In the fall of last year, I was contracted to build a small 8×16 timber frame wood shed and it was a great opportunity to get back to the ol’ chisel and mallet. I love this type of work — the materials, the scale, the tools, and the workflow feel so good. In my first post about the shed back in November, I shared some photos of the building process. Here are a few more pics of the raising and the finished shed.
We’re about to lift this timber frame into position inside our new house that we’re currently remodeling. Exciting times ahead… more news soon once I have a second to write. I’m also preparing to depart on a very exciting trip to New Mexico.
p.s. No, it won’t hit the ceiling… we planned for that!
p.p.s. I love working with poplar after so much fussing with white oak… what a dreamy wood!
If you’ve been following my updates about the Timber Framers Guild workshop in Nacogdoches, Texas, you’ve seen images from all the other stages of the timber frame pavilion construction — layout, cutting, and assembly. Here are my favorite images from the trip: the finished frame in all of its glory! The raising was very successful; it was safe, seamless, and the rain held out just long enough for us to get all of the main pieces up in the air. Check out the results here. The compound roof is stunning.
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A bit over a week ago, we raised our mighty giant of a bent for the kitchen. It’s the bent we’ve been working on for weeks and weeks – an assembly of three posts, and a beam with a scarf joint. The beam in question is a gigantic, curving sycamore joined to a cannon of an oak, supported on the south side by a stout poplar, in the middle an oak with a coped shoulder and through tenon (that runs through the scarf), and on the south another oak post. Put together, we guessed that the bent weighed in around 1800 pounds. No joke!
In this post, I’m going to rewind back to June of this year when Wabi-sabi hoisted its first timber frame bent to vertical. (A “bent” is a cross-sectional assembly of posts and beams, part of the framing of a timber frame structure.) This particular bent was composed of two roundwood oak posts, and a hewn black walnut beam, with a span of around 18 feet. No small feat!