Milling Lumber for the Kiln Shed Trusses

When we built the walls for the 10 x 20 foot kiln shed, we milled the 2 x 4 lumber and built a wall. Then repeat, repeat, repeat until the four walls were up. Now we are on to the roof trusses and decided to mill all of the lumber first.

That large spruce alone yielded eight 2 x 4s and one 1 x 5. A lot less work milling a bigger log as opposed to milling several small logs to get the same result. That log was buried in this pile that we got a few weekends ago.

So far we have milled about one trailer load full with another trailer load to go, but I think we have enough to get started on the trusses.

This is what we have milled so far. The back pile is all 2 x 4s and the front pile is random width 1 inch thick boards. Basically what ever we could get extra from a log while getting the maximum amount of 2 x 4s. There is about 1000 board feet of lumber in these two piles.

So….Jim got started building the roof trusses. He set up a sort of jig on the trailer bed and started assembling the first one. The span is 10 feet plus one foot overhang on each side, and our lumber is 8 feet long so the boards are overlapped for strength.

We put up two braces for the first one to make things easier.

Here is how it stands now.

Supposed to get snow tomorrow but it shouldn’t stay around too long. Fingers crossed.

Up next is to tarp and strap the kiln building.

I’ll leave you with this cell phone picture of Jim showing this pine tree some love. For a second there I thought he was going to chain himself to it.

Later