While we did have a set of drawings for our project, they had to be re-drawn with our own measurements due to the varying sizes of timber we had available and a design change. This was good practice to transfer measurements and calculate the brace angles. Once the drawings were complete, we marked our timbers with the appropriate joinery that will be required. It makes you appreciate the amount of labor that is invested in a timber frame house.
Spent the better part of the weekend reading some of the timber frame books I have. There is already some difference between the authors methodology. For the most part the cutting of the frames is identical, but there are variations in the finishing. There does seem to be a number of ways of completing the exterior.
Completed components that will be a sawhorse.
Craig demonstrates a brace drill.
Miniature Swiss Village in the town of Kimberley
The timbers that we cut last week still needed some finer finishing. The jointer will square the timber and then off to the thickness planer for the final dimension to be milled. Cut this material to various lengths to construct our sawhorses. Started layout of some of the components. More hand work shaping our bases for the sawhorse. Learned the finer points of planer blade install and squaring of 'un-square' carpenter's squares.
planing to make it square
very quickly the log turns into a beam
*trivia* Deathblow to timber framed houses came in 1832 with the invention of the 'balloon frame' by George W. Snow of Chicago. Light framing members connected with machine produced nails. Advantages were that it quickly created a house frame and most importantly didn't require skilled labor. The carpenter was effectively replaced by the laborer.
This morning discussed the importance of braces in a frame and the layout of them. A brief introduction to the Dietrich's 3D CAD/CAM software was also hosted. This is a very impressive tool for shop drawings & rendered images which give you a great overview of the structure. The afternoon was there to cut and finish some more components for the sawhorse project. Everyone is getting more comfortable with the hand tools. Of course nothing is more impressive than a 16" circular saw!
big power in a big saw
roof profile using Dietrich's software
trying out my carving skills on a brace
This is a hand drawn plan each of us made of our saw horse. All of the joinery was cut by hand to get familiar with hand tools. Having drawn the timber frame project out also gave us good mental notes.
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