Timber Framers Guild Forums General General Forum Questions Cruck and scribe workshops, what to study?

Hi Tim,

Crucks are highly variable in their construction configuration often varying frame to frame in the same building and so there is probably no correct text book way of building a cruck but one can see some methods more often than others. Keep in mind that for example in the whole of Olde Hampshire where I live that there are only about 100 surviving cruck frames and that these are not all by any means complete i.e. in some cases only remnants remain and just possibly most of the less than perfect patterns have disappeared altogether. Another interesting observation is that most of the survivors fall into a date range between 1375 - 1425 with a few exceptions outside this window generally somwhere around 1550 and then nothing. So with some good fortune and good health then potentially all these crucks could all have been built by the same person (don't quote me on that).

One of the clues that can give one a hint that a building might be a cruck frame is the slight step above ground level made on the back of the cruck blade where the post intersects and sits on the back of the blade.

Generally I think that it is the shape of the cruck blades themselves that tend to determine the frame pattern and so I wondered what it was in the case of this workshop that was driving the design ? For example, could the outside edge of the cruck not have be laid up to the outside edge of the sill and then a tenon made at right angles to the long sill to sit in a mortice in the cross sill thereby helping to hold both these components together. Some allowance would need to be made for cross grain versus long grain shinkage. Why are the cruck tenons not proper 4" long tenons pegged to the sill ? - using stub tenons would make it easier to raise but in the longer term will permit this joint to come apart if the sill subsides ?

As you have observed these blades are very regular and it might well be that good straight timbers were profiled to produced curved blades.

What's the answers Dave ?

Regards

Ken Hume