My Utility Trailer is 8 years - makeover time

I actually did that about 3 years ago. Used oil and a dollar general mop. Worked great!

quote:

---

If you coat all six sides of the board with used motor oil and diesel those boards will last a lot longer. Especially treat the ends where it sucks up water.

The stuff they treat wood with today is crap compared to the old cancer causing stuff.

But the oil\diesel stuff works.

---

It might be possible to get white oak from a local sawmill for less than PT lumber from anywhere and it will last longer with no treatment at all. If you treat it with motor oil and diesel fuel it will last longer than the steel in the trailer. It will be sticky for a while though....

I picked up 4-16 inch diameter (inside the bark) X 17 foot long white oak logs a couple of weeks ago for $100. That is enough true 2x6's, not 1.5X5.5", to do 4 -16'X90 inch wide trailer decks. I will use a $20 blade and it took me about an hour and a half to load them, haul them and unload them and another couple of hours to mill them so 4 hours is a stretch, $120 in blades and logs for better lumber than I can buy at HD or Lowes and that much PT would be about $240 a trailer so $960 total. I have already had someone offer me $1250 for those logs milled into 2 inch slabs, flat sawn and green as a gord. I have one trailer I need one for and the rest I will "quarter saw" (as much as one can quarter saw with a bandsaw mill) to 5/4 and what whatever width I can get out of them which will take me about 4 and a half hours to do 3 logs, air dry them for about 120-150 days and just about any cabinet shop in the country would gladly pay $3.50 to $4 a BF for quarter sawn white oak at less than 15% MC for a grand total of around 450 BF or around $1575 to $1800. And I will have the new deck on my flatbed trailer and all it will cost me is about $120 an a 8 hour or so day. Not only is it pretty damned lucrative it also produces far superior lumber to anything one can buy from anyone other than a small sawyer who knows what they are doing.

quote:

---

I actually did that about 3 years ago. Used oil and a dollar general mop. Worked great!

---

I did about 200 8 foot true 4X4 SYP posts, green as a gourd when treated, about 20 years ago and my dad and I built a fence at his place with them and they are as good today as they were the day we "planted" them. This is in Georgia clay so they have basically been underwater for 20 years and they are as solid as any cedar or PT post. We painted them completely with about 3-1 ratio of diesel fuel and motor oil and they stayed wet and then sticky for about 3 years but they eventually dried completely and have been good ever since. It works. Been working for a LONG time. I am about to build about 400 linear feet of fence on a lot and I have milled most of the cedar for it but I would not hesitate to have used SYP treated with oil and diesel fuel instead...I was given the cedar so that is a no brainer but if that hadn't happened it'd been SYP treated just like this.

How much that gonna run me on 5x10

As done as it will get.