Advice on making 24" boards

[GuyGordon]

I just moved into a new house with an unfinished basement (about 1200 sqft) that will be my various workshops (computers & electronics, metal & woodworking.)  I intend to 'rough finish' it, by which I mean seal & paint the concrete, insulate & panel the stud walls (I plan to use whiteboard/marker board on all walls, so I can write myself notes.).  Of course I'll build in plenty of shelves & work tables.

The ceiling is engineered wood I-Joists, mostly 24" O.C. (some 16" O.C.) with fiberglass bat insulation.  My thought is to rough-finish it by suspending 23.5" wood between the I-Joists (resting on the bottom flange).  I've put up a few strips of chipboard, and it looks OK.  But I don't feel like buying 1200sqft of plywood to rip into strips for this.

Instead, it occurred to me that I can make my own 24" boards from free logs.  (Did I mention I'm retired & have time for hobbies?).  I see free logs listed all the time on Craigslist, mostly cut to about 2' lengths.  Here in Georgia there's lots of pine, but these urban logs are often oak, elm, cherry, etc.  I should be able to slice them into boards, dry, treat, & finish them to make an interesting random ceiling.  Yes it will take a long time, but I have lots else to do, and the ceiling is low-priority.

I don't want to invest in a full portable saw mill.  Also, I don't have the yard space to process large logs.  I'm thinking of ways I can collect & saw a few short logs at a time.  This is where I need some advice.

First, I could put small diameter logs in my SUV.  Larger ones I could split first.  Then back home I could slab them with a band saw or chain saw.  I don't currently own a band saw though I do have a small table saw.  I've seen attachments for chain saws to allow you to cut boards, but that doesn't sound like a great idea.  I could buy a band saw, but that doesn't look like a great way to slab logs.  Possibly I could build a small saw mill with a pipe frame, a horizontal band, driven by an electric motor.  Yes, I have the skills to build such a thing, but no experience sawing logs.

Any suggestions? 
 
(Drop it/You're Nuts/Waste of Time are all reasonable responses, which I'll probably ignore.  Don't because [reasonable argument why] is quite welcome.  What to do or avoid, especially with links would be a great help.  Thanks.)

[CLETUS]

1/2" OSB would run you ~$500, 1/2 drywall ~$600.

Even if you're retired, I'm sure you can find something more fun than spending your remaining years trying to piece together a ceiling.

[Dave Diaman]

Cletus is right. What you or considering sounds like a nightmare and will end up costing you a lot more in the end. Honestly you will probably spend more money on gas alone going to get the various logs than it would cost you to just use plywood or drywall. Once you factor in cutting and drying any wood you get it will be even worse. Something else you need to think about is sound. Noise from your tools will go right through that floor until you get some type of ceiling in there. My shop is actually the basement of my house. I was lucky that the original guy who built my house was a avid woodworker and designed the whole house around the fact that the basement would be his shop. This is the only reason I didn't add a building on my property as a shop. He didn't however put any any sound barrier. When I used any tool in the basement it might as well have been in the living room. . I in put a special sound insulation as well as resilient channel and 5/8" drywall. I had planned to add a second layer of drywall but it proved to be unnecessary. The whole shop is almost sound tight. Just something else to think of.

[Admiral]

Guy:  I'm thinking that you're overthinking this.  Getting 24" wide boards out of logs is going to take a whole lot of logs, as even with big ones, maybe you'd get 2 or 3 out of each log, and you don't have a bandsaw mill or a chainsaw mill (unless you are going to edge glue up panels).  Incredibly time-intensive and work intensive, and you still have to season and dry them, and that process can go sideways on you with cupping and warping, as some of the logs may be limb logs which have a lot of built-in stress that can drive you crazy with cup and warp.  Downside is also if you mix species the ceiling is not going to be all that light reflective, which is also important. If you've put up some OSB already and its satisfactory to you, I agree with Cletus, as OSB is very reasonable.  I'd go with OSB, but before ripping I'd get a cheap Wagner spray gun and paint it white (cheapest interior ceiling white you can find in 5 gal buckets), one or two coats, then rip and install.  What you end up with is a reflective ceiling at perhaps 1/4 of the cost of say, a suspended tile ceiling.  Oh, and I'd screw on the OSB so you can remove it for getting into the joist spaces for electrical work.

[Splinter Puller]

Try slabbing a few logs as you say into 24" boards.  You will quickly realize how much the job sucks and then you can look to simpler sheet good alternatives. 

[cvillewood]

Sounds ludicrous. Surely you can spend your time more productively, like breaking rocks or digging ditches.

[joe1086]

And........................welcome to the forum. 


Some excellent responses so far from some very credible people. 

That's a nightmare for all the previously stated reasons.

[mikefm101]

What about this stuff. We have knotty pine headboard on the roof of a screen porch, quite nice.

Many of the reviewers comments are about doing a ceiling and how happy he was with it. One said it cost him $140 to do his ceiling (but didn't say size).

Also, if I had 2' wide oak boards I'd do something with them more interesting than a shop ceiling. Maybe even sell em on Craig List.

Mike

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Empire-Company-...nk/3799133

[Bill Wilson]

I'm thinking the boards would be random width, 24" long.

"Instead, it occurred to me that I can make my own 24" boards from free logs.  (Did I mention I'm retired & have time for hobbies?).  I see free logs listed all the time on Craigslist, mostly cut to about 2' lengths. "

[BrentDH]

I don't disagree with the consensus here that this seems like a lot of work for a minor reward, but I do think some of you are misunderstanding what he wants to do.

If I understand him correctly he wants to take random WIDTH boards and cut them to LENGTH to match the distance between vertical plywood parts of the I-beam joists (approx 24").  Then just set them in place on the lip of the I-beam joist.  Imagine a normal suspended ceiling.  The bottom piece of the joist is the same as the t-channel grid and the approx 24" long wood is the suspended panel.  Only in this case the wood is rigid enough that it only needs to be supported on two edges instead of all four.  So the bottom piece of the I-beam joist would still be visible.   I believe his intent is to use NO fasteners so that the random width boards could just be tipped up and removed at anytime.  There would be no need to glue up any panels and he is not proposing using 24" wide wood.  At least that is my interpretation of what he is suggesting.

This is an interesting concept and I agree that it might look neat with a random selection of woods.  If this is really the look you want I would just go buy the cheapest hardwood plywood in varying species I could find, finish the entire sheets all at one time, rip them into random widths, and finally cut them into the approx 24" lengths (virtually no waste), and then set them in place randomly.  I and trying to decide if 1/4" would work or if it would sag over time.  But you could for sure get away with 1/2" if it is cheaper than 3/4".

If you used actual hardwood for those slats you will have a lot of variation in the width across the whole room from humidity swings.  You would need to leave some room on the ends for the expansion and contraction.  With plywood this would not be an issue.

I also agree with others that the whiter your ceiling the better the lighting will be.

The suggestion to pre-paint some type of sheet goods white, then cut 8 foot long strips that are as wide as the distance between the joists, and then rest that entire 8" piece on the lip of the I-beam joist would work very well and would still leave you the ability to remove them easily.

And a final idea as I think about this while I write.  You could just go buy suspended ceiling tiles that are 2' x 2' (or 2' x 4') and trim them off to fit between the joists and just place them on the lip of the joist.  This would give you a brighter ceiling and maybe some sound reduction.