Our work comes together during the assembly process

On our final Timber Frame Workshop day, we saw the fruits of our labor come together, quite literally. Having cut all the pieces for at least one bent, we assembled the posts, beams, and braces to see just how well we did on our layout and cutting. Thankfully, we did a really good job and things came together quite well.

It helps to have help when assembling your walls and bents

I was very pleased with how well the joinery fit together, and how clean the frame looks overall. It’s difficult to truly convey the importance of the critical cuts on each piece of joinery until folks actually see the wood come together. It’s also tempting to spend too much time on things that will never be seen, like the smoothness of any given tenon.

It’s really nice to have ample help around when you assemble your walls and bents on the ground. Shuffling 8x8s can be pretty tiring, but when you have enough hands no one person has to break their back.

Chris wields the king kong mallet

Our commander (a.k.a., persuader, beetle, king kong mallet) was a big hit (no pun intended) with the students. These things have the tendency to look pretty ridiculous, but they are definitely a useful tool to have around when joints need that extra little bump to squeeze together. You would never actually swing one of these suckers overhead, but more like a golf club as Matt demonstrates in the photo below. I would hate to have to rely on one of these exclusively — if you are, that means you’re probably wasting a lot of energy. Our ratcheting straps did the bulk of the work in the pulling joints together department.

Matt gracefully swings the persuader to knock some joints apart

Occasionally, joints are a little too tight and need a little relief to fit properly. If you are constantly cutting your mortises and tenons extremely tightly, you’ll have to do this frequently. We try to avoid that problem early by cutting slightly undersize so we’re not wasting a lot of time and energy later.

Cleaning up a tight brace mortise

When all was said and done, we had a pretty sharp looking bent fully assembled! Our students did a great job.

Our fully assembled bent, looking good and ready to raise!