Timber Framing

[Paul B]

J, I also like that concave table, would be great for a house with little childrens in it, spill your heart out!

 

[woodworkingboy]

Ha, Paul, I've spilled a few things too. I did show it once before deciding to keep it. There were a few rastas about, and one guy saw it as advantageous for cleaning seeds. Never thought of that, but a good sales point in the right neighborhood.

 

[Dave Shepard]

What are you contemplating Brendon? Small truck shelter type thing? Do you have sketches, blueprints, cocktail napkin with ink smudges?

 

[brendonv]

It's probably on a napkin with all the others somewhere.

I'm not sure right now. Thinking I might want a lean too off the back of my garage, possibly a small shed, my mind changed daily.

I've got some pine I'm getting milled into siding for an update on a shed thats on my property. I've got an old peice of cherry I want 2" slabs for a coffee table top. And I've got Red Oak sitting on a job for 4x4's or 5x5's. Not sure which.

 

[woodworkingboy]

Darn amazing how wood lasts if the rain and sun is kept off it when it is stickered up in stacks. It might take twenty years to figure out how to use it and not a flaw. Awesome material. Keep an eye out for bugs, though.

 

[Dave Shepard]

Leantos are a good project. They don't have a lot of joinery or need a lot of timber. How long can your sawmill saw? What species are you having sawn?

Posts should be 7"x7" or bigger. Brace stock is usually 3"x5", but can be 4"x6" for softwood in bigger posts. Scarf joints will allow you to create any length horizontal timber, with some prerequisites. The plate in the pic below was 26' single piece, but you could do that with a 14' and a 16'.

 

[Al Smith]

Keep an eye out for bugs, though.

Say on that it seems I had ants galore in the hickory firewood and some type moth in the stickered oak lumber .

Now weather it was a good plan or not I shot a bunch of Sevin on it .Antless and mothless in about a day or two .

 

[Thor's Hammer]

My long term goal is to build an A frame Chalet with timber I cut myself. Going to have to earn a few more penny's first though.

 

[Al Smith]

Post and beam would last almost forever if the right stuff were used . The old barns that fell down hither and yon would still be standing if they had kept good roofs on them . Granted the wind got a few of them but more fell to just lack of maintainence .

 

[woodworkingboy]

I live in a post and beam structure. We had a good aftershock jolt last night, and I could hear the tenons moving in the mortises.

 

[stig]

I tried that in California once.
Got hit by a 5,8 and the whole house just moved and swayed with the quake instead of breaking apart, like my old brick house would have done.

When we bought this house, it had never been heated by anything but a small oilburning stove.
Then I installed central heating and a big woodburning furnace.
The first winter when we turned the heat on, the wooden beams would creak and groan, while they constricted.
One door suddenly didn't fit the moldings and in the bedroom a ½ a square foot of paint got blown off a beam.
Ten after a couple of weeks everything had stabilized and things went quiet again.

 

[Al Smith]

That flexability is why those giant old dairy barns held up almost forever with proper care .

 

[woodworkingboy]

It makes you wonder about the wisdom of pegging joints, seems like a slot would be better to allow movement. Things get old though, it probably doesn't much matter, slop gets into the works.

 

[Dave Shepard]

Pegs are actually draw bored, meaning the peg holes are not aligned. This distorts the peg, so when the timbers dry, it is still tight (ish).

 

[woodworkingboy]

Dave, were those old barns typically built with green timber? That was the norm here for houses/structures, they they would sit for three or four months just framed up with the roof on, left open on the sides. You hardly ever see that now, people don't want to wait.

 

[Dave Shepard]

Yes, all green timber. There are tales of people cutting trees and letting them lay for a year in the woods. All that would do is let the bugs munch on the sap wood. Not much drying in a timber in a year. The real shrinkage and movement happens when you start heating the house. Most framing today is still done green, although there are some proponents of RFKD Doug Fir timbers, planed and oiled. I prefer the checks in a frame. Just don't use a spiral grained stick of red oak that will rip your house apart when it finally explodes.

 

[woodworkingboy]

Kiln dried has it's uses in carpentry and cabinetry, but with the hardwoods that I work with, I sure notice the difference between air dried and kiln dried, in terms of resiliency and color. Much prefer air dried. You can easily tell the liveliness when planing it, over the stuff that has been baked. Translates to a strength factor also.

 

[Al Smith]

If I'm not mistaken those holes were about a quarter hole out of alignment and the pins either green locust sapling wood or hickory .

 

[MasterBlaster]

Explodes? Wow!

 

[Dave Shepard]

For my money it would be locust. I don't think there are any bugs out there with carbide chompers. I draw bore about an 1/8" on a 3/4" peg.

I'm doing some mortise and tenon work right now in black locust. Works surprisingly well. Of course I've been killing the tree and sawing it up within minutes. Fresh helps with locust.

 

[Al Smith]

I'll tell ya shagbark is as hard or harder than black locust once it's dry . It's the next thing to cutting concrete using a chainsaw .

It's beautful wood if used for cabinetry and trim but a little tough to work .

 

[woodworkingboy]

I find that locust splits surprisingly easily for being so hard, lacking in the glue type substance between the cells, the lignin? Ever notice how well it burns when still green? Make a tenon too tight and it pops right now.

 

[Dave Shepard]

I was splitting out some tenon waste today. It's not like pine, but it's not like ash, either. Paring off tenons is a little tricky, you really have to work with the grain, although a really sharp plane seems to clean it up ok. I've been using a Stanley 605 with a "scrubby" iron, and that really helps. Now the tenon cheek with the knot in it on the other hand, that sucked a bit. My shaving sharp chisel would glide right across that knot and wouldn't catch, almost like it was blunt.

 

[woodworkingboy]

Yup, can be troublesome to plane, tear out will get you. Some unusual characteristics. Sure is a fast grower in these parts. Decent steam bending wood. A friend uses it for ribs when boat building.

 

[stig]

It is a wonderful turning wood as well.
One can get an almost glass-like surface on it.
I have made hundreds of salad bowls from it over the years, and they always sell well.

It is fun to fume it with ammonia. It starts out by turning greenish, before getting real dark.
I have a glass lid on my fuming chamber, so I can stop the process when I get the colour I want.
Not many of our trees here have dark wood, so one has to improve on the colour once in a while.