Timber Framers Guild Forums General General Forum Questions Oh, to build a Cruck Frame

Built my house with nary a crooked piece of wood. Bucked the trees where they veered, and straightened all those ornery logs with my saw mill. Ironically, now that the frame's done, I find myself walking the woods looking for just the right "curved" timber. I have a real need to scratch this cruck itch... thinking about building my front entry as a cruck frame. Which leads me to my request...

Anyone have some pictures or pointers they could share regarding cruck frames? Am I the only one with cruck itch? :rolleyes:

-Thomas

Early on in our house project I spent many hours in the woods looking for the right arched beam to cross my office. I found a lot of really great straight trees.

More recently I've been looking for nice straight floor joists and see nothing but great curves for the 'next' frame.

I got that cruck itch really bad watching a slide presentation given by Jack Sobon at Heartwood School. I'd keep my eyes open for his next workshop or appearance at someone elses.

After that same slide show we all decided we'd cut the straight trees for firewood and leave the crooked wood "just in case". I am planning a crooked frame for next summer that Jack said he had not seen before. It will be a challenge to find just the right trees though.

go for it. lots to learn by working with curved material. I laid out this little cruck using snaplines and if I ever get the other end done, would like to try scribe...

Brunskill's book "timber building in britain" has lots of cruck photos... search timberframing U.K. and you will see websites with crucks... here is one:
http://www.crucks.eclipse.co.uk/crucks800/index.html

Thanks Mark! Your link led me to this site and these pictures... incredible!

http://www.woodenways.com/site/html/andys.html

For what its worth....
Wisdom passed along to me by a soils engineer. Where the ground has slipped or slid down a hillside you will find trees (often a number of them) with downward curve caused by the tree laying over in the slide and then correcting upward.
So...from this we know where we might find the crooked trees we want AND where not to build the house.

Hi Thomas,

Ok you have shaken me out of bed !

Hi Derek,

Time for a good scratch

Hi Mark,

Time to prepare you for your upcoming visit to the UK

Several years back we made a visit to a really excellent 3 bay cruck frame cottage in an adjacent village.

There are a number of things worth noting about the end gable shot of this cruck cottage posted above.

The heart of the tree is quite visible on the left hand cruck blade and with better resolution it is also possible to match up the knots from one blade to another so here we have a halved tree formed into two cruck blades. The blades are positioned upside down compared with growing position. The upward springing (now downwards)of juvenile branch outcrops are clearly visible. There are two large mirror image curved braces sweeping down to intersect with "the mantle beam". Note the height of this beam compared with my son (now 6' 5" but then about 5') and though not visible in the photo recognise that the upper floor joists (7 x 5's laid flat) at this end are jointed into the mantle beam thus internal headroom at this end of the cottage is not good. The floor has been lowered inside to help improve headroom.

You can see the whole frame arrangement at http://www.kfhume.freeserve.co.uk/pages/...ottageframe.htm but you should note that the rafter hips are incompletely and probably incorrectly drawn due to access diffulties to inspect same.

The sidewall posts joint into the lower outside face of the cruck blades and the whole wall frame is then tied to the cruck blades using a short tie cut with mortice and tenons.

You will see that the mantle beam and tie joints have come apart after 600 years but the cottage is still standing thanks to the brick infill which affords quite a bit of stiffening to the frame. The rear of this cottage still has original wattle & daub infill panels on the north side i.e. away from the prevailing south westerly wind and rain.

There are only about 100 or so known cruck frames left in Olde Hampshire and most of these are of some antiquity generally 1400 - 1550 but less than 20 miles to the north in south Oxfordshire a well known timber framer is living in a cruck frame dendro dated (by him !) to the late 1200's.

This can be a seriously long lived way to build.

Regards

Ken Hume

p.s

Here is another very famous cruck frame located at Woebley in Herfordshire.

So what do we call the cavemen now selling auto insurance on TV ?

good one derek...

I understand that, historically, there were no cruck frames built in the new world. The Europeans had to use what they had for lumber. Timber in the new world was so big and straight the immigrants had to learn how to use it!

I find hewn, cruck and natural timber frames to be the most beautiful.

Jim