Could You...

...use wood or plastic to make the basic form of the stacks and scribe a pattern on the visible surfaces to give the illusion of separate sticks of lumber?

Edit:  As illustrated below in mecovey's photo...looks pretty good imo.

casting

I would suggest making a couple stacks out of styrene and making a rubber mold of them and then cast them in resin.  That's probably the fastest and cheapest way to do it.

What about a photo?

Could you print images of the ends of lumber stacks, and use those?  They wouldn't have any relief, but they might be good enough.  you might even build a master and take photos of it, so that the rest will have the same colors and sizes that you know you can make.

Lumber Stacks

The stacks in this still under construction Lumber Yard were made by scribing balsa blocks with a scriber. It looks OK from 12" or so.

Just a thought...

...but what about taking styrene siding and cutting as needed. Scribe edge lines to show the individual boards on end. To simplify, build one stack and resin cast the rest.

Lumber stacks in large numbers

Someone suggested photos of lumber as a background to imply large numbers of cut lumber stacks.  You could use photos in 3-D, however, if you made graphics of photos of actual lumber stacks, ends included, and then glued them to blocks of wood of the appropriate size.  Other posts have shown this technique being used to imply large numbers of stacked cargo containers; this would also work for lumber stacks.

I apologize for the poor focus.  These are lumber stacks in HO scale, and are not even laminated to hard blocks; they are just folded paper, with photos of stacked cut lumber on the ends and on the sides, between the wrappers.  By surfing the web, you can probably locate photos of lumber that you can use, included painted cut ends, if you'd like.  Using this technique, you can make large numbers of lumber stacks for the cost of printing ink.  I created these files in PowerPoint, using photos of lumber and images captured from websites for the wrapper labels.

Rog

Options

These are all interesting ideas,  Some of them maybe of more use in my case then others.  The photo idea I am not sure will work well in my case for a couple reasons. First off trying to find a photo or two (I would need a couple so that 18 liner feet don't look exactly alike.)  But the real issue with photo's is that the location these stacks will be right up front running paralel to the front of the layout within a foot at most.  And the texture for lack of a better word where the end of the boards are not on the same plain is key to the look.  So somehow this is what needs to be modeled. I may try and clue up on "front" and cast it as suggested and if that works then I could build three or four of them and cast them over and over and over. A quick estimate for this project is I need something like 100+ stacks (based on how big the prototype stacks where)

-Doug M

How about this?

Could you assemble long stacks of sticks (styrene or wood), and then chop the stacks into shorter segments?  If you bundle but not glue the stacks (wrap them in tape, or glue only the outside) then it should be possible to have the boards inside move around, leaving a slightly uneven surface.

Don't forget that fresh wood smell!

If you plan to have a sawmill with 100 stacks of freshly cut lumber at the front edge of the layout, maybe you should add some fir or pine pitch or some other source of freshly cut wood aroma - it might really add to the effect (and give the whole train room some backwoods atmosphere!)

Rog

Hey

Rog, now there's a thought for a mom & pop business. Aroma's for your layout. Got an oil facility, how about a little oil smell, gas station, gas smell and of course a fish cannery. I won't go there.  We strive for prototypical sounds why not prototypical smells?

Bernd

$tack$ of lumber

Ken, I think the problem with using real wood bundles is more that trying to fill a lumberyard with scale lumber lifts would put you in the poor house.  You would need dozens of packages.  I started out trying to make a scale lumber load for a flatcar using scale lumber, and I cleaned out the store and still didn't have nearly enough to load a car.

On the cheap

If you can cut a 12" long stack of lumber into short enough pieces, you get quite a few ends out of a single pile.  Also, you can use cheap commercial balsa or styrene, unless the exact dimension is critical.

LOL BERND!

I could just see the look on the wifes face when i ask her if its ok to have the "aroma" for my water treatment plant. or mabey even the low tide by the river!!!!!!

sounds like a lot of work

Trying to sheathe little blocks of wood with dozens of even smaller bits of wood sounds very labor intensive.  I don't think Henry Ford would approve.  I found wrapping the blocks of wood in Jager loads with paper wrappers was so odeous that I only managed to get two loads built so far.  There are 40 blocks per car, and they don't look like a lot stacked up, and those only took about 5 minutes each to make.  Maybe I just have a short attention span.

Look at the Time Era

Back in the 1940s lumber was not wrapped in paper or plastic.  It was stacks of common sized boards.  So Doug will have to develop a method of building up his stacks around a center block of wood or if he is richer than most of us, buy a lot scale timbers or plastic strips.

He has a major task either way.

miscommunication

Yeah, sorry, I wasn't suggesting Doug use the Jager loads; I was just saying that wrapping wood blocks with paper is a snap compared to covering them with individual small pieces of wood, and I found the wrapped blocks were a lot of work, so doing the stripwood covered blocks would be an onerous task, especially if you needed 50 to 100 to make it look like a lumber mill storage yard.

And in the 1940s they did not

As noted in the 1940s they did not wrap wood. So the wood in these piles is individual boards with ends sticking out. About the only thing that would be visable would be the ends and the top.

And it is a matter of A) Cost andb) time. Both are issues with the amounted needed.

If you assume a scale 20' high stack, Made of 2 by 6s, with a scale 260' long run (36 in real life) and assume 1/4" pieces you get the following

20' / 2" = 120 boards tall,

360' / 6" = 720 boards wide

120 x 720 = 86400 boards

86400 x 0.25" = 21600"

21600" = 1800'

1800' = 90 packets of lumbers (Mt Albert 2' long packets) or $396.

You save some because the stickers between layers uses less lumbers (it needs 36" vs 180") but then again I need to model the back of the stack where it is higher then the walkways. So I would expect that the savings is less then the rear of the pile (about 6 scale feet high). 

Now assuming that only 2/3 of the stacks are full at any given time that means I need 2/3 of 6 runs of 4 runs total 

That works out to 360 packets of lumber or about $1584. And that is not even talking about time!

So cost enters this picture.

If you assume you can cut one piece of lumber per second (counting opening the packets, changing the setting on the chopper replacing the dull blades etc) you would need 86400 seconds or 1400 min or 23.3 hours of time cutting. Per section or about 93.3 hours. Assuming 2 hours a day this would take 46 days just to CUT the wood.

Assuming that it takes 2 times as long to assemble the stacks (and this seams low) you would need another 189.6 hours time or working again in 2 hour shits another 92 days. 

In conclusion this project would take over $1600 and over 138 days (2 hours a day).  And that is not counting the walks ways himself.

So SOMETHING has to give for time and cost.

Right now I am working on the idea of making three fronts for different size wood (say 2X6s 2x12s and 4X10 for example) then making a side casting to match one of these and just cast and repeat. Note you can turn the casting upside down and use it over and the pattern will not be as obvious.

-Doug M

Lumber loads

Here is one source.I like these and use them for unwrapped loads.

http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/295-LL1

1940 Era Wood Loads

Folks,

I suspect Doug has taken the time to research what the lumber loads looked like along the Cass at the Mower Mill in his time period.  The stacks were much larger, with no stenciled markings and steel banding was still 20 to 30 years in the future. 

When looking at the periods prior to the year 2000 the modeler need to do a little research to get a feel for the era and realize that things were different back then.  Research is a great thing to do because it allows you to realize how much things have changed over time and there is no exam at the end of your efforts, but I find at least, that I have a great feeling about learning that our fathers and grandfathers weren't dolts, but some pretty darn inventive and industrious folks who were able to do some very amazing things without all the neat things we have today.  There was no OSHA back then.

Well yes I have researched

Well yes I have researched these things.  I know what they looked like. I would post a photo but I do not have one to post (the best photos are in various books) All I have are photos from the first mill and they stacked the wood differently in 1923 then in 1943.

The stakes where very much a collection of the same sized boards (different sizes where in different stacks) and they had stick boards between almost ever single row (they were expect to dry out in these piles) they stayed in these stacks for at least 3 months. Then the wood either was shipped out or went back into the mill to be machined into flooring or other uses.

The key to the look is going to be the end view, Because they were hand stacked each board was a little bit out compared to the boards around it so you get a lot of texture in the ends.

Interesting fact at least one of the Wright Brothers very early experimental aircraft was build with wood from Cass as they letter and quote still exists.

It is the shear scale of this project that is the issue.  

-Doug M

Hate to mention another mag, but..

I got home late last night and found my new issue of RMC.  In the back, in the RPM meet photos (don't recall where, sorry) was a flat car with a couple stacks of random length lumber, along with a description of how it was done.

The modeler started with sheets of wood (it looks like pine to me), then cut notches in the end to represent the random board lengths.  By stacking the sheets, the effect is one of a lot of boards of various lengths, but without the need for stripwood or all the time stacking it.  I immediately thought about this project, and how the technique would make those lumber stacks a lot easier to model.

Starting with a sheet of balsa or similar, I would cut strips off the end (so the grain runs across the strips) and then cut notches in one side.  A brass or steel jog might be handy, or simply using the edge of a file might be effective.  Cutting the strip into pieces of the appropriate width and stacking the resulting pieces would quickly develop stacks of lumber with distinct board ends.

If the board ends could/should be evenly aligned, it might be even simpler - just use a razor saw to cut notches where each board would end.

Balsa

My lumber stacks are made from 1/16th and 1/8th balsa sheets. I made up jigs for stripping the sheets lengthwise into planks and then to cut them to length. 

Another jig is used to lay up each stack, and as most of mine are going on cars a last jig is used to assemble the loads. Once cut I assemble the stacks while watching TV. One side ends up a bit uneven, doesn't matter for car loads, but could be evened up. A balsa plane would probably work for this.

Stacks on the ground

Pennsylvania Logging Stacks 1900-1920 or later...Bass Wood...

Paul Miklos of the built the stacks below on the Eastern Loggers layout.  They are all basswood from model railroad suppliers or cut himself (the home cut might be pine or other).  Paul would cut wood each morning before going on his day job.  He used a standard 10" table saw and patients....

Notice that the boards have slats between each row of board for drying.  Pennsylvania was known for having lumber yards with millions of board feet of lumber drying.

Having hand-cut

more than a few ties on a table saw, I am quite in awe of Paul's work.  Here are a couple of examples I found in the BC Archives.  Apart  from the neat little rigs for moving boards around, the first shows sloping roofs on the complete stacks of lumber (click on the '1' on the left to see the image):

http://search.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/sn-42134AB/query/VisualRecords/find%2BF-08774%2B%2B%2B%2B 

The second shows that not every drying stack was uniform in board length:

http://search.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/sn-15D0A77/query/VisualRecords/find%2BH-03850%2B%2B%2B%2B 

David