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Timber Framing

Nov 03
Love0

Finding Used Timber Framing Hand Tools

By Hand Tools, Timber Framing
chisels

1 1/2" framing chisel & corner chisel found at flea market

I’ll admit, I do like shopping once in a while, although I dislike going to most stores. The kind of shopping that I don’t complain about, though, is the kind that happens once a month at our local flea markets.

These flea markets are brimming with tools, if you can manage picking through piles and piles of rust and assorted junk, but every once in a while you will walk away happy. I’ve spent the last year specifically looking for timber framing tools, and have had some success with procuring things on my want list. Read More

Sep 12
Love2

All About Hand Hewing Beams

By Timber Framing, Resources, Video, Hand Tools

I read a great post last night on the Holder Bros. industry blog about hand hewing beams with broad axes. It’s worth a mention here!

Beams that are hand hewn get a flat face treatment with nothing more than a felling axe and a broad axe. This is how beams were converted from round logs before the age of cheap fuel and portable mills and all that jazz.

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Sep 12
Love2

A Felling and Moving Logs By Hand Quandary

By Timber Framing, Hand Tools

This weekend, I attended an excellent firewood workshop at the Clark Conservation Area here in northeast Missouri. My primary motivator was the promised access to timber that would be granted by simply attending the workshop. I came away from the workshop quite excited by the possibility of obtaining free white and black oak logs perfect for timber framing, but very stuck as to how in the heck I could pull off getting the material actually out of the woods.

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Sep 10
Love2

Inspiring Video about Gränsfors Bruks Axe Company

By Timber Framing, Resources, Video, Hand Tools



Lately, I have been doing a lot of reading online about hand tools, especially those for timber framing. A couple of websites have caught my eye recently (which I’ll mention soon elsewhere), and during one of those late night reading ventures I stumbled upon this excellent video about the history and transformation of the Gränsfors Bruks axe company of Sweden, one of the top hand-forged tool manufacturers around.

I’ve been reading snippets about the company and its products elsewhere (mostly in catalogs), but this video gave me a much broader knowledge of the company than before, and I must say, it was very satisfying. Inspiring.

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Sep 08
Love2

Our Second BIG Timber Frame Bent Raising (With Video)

By Video, Hand Tools, Wabi-sabi Kitchen, Timber Framing, Bent Raising
bigbent-standing01

The mighty central bent in the Wabi-sabi kitchen

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!

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Sep 04
Love0

Our New Timber Framing Tool: Millers Falls Boring Machine

By Hand Tools, Wabi-sabi Kitchen, Timber Framing
boring machine

Our new Millers Falls boring machine

We’ve been looking for a boring machine for a year or more. Last  fall, we saw two at the local flea market on the same day, but for some reason we decided to pass on both at the time. I can’t remember why.

This year, in May during our timber frame workshop weekend, we had a chance to use Tom Cundiff’s Millers Falls machine. Wow! It was a workout, but made boring holes for mortises much more practical with human power. Since then, we’ve been looking pretty steadily.

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Aug 30
Love0

Wabi-sabi’s First Timber Frame Bent Raising

By Hand Tools, Bent Raising, Wabi-sabi Kitchen, Carpentry, Timber Framing
RIMG5053

Our freshly raised black walnut bent

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!

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