Timber Framers Guild Forums General General Forum Questions Tools collected, timber prepared, framing begins.

I'd be especially interested in seeing your method of burning the wood.

And I love your video of the building of your cabin. Makes me want to move to Latvia.

Timberwrestler!

You are welcome to our country! And welcome to my cabin too.

I will be burning the frame using Japanese traditional cedar board siding burning method: shou-sugi-ban.

Some of my friends has made similar experiments.

You can see some pictures here:

You talked about making the notches with a circular saw and then cleaning out with a chisel. I wonder, do you know of any methods for doing this without using power tools?

DLB

Hi.

Yes I know for sure. I made first ones with a 2 inch auger bit hand drill. As I do not have any drilling old school mortisers I done this with drilling a several holes with my 2 inch hand drill and then chisel cleaned the notch/mortice. But it took quite a lot of time so I decided to use a circular saw just for that part of joint. If I had the drilling morticer - I would do the job with this tool.

I was concerned that burning would lead to decay, but looking at your pictures it looks like you maybe scrape the top layer of burn off, thus using the black carbon as a "stain", and the linseed oil will protect and maybe prevent decay?

I know that farmers have burned the bottom of fence posts for rot resistance. I believe that the Norwegians use the same practice in some of their Stave Churches. They would burn the bottom where the posts had contact with the ground. The decay resistance is more in the wood being carbonized over the use of oil. The oil is still a good addition.

Yes. I will scrape off the upper part of the carbon (between the fibers) from the wood and then linseed oil the timbers to prevent decay and to get a beautiful look.

Hello,

These are two very complementary techniques if taken to properly. The consideration being this: Linseed oil is not durable and will breakdown under exposure to ultra violet light and wash away, along with a good part of the carbon layer, within half a year when it is applied as a surface treatment out of doors.

Two things can mitigate this. One is to use the linseed oil as an impregnation but this means it must go into the wood. You can achieve this by adding turpentine or putting it on warm, (this all assuming you are using raw, warm or cold pressed linseed oil). The other alternative would be to add a pigment which will shield the oil from the sun's rays. And this is where the beauty of the two techniques you want to use comes in because you can use the residue from the charcoaling process as a pigment with the oil. Either sift the dust prior to mixing it with the oil or strain the oil afterwords and apply it as described above using a brush.


Greetings,

Don Wagstaff

Hello,
Given the absence of power tools, a combination of pushing and pulling gets the job done in little time.

Nice set up, Cecile. Faster than one may think, and fun on that clear stick of wood.