Hi Dick,
I saw your articles in TF62 and TF63 and had a couple of questions for you. Please excuse me if I misstate something here, as I am going from memory.
When I look at a tree I see something strong but not especially stiff (bends in the wind). As timbers dry they increase in stiffness. Does your report take this into account, are you able to calculate or predict stiffness vs. moisture content?
Didn't your testing involve both the use of spline joinery and traditional mortise and tenon joinery? Did the data suggest any advantages one way or the other?
How about frame stiffness vs. brace length? I know that longer braces are better, the question is just how much better?
I realize that to perform destructive testing on full size frames is a significant and expensive undertaking, is it possible to get good data using scale models?
Finally, I don't want to throw too many variables into the mix but perhaps in the future you could include southern yellow pine in your testing.
Thanks,
Chip Piller
