Board and Batten Questions

[SDdave]

All right first of all, trying to get a final dollar amount for the wife. So far everything is falling in place and under budget. I really like the look of board and batten siding being on the rustic side, and no one around here having it is also on the plus side.

My questions. 1.) Rough sawn, correct? 2.) Green wood or kiln dried? If green how bad do those suckers bend, twist, pull nails, etc.. 3.) I was planning on about 2.5' nailing spacing,... overkill? 4.) Type of wood...I got pine available on one side of the state and a blend on the other half, ash, maple, cottonwood, etc.

Thanks for the time and expertise,

SDdave

[Maplewalnut]

SDdave,

I used a mix of tulip popular and hemlock. Most of mine was rough sawn air dried about 6 months. I ran a little short and used green hemlock to finish. Very little twisting or warped. 10 years later all wood is indistinguishable from each other. Keep you boards off ground and they will last a longtime. I'd go with pine personally

[n8hutch]

Pine is nice to work with, unfortunately all have is Hemlock & Maple so I will be building with Hemlock, is 6 months a pretty safe amount of time to air dry?

[Moser's Maple]

i'd recommend using green hemlock since it's becomes so much harder to nail once dry. put the boards tight together and then place batten strip over them

[maple flats]

I also used Hemlock, it was dried about 5 days (ha). I got no twisting. When you put on the batten, only nail it on one side of the crack. Put them up so about 2/3-3/4 of the batten is on the side being nailed, then nail it only towards the center of the batten. That way, as the board expands and contracts it can move under the batten. If you prefer more nails, have one closer to the nail side edge, and the other at or just under the middle. If you nail both edges, you get some cracking and splitting as the board expands and contracts under the batten. This will eventually stress the nails and loosen some. The boards will actually move (expand in width) as much as maybe 1/8" from dry and in the sun/wind, to an all day wind driven rain. That is why board and batten was designed in the first place.

[n8hutch]

I have had a fair amount of people say that Hemlock is nicer to work with green vs Dry.

[Moser's Maple]

Green is wet.
If you can handle the weight of the boards will stay true with less twists, cups, and bows if you put it up green. Framing and siding.

[n8hutch]

I swear I wrote Dry, but after I read your post, sure enough I wrote wet. Lol guess I am not getting enough sleep.

[SDdave]

Thanks for all the info!!

SDdave

[VT_K9]

We built a 8x12 sap shack (for our 600 gallon gathering tank) out of green hemlock last year. Due to an injury we could not complete the battens at the time. We will be doing that later this summer or fall. The wood was cut a the same time last year. We will use an air nailer for the nails. The boards are nailed near the edges at an angle towards the center and the battens will receive one nail in the center. We used 2x10 rafters so we would not have to have any concerns with a large snow load. It has a single slope to it.

Mike