Storeing Lumber, or more Craigslist madness

[mashtun]

Hi Guys
Well I was looking at Craigslist, and found a guy near me who had a Grizzly jointer for sale. I Went to look at it, and bought it, even though I have a small delta benchtop jointer.

He also had some lumber with prices to good to pass up, So my questions are what is the best way to store this wood.

1 Lean it against a wall?

2 Make some kind of rack to store it laying down, or just lay it down on the floor?

3 If I store it in my unheated garage which will get down to below freezing will this damage the wood?

Let me know what you think, its some really nice Black Walnut, and some nice red oak.

As for the madness part, the red oak is planks of about 12 inchs wide, by two inches thick, so I am now going to have watch craigslist and the bargian alerts for a bandsaw to resaw it.

It never ends.

John

[thrytis]

Lean it against the wall or make a rack to store it horizontally off the floor. Moisture could move from the concrete to the wood if you store it directly on the floor. Freezing won't hurt it, though you will have some movement with the relative humidity dropping. Make sure you bring it inside for a little while to readjust before cutting it up.

[siliconbauhaus]

I would store it flat on a rack. I bought some white oak and had it machined and leant it against a wall for a couple of weeks. It has a nice bend to it now

[Greg.B]

You want to support it flat. Do not lay it on the floor, the moisture will kill it, and leaning it will create a bow over time. Most guys build a rack mounted to a wall, that has supports every 12" or so.

[Black wallnut]

Build a rack to store it flat. Support every 12-16". Place stickers between layers that line up with the supports.

[Garasaki]

You can also store it on the floor if you use stickers (maybe extra thick ones) to keep it off the concrete.

Absolutely don't lean it, and absolutely don't let it touch concrete.

[John Hunter]

This is the perfect excuse to build a lumber rack!

[Jeffrey Schronce]

I'll post a photo of my rack I just built tomorrow.

[ironhat]

If you don't have time to build a lumber rack 'just like [he's] going to build [today]' it should be OK on the floor with plenty of tall stickers (rip some 2x4s) but put some polyethylene on the floor first. It will help with the immediate transfer of moisture. I did mine like this for years and had few problems - at least not enough to say it was the storage method.