Hammer truss joinery.

Hello, first post on this site ever... Has anyone any knowledge of where I could specifically find joinery details for hammer trusses?

Hi,

The Baines Report.

Regards

Ken Hume

Use an experienced timber frame engineer. Many beautiful looking hammer beams fail over the years, the room spreads, the hammer beam buckles out of plane, the supporting post fails, to name just a few. Keep in mind the old cathedrals had massive stone buttresses on the outside to resist the outward force, and these buttresses climbed quite high because the foreces were at the top where the truss landed. Modern day trusses tend to be sitting on long posts, the posts undergoing significant horizontal bending, putting the connection at the bottom of the post into lateral tension. And then if you get all of that right, without all the heavy ornamentation you see in the ancient cathedrals the hammerbeam and post now tend to buckle under the load since they are frequently left floating in space and not properly braced perpendicular to the ridge. Be afraid....

The picture and the thousand words thing...

To see a model and correctly visualize the bending drives home just how much is going on in a Hammer -

http://books.google.com/books?id=21Uz_E0...GJIzayQT1-uS-AQ

Thanks for your reply...I would be looking at only a 26' span. If traditional loads distort the truss to the point of failure over time could one use a decorative iron rod of some sort to resolve the lateral stress? I think the hammer truss is still the most beautiful truss design I have seen and I would very much like to use it if possible. Yes, I would most certainly have a TF engineer review all plans before even moving past the planning stage.

Hi Ken, Thanks for your reply. I did a quick google search for "The Baines Report" and hammer truss joinery and wasn't able to come up with anything. Could you please provide additional details that would help me find the publication you are speaking of?