Large slab storage?

[squall_line]

I have a significant number of Ash and Maple slabs that I dropped off a while back at my sawyer's place and are currently air drying while waiting for their turn in the kiln.

When they come back to me, I'm going to need a place to store them until they're actually used for a project (coming up with a project is another issue, of course, but I'm working on that).

The slabs are all in the 24" wide range, some live-edge and some not.  Most are 2" nominal, some are only 1".  I think the total combined amount is in the 600-800 bf range, all said and done.

It took up a ton of space in my backyard, I know it'll take up at least that much in my garage (but hopefully it'll weight a little less dry).  I will probably gift some to my woodworking brother and to my neighbor across the street, but I definitely want to keep a lot of it for my own use.

I thought about getting wall racks to hang up and store them, but the Bora wall racks (and most of that style) appear to be only 12" deep.  I have a 2 car garage that eventually both cars need to fit in again.  We also just got a small shed for our backyard that's 10'x12' on the outside, less studs on the inside.  It's already partially filled with yard equipment and other things that came from the garage.

The garage is attached to the house but not a conditioned space.  The shed is free standing.

Any thoughts from the FOG on storing this much wood?  Obviously if I was purchasing lumber for projects, I wouldn't buy 600+ bf at a time, but these were reclaimed from my backyard after last year's storms and I didn't want to see them turned into mulch.

 

[rvieceli]

Some questions:

How long are they?

How many are there (wild guess)?

How long are you going to store them?

How much space do you have on your property?

How understanding are your neighbors and your wife?

Ron

 

[squall_line]

All of the boards are between 7 1/2 and 8 1/2 feet long.

(21) 4/4-ish ash boards
(4) 8/4-ish dimensional ash slabs
(9) 8/4-ish maple slabs
(10) 8/4-ish ash double-live slabs

I plan on storing them until they're used up by projects or sold off to people who want them for projects.

"On my property", I have the aforementioned garage and shed.  My neighbors are fairly understanding, my wife already told me we're not building a carport or storing the slabs outside in the yard (which is why they went to the sawyer's farm lot and kiln).

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[rvieceli]

if you have the room for it something like this is useful. It keeps you from having to go through the whole pile when you want something.
https://www.globalindustrial.com/p/cantilever-single-sided-starter-unit-medium-duty-4
https://www.uline.com/BL_156/Cantilever-Racks

Lots of different variations and price points. The industrial supply houses will have them. sometimes they come up for sale at auctions, although those units are usually too big.

The other option is sticker and stack them in one halve of your shed. There a variations of temporary Tent like car ports and garages that will keep the weather off.
https://www.harborfreight.com/10-ft-x-10-ft-portable-shed-63297.html

Pare it down to a manageable number if you can. You can store the thicker stuff upright if you can keep it mostly straight vertical. Leaning at an angle tends to allow some bowing to creep in.

Depending on your garage ceiling height you may be able to squeeze some horizontal storage up high along the edges.

Good luck.

Ron

 

[Bob D.]

An option might be a small scaffold. One of those that you 'll find at HD or Lowes, or even HF.
The ones I have seen are 2.5 feet wide and 5.5 feet long and range from ~$250 on down.

You could use it as a mobile lumber rack. Just build some platforms to support you slabs.
Or maybe you have more than one of those can accommodate which sound like it could be the
case. I would think one of those small scaffolds would only hold a 12 to 16 slabs.

If you're wanting cantilever racks you can find them on craigslist and probably FB marketplace locally.
On CL try searching under For Sale -> General for "industrial shelving", "pallet racking " or "rack shelving".

 

[CeeJay]

I’d put a lean-to roof on the side of the shed and sticker them up under that.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[squall_line]

An option might be a small scaffold. One of those that you 'll find at HD or Lowes, or even HF.
The ones I have seen are 2.5 feet wide and 5.5 feet long and range from ~$250 on down.

I actually have two of those broken down and stored in the corner of my garage... Just measure, and it's 25.5" between the rails, so it should fit the slabs fairly well.

 

[squall_line]

Following up on this, I picked up the dried lumber today.  887 BF combined Ash and Maple.  I hate BF math, but I'd guess it's split about 600 BF of Ash and 287 of Maple.

[member=60461]Bob D.[/member] , thanks again for the recommendation on the scaffolding, which I already had in my garage.
I set up the two scaffolds in the shed and my buddy and I loaded the boards and slabs up.  I imagine that they're actually above the 1,000 lb working weight of the scaffolding by about 60%.  Not sure if that's a static or dynamic load limit, but we removed the wheels at my friend's recommendation, and used a few of the shoddy boards as sacrificial strips between the tubing and the plywood floor.

There are a few gems of pieces in the maple stack, including a piece that has a spot for a pond or lake if one were to use it for an epoxy/resin project.  Quite a few of the live edge ash slabs have some nasty knots that may or may not cause issues when flattening.  Some of the ash slabs are cut on all 4 sides and fairly straight and I will likely flatten and cut them down to dimensional pieces for legs or other uses.  I was too concerned about getting them into the shed and letting my friend and I get back to our families to inspect and mark down the best pieces.

If I can manage to sell about 1/3 of it, I may be able to recoup my milling and drying costs.  I certainly don't want to hang on to 800+ bf of lumber for very long, regardless.

Thanks again for the suggestions, all!

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[Bob D.]

Can't tell for sure but it looks like you are only supporting at the ends leaving the majority of the slabs unsupported. This will not go well over time, even a few days if this were green wood.

I use the scaffold planks/platforms at each level and stickered every 18 inches of length with wood lathe that I ran through the planer to get an even thickness on it. I bought two bundles of lathe for next to nothing and cut the 48" lengths in half. This gave me a few hundred stickers and I made sure to place them on top of each other to transfer the weight directly down. If they are offset from one layer to the next your slabs will dry with a bow or a twist.

I went back and re-read your first post and see you mentioned these were air drying and eventually go in a kiln to finish drying. If that happened there is much less chance of the wood bowing or twisting so my above comments may not apply at all.

 

[4nthony]

I'm definitely jealous.

It looks like you found a solution with the scaffolding. Frank Howarth built a cool wood shed off the back of his workshop if you're looking for a more ambitious means to storing wood outside of your existing shed.

Part One:

Part Two:

 

[squall_line]

I went back and re-read your first post and see you mentioned these were air drying and eventually go in a kiln to finish drying. If that happened there is much less chance of the wood bowing or twisting so my above comments may not apply at all.

Yes, this is post-kiln.  Many of the boards cupped while they were in there, so I'm not sure what the ultimate yield will be.  I should get a moisture meter to verify the content, but it was kiln-dried with stickers every foot to 16 inches or so.  The sawyer was pretty adamant about us pulling apart the bundles to get his sticks back.  [cool]

I'll definitely check on it daily (I'm waiting to wake up one night to the sound of the bars creaking and welds snapping) for a week or two and make sure nothing is moving.  I'll take additional steps at that point if needed; I'm not trying to make a killing off of this hoard, but I certainly didn't spend the time and money to have it sawn and dried just to toss it all out, either.

Next up is to compare the WP Slab Mill to some of the linear rail offerings I've seen out there...