Timber Framers Guild Forums General Straw Bales & Other Enclosure Systems Bark Shingles

Saw this in the paper today.

A trophy home here in the western Maine mountains is being built w/ bark shingles as siding. It really is bark, from poplar trees, and is attached w/ regular common nails...they want rust lines to bleed on to the bark.

Neat.


http://www.sunjournal.com/story/287040-3...ewry_landscape/

Modern twist to a wigwam, Don. Tim

Hardin Creek Timber Frame and Millwork makes these. They are in Boone, NC. I met the guy at the Western confernece. They had a booth there. Really nice looking siding.

"Kevin Bedard of Kevin Bedard Contractor in Biddeford did the framing, roofing and the siding of the house, including the installation of huge timber trusses, which Bilinsky said were "quite a challenge to install after the house had been framed and roofed.""

Mr. Bedard has just discovered the reason I like to put the timbers in prior to the roof. I would bet he has a newly increased appreciation for a ship in a bottle.

Anyone put these up before? Are they heavy or light?

Do you need a solid substrate or can you install them like cedar shingles right over strapping?

Are they just for walls or can they go on the roof, too?

I'm thinking ice shack... big in these parts. We have contests and prizes. Really.

Gabel,

we posted w/in a minute or two of each other...

I found his construction method a bit odd, too. I hope he excavated for the foundation before framing things...

We've installed a few timbers in framed and roofed houses before. My favorite way to do the big stuff is to cut a hole in the roof and drop a strap through it from a crane. Otherwise it's usually no fun.

i have used those things a couple of times. the shingle are so pricey that the homeowner wanted to expose as much as possible to cover square footage but effectively nulled their siding capabilities. so we backed the building with bituthene. they say that if you install the bark with about half or less exposure then they are a fine product but they want to crack (a lot) and that makes me wary. they are very similarly installed to cedar shingle. they are two foot in length. i think that they are a nice accent but too much really is too much.

i've used both cedar and birch bark as exterior wall coverings, in conjunction with split cedar shingles. i think both look really nice. i applied both over tar paper into osb with copper nails. it was a handy way to fill in over the door and windows, and the barks looked pretty as accents against the cedar shingles, IMHO.

poplar bark shingles are news. i wonder what kind of poplar they're using and how to make them?

toivo,

The poplar that is being used is not a true poplar, it is yellow poplar (tulip poplar, tulip tree, liriodendron tulipifera).

You can peel a yellow poplar easily and the bark often comes off in one piece if you do it right. Then it is cut up into shingles 2' long by various widths.