1" rough cut boards for stalls, etc?

I have a bunch of rough cut lumber on hand. It is all a full 1" thick and between 6" and 12" wide. It was in the barn that I am cleaning out to make room for stalls. After I sorted it out and put it all away I started to wonder if I could use it for stall walls.

Has anyone done this and discovered it was good, bad, or otherwise?

Thanks in advance for your input,

DOC

I just built a barn a year ago..

1. The wood should be fine but stain or seal both sides before you put it up.
2. Install wood virtically.. The shorter the pieces, the less warping there will be.

Why vertically. That would certainly be easier since there would be less splices.

DOC

My husband welded together all of our stalls and we installed the 12ft. Boards horizontally. Now there is some bowing and we are having to drop vertical boards between the metal and the back of the stall walls to keep the boards together.

When we re-do them.... the back walls (8ft) we would have 2 rows of 4ft boards held together with metal horse channel. The divider walls and the stall fronts we would just install the 5ft boards vertically. Manufactured stalls I think are only 4 ft though.

If you want to see what our stalls look like.. go to facilities
It will show pictures of the construction phase and what the stalls looked like being built and painted.

Greetings: This is my first post,But I've enjoyed the forum for awhile.
Good advice on sealing the wood IF it is green,But you stated it was stored in the barn.For how long?If it has been there for a long time then there would be no reason to seal it,for it is all ready air dried & it should not srink any more or very little. Depending on the type of wood it is, it may be hard to drive a nail in it

The farm was my grandparents and I eventually bought it from all my siblings and sold my house in an addition. The wood was from when my grandfather had a sawmill. It is a mix of everything that he cut up from our woods. Anyway, it has been there for about 25 years. So it is plenty dry.

Starline - I was looking at your website last night. Very nice set-up. When you welded everything together how do you go about painting it. I do not know about Texas, but it is humid in the summer and cold in the winter up here in MN. Rust is a major factor, so prepping it properly and painting with a quality paint would be very important. Other than that I love the idea of the steel frame.

Thanks,

DOC

Oh yeah! Sorry I didn't look at the screen name...

The stalls were a BIG undertaking. My husband bought a smaller mig welder for the job which worked out well. I didn't have to weld anything myself (thank god) but it took him forever and alot of chop saw blades to cut and weld all of those bars in. But it cost us a fraction of the price of a prefab one.

If you do go metal frames, wipe them all down with mineral spirits or paint thinner before you weld them together because if you don't.. going back to do this is a PAIN... We also used a cup brush to clean up the welds a little so they would look better under the paint.

We used a rustoleum metal primer and flat paint finish. Don't use a gloss at all because it looks terrible. We also found it easier to use those really small rollers (not the foam ones). Instead of taping, we just used a plastic gaurd.. same for staining because stain will mess up even a black finish. I wouldn't worry about your northern shortcomings messing up your paint finish...as long as you wipe the metal down before you paint it and get it primered everything should be fine even if it does rust a little bit in the process. The primer and paint both dry reallly fast too.

These are all things we had to learn the hard way.

Do you know what kind of wood it is? If its a good solid hard wood like White Oak or Maple it makes great stall walls I made mine from White Oak. If its Elm or a soft wood horses can kick and bust them pretty easy.

It is a mixture of everything. A few are pretty hard, but most I can get a nail through if I crank the air pressure for the nailer up to 115#.