I am new to timber framing but have been thinking of the idea for quite some time,I ordered six books earlier this week so I hope to get many of my questions answered through them, I have many questions since the only framing I've done has been conventional stick. I have a sawmill and I live in northeast Nebraska. I am wondering what types of trees around here are suitable for timber framing, the woods most available are elms, ash, red cedar, cottonwood, mullberry, soft maple, and honey locust. Pine are hard to find but if I run a want add I'm sure I could come up with some. I am thinking of framing a couple sheds about 24x40 and then maybe a house. btw, is there a spell check on here? Thanks

Welcome jbuckendahl! I don't think there is a spell check that I know of. I have not worked the woods you mentioned, but I, too, am new to TF. Red mulberry is supposed to be very decay resistant. Both of Jack Sobons books discuss the benefits and disadvantages of many different species of trees. Ask plenty of questions, there are many knowledgeable and helpful people on here.


Dave


BTW, what kind of mill do you run? I run two Woodmizers.

From what I've seen the most common timber frame woods are Red and white oak, Eastern White Pine and Southern Yellow pine. Movnig up the cost scale they use Doug Fir from up North, and Some use reclaimed redwood out west. In the old days, Hemlock was used in many barns and structures. I read some opinions though that it tends to check and twist more than is desireable. Maybe the old growth stuff didn't as much, not sure. As far as posts go, my interpretation from being on this site in the last 10 months and the forestry forum, is that hey if it held up the tree it should hold up the frame. As long as there are no obvious problems, even knotty spruce can be used for posts it seems. For tie beams, rafters, and basically the rest of the frame you need a high grade material. Members that will be in tension or experience bending stresses need to be more uniform and not have defects that would compromise the strength on bending and shear.
Not sure about soft maple, but I'm guessing that some of the others can be used, provided you have good strength numbers for the species and their specific strengths are used in calculations for the joint stresses. Heck the honey locust is used for fence posts, I'm thinking it's got to be pretty good in a frame? Part of the consideration is going to be how those mateials, in beam form, will dry. If huge checks open up that would compromise the structrual integrity, well... Checks are normal when beams dry, but it's how big and their positioning that determine whether your calculations are compromised or not. Now we need someone to respond with direct experience with using these types of wood. You should also probably go check out and register on the forestryforums.com website if you have not already. It's another great resource.

ok, thanks for the info. Does anyone have experience with any of these types of lumber? I'm guessing honey locust and ash would work really well.

while u r building your library download the wood manual from the TF Guild site.

I like Ash for timberframing. It tends to have very few knots. Some of my ash timbers have checked (big time), and some have not. Comparable to Oak in that regard (no worse and no better, on average). Does not have the rot or stain resistance of Oak, but not an issue so long as you keep it dry. I also made about a dozen 3x8 braces with ash and none of those have checked.

Black locust makes great pegs (and fence posts). I would bet that honey locust would too. I've never had a locust tree big enough to make a timber... if you find some, be sure to complete the joinery while it's green! I hope to find enough locust of useable size to deck my porch when I get to that point.

I used some soft maple for floor joists (red, not silver - I don't have any silver maples here on the farm). Beautiful figure. One red maple floor joist misbehaved (checked and twisted too much before the raising) and had to be culled. But you can get that with any species.

I have 14 species of hardwood (not counting the variations within red oaks and white oaks) in my frame, and none have failed yet... knock on wood.



The beam in the upper right of this picture is ash (large check visible on this face only), as is the floor joist that joins it, as are the two knee braces. Post is N. red oak, and the wall girt/joist is white oak. Bigger version of this same photograph available on my website, http://massiehouse.blogspot.com