Advice milling sweet chestnut cladding please

[Shanemac]

Hi,

I'm quite the novice with regards to milling in general having only got my mill a few weeks ago, so I apologise if these are silly questions.

 

We're in the early stages of building a house and have a reasonable quantity of exterior timber cladding to do.

We have lots of Sweet chestnut on the farm which I hoped to use for the cladding, once air dried and t&g profiled(by third party).

 

My questions are;

 

What size should I cut the boards, allowing for planing/moulding etc and limiting movement once fixed etc? I was going to cut 150 x 25. Some say if doing t&g, finished face should be no wider than 120mm excluding tongue and groove but not sure if thats correct?

 

Should the boards be quartersawn or does it not really matter?

 

Should the order of events be,

Mill - Dry(to what moisture level)?- Mould for t&g then ready for use?

 

Many thanks 

[trigger_andy]

40 minutes ago, Shanemac said:

Hi,

I'm quite the novice with regards to milling in general having only got my mill a few weeks ago, so I apologise if these are silly questions.

 

We're in the early stages of building a house and have a reasonable quantity of exterior timber cladding to do.

We have lots of Sweet chestnut on the farm which I hoped to use for the cladding, once air dried and t&g profiled(by third party).

 

My questions are;

 

What size should I cut the boards, allowing for planing/moulding etc and limiting movement once fixed etc? I was going to cut 150 x 25. Some say if doing t&g, finished face should be no wider than 120mm excluding tongue and groove but not sure if thats correct?

 

Should the boards be quartersawn or does it not really matter?

 

Should the order of events be,

Mill - Dry(to what moisture level)?- Mould for t&g then ready for use?

 

Many thanks 

Quatersawn would be very nice but overkill for exterior cladding Id say, you would have significant waste as well

 

To allow for warpage and cupping Id mill them thicker than 25mm, 30-35mm would be my thinking although Im yet to mill for T&G so I can only suggest what Id mill at 

 

Plenty Houses cladd in 150mm in Norway so I cant see the issue myself

[Woodworks]

I used to work on getting 25mm boards to finish at 20-21mm when planed up in my furniture making days.

 

As for widths I made some through and through cut larch T&G for our doors at 100mm wide and they go from tight as a tight thing in winter to a few chinks of light in the summer due to seasonal movement. I should have put larger tongues and groves on them in hindsight. Quarter sawn would expand and shrink a lot less but as said would be wasteful. No experience of using sweet chestnut myself

[Shanemac]

5 hours ago, trigger_andy said:

Quatersawn would be very nice but overkill for exterior cladding Id say, you would have significant waste as well

 

To allow for warpage and cupping Id mill them thicker than 25mm, 30-35mm would be my thinking although Im yet to mill for T&G so I can only suggest what Id mill at 

 

Plenty Houses cladd in 150mm in Norway so I cant see the issue

 

4 hours ago, Woodworks said:

I used to work on getting 25mm boards to finish at 20-21mm when planed up in my furniture making days.

 

As for widths I made some through and through cut larch T&G for our doors at 100mm wide and they go from tight as a tight thing in winter to a few chinks of light in the summer due to seasonal movement. I should have put larger tongues and groves on them in hindsight. Quarter sawn would expand and shrink a lot less but as said would be wasteful. No experience of using sweet chestnut myself

That's good to hear, quartersawn seemed like a lot of hassle!

 

Friends have used secret nailed siberian larch on properties and had  problems such as yours with movement and the groove shrinking back past the tongue - they resorted to face nailing to try and limit it. 

I hoped chestnut might be more stable.

 

Thank you both for your help.

[slack ma girdle]

Have a watch of this, particularly around 4 minutes. Really shows the difference between the quality of cleft and sawn shingles.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UZA1J8RHltY