Here’s a quick little video of one of our favorite tricks we’ve learned during the Timber Frame Workshop: the so-called “French snap”. After you saw the tenon shoulder one on side of your piece, flip the timber and saw the end cut down to that same shoulder cut depth. Once you’ve got your cuts, you can snap the material off by striking it with a heavy mallet. It works with straight grain and eliminates extra sawing and splitting. It’s very satisfying!
Standing at the future floor height... we are way up there!
Many people are shocked at the giant size of the sill beam timbers we are using (myself included), as they are very burly 8×12 white oak beams. They are no joke. Lately I’ve been thinking about a concise way to describe our foundation design, and I’ve decided to make clear sense of it by explaining that we are replacing concrete with wood. These are serious pieces of wood, and they ought to be as they are supporting a heavy straw bale house with a living roof.
Anyway, we’ve had a lot of excitement the past week wrangling with the 8×12 beams, and setting the first three onto our concrete pier foundation.
A double beveled broad axe from John Neeman Tools
I got excited as a schoolchild the other day when I saw a distinctly shaped package arrive in the mail — my broad axe from John Neeman Tools finally arrived. This hand forged broad axe is truly a piece of artwork.
An old froe and mallet
Every month, I make my pilgrimage (er, it’s really just a short trip, I guess) to the local flea market, the so-called Dog and Gun. Usually I go in search of old hand tools, especially woodworking tools. The latest find was this very old froe.
A froe is a tool used for cleaving wood — very often they are associated with splitting shakes, but they can be used to pare down wood for making handles, or whatever other reason you would have to cleave wood. They are used by striking a wooden mallet on the top of the blade (seen at right in this image). They are not sharp — they are basically a glorified wedge on a stick.
They are extremely useful, however. Recently, I spent a lot of time starting to split out blanks for wood pegs for the future timber frame. The handle is shot, so I need to make a new one, but for $20, it was a nice deal. This one’s quite old, too. I like when you can tell that an old woodworking tool has a lot of history.
(New froes are at least $50 or more, by the way.)
John Neeman is a small outfit making stunning quality, hand forged woodworking and timber framing tools in Latvia. Their work is impressive on multiple fronts (including this gorgeous documentary). Very inspiring.
I will have more information about John Neeman tools up in the coming weeks, as they are planning to launch an online store in the near future. (I’ve got a broad axe coming from them, too.)
Yea for traditional skills and blacksmithing!
p.s. Today is the last day to save 20% off the 2012 Timber Framing course! We may even get to use that handmade John Neeman broad axe during the workshop…
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
You may have noticed lots of references here lately to hand hewing and broad axes. Call it research, I guess, because I’m still debating how I will acquire, and then work with and move those white oak timbers I mentioned earlier.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this quality video. Really well shot, very clear, very easy to understand the process of hewing here. Check it out!
Check it out. Here’s one more nifty Gränsfors Bruks video, this time inside the factory with a couple of highly skilled smiths creating an axe head.
Gränsfors Bruks: Still Hand Forging Axes in High Tech Gadget Age
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.
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.
About The Year of Mud
Hi there, I’m Ziggy. In 2008, I launched The Year of Mud while building my first natural home. This website is a collection of personal stories and experiences building with clay, straw, and wood over the past 15+ years. A few of the things that get me fired up are natural plasters, timber framing, & Japanese architecture. In 2012, we started offering Natural Building Workshops, so you can learn essential hands-on skills to build your own natural home.
