Buildings,  Milling Lumber

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.

milling lumber,spruce logs,kiln shed
Large spruce.

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.

skidsteer,spruce logs,piedmont
About 2 cords of spruce.

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.

milling lumber,spruce logs,kiln shed
Doing the heavy lifting.

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.

milling lumber,spruce logs,kiln shed
Beautiful.

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.

kiln shed,trusses,milling lumber
Building the trusses.

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

kiln shed,trusses,milling lumber
One done, many more to go.

Here is how it stands now.

sawmill,roof trusses,kiln shed
Four up and another one built.

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.

milling lumber,spruce logs,kiln shed
Jim’s a hugger.

Later

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *