... after my first few days of serious framing work. These are just some observations that might amuse some of the more experienced denizens of this forum, and will one day be worked into a blog posting in the hope that other people in my situation can make their own different mistakes instead of following in my footsteps.

1) Don't choose to make your house your first timber framing project.

2) Timbers get rolled a lot. This means that ideally, the surface on which they are supported should be long enough to allow them to be rolled 3 times without need to move them (recentre them). In other words, in addition to the requirement that the saw horses used should be sturdy and the right height, I would add that the clear span between the legs should be at least 3 times the width of the average timber that you'll be working on. In my case, my 60cm long saw horses, with legs inset by about 10cm each side, are about 20cm too short. This equates to a lot of timber shuffling when marking up... especially when squaring off.

3) Don't choose Douglas Fir for your first hand-cut frame project. I'm sure there are woods out there with more exciting grain, but I don't think that they get used for house building!

4) Don't choose to make your house your first timber framing project.

5) No-one puts videos on youtube showing the time that despite their best efforts, they had to cut a mortise through a knot. There is a reason for this... it's not pretty... and you certainly don't get to follow the "standard" routine for working. It has to be soothed, flattered and persuaded into giving in.

6) Tools are sharp... and so are the edges of the timbers that you've just cut. Splinters are understandable, but smacking your hand into the nice squared off corner of a timber is a lesson in anger management!

7) Don't choose to make your house your first timber framing project.

8) It's really obvious in retrospect but, make sure that your tools are long enough. Everyone talks about using forstner bits to pre-cut nice flat bottomed mortises, but no-one mentions that to be any use you also need a bit extender. You can make do with a standard magnetic screw driver bit, but about halfway through your 3rd bore you'll be cursing every god that you can remember. The same goes for chisels. A 50mm wide chisel is great, one with a long enough handle to let you work right the way through a full mortise is a blessing.

9) When in the planning stages, and thinking through how you're going to be working, try to avoid picturing your site in golden sunshine, with a clean, flat working area. Instead, picture gale-force winds and driving rain. Chalky, clay puddles. A slight slope that ensures that wherever you're working you're always in a puddle. Remember that while a light will allow you continue working past nightfall, it won't solve the falling temperature issue.

10) Seriously... Don't choose to make your house your first timber framing project!

:-)

The above is not by way of complaint. I'm having a lot of fun, despite the various cuts, scrapes and bruises. While I thought I understood square rule before I started, having cut a few timbers I know understand what I hadn't understood before. Marking out makes a lot more sense to me now.

P.S. While this isn't really off-topic in a timber framing forum, I wasn't sure of a better place to put it.

Great post, Jon!

I remember my first frame, also cut outdoors. But it was as sauna, not a house. This is all really great advice for others in your situation. Thanks for sharing your hard-earned insight, and for starting out my day with a grin. CB.

Ha. Good stuff.
My first frame was out of DF, reclaimed at that. Is there a more painful splinter than DF? I doubt it.
Sometimes I think that if the natives of New Guinea made their blow darts out of dry DF they wouldn't have needed to look for poison frogs.
Used a 1" Marples Blue-Chip for the whole thing. Holding on to the chisel top with 2 fingers in a deep mortice wilst trying to wack it. LOTS of smashed knuckles.
Bored every mortice with a electro-magnet based portable drill press. Had to weigh 80 lbs. Clamped it down for every hole.
Cut every brace mortice at a 45...all the way to the bottom.

I'm afraid there is. OSB is amazing stuff! Shards of wood toughened with industrial grade glue. You feel a shooting pain and look down to find what appears to be a whole panel stuck out of the palm of your hand! :-)

I am glad to hear though that I'm not the only one who didn't necessarily think everything through before starting.

Hello,

The old carpenter said: "The first house you build is for your enemy, the second for your friend and the third house for yourself."

Greetings,

Don Wagstaff

Hi Jon, check out the ponies used in this video. I find saw horses too short for the reason you mentioned. I picked up this method from Steve Chappell at Fox Maple. Spread your work out. These are about 16 years old, and about 4.2 hands high, HH, well trained.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxlO_0YqrY

Knots, take the time to lay out around the knots as much as possible, shift joinery up or down the timber, make a story stick with the pertinent joints marked out. It is worth having timber a couple feet longer for such reasons. The cut offs can be used as pony blocking, too.

Keep going Jon.

I cut a frame with my father for his house back in 2000 or so. It was my first independent frame after working with a few timber framers and moving barns on my own. We would meet up after he left work - working under a travel trailer awning in his backyard.

We used white oak - small circular saws, drills, hand tools. Pretty rustic stuff. Square rule, and we kept it all rough sawn.

My dad who is a tool and die maker by trade would end up cut every few days from reaching for his chisel, and generally abusing his hands. He'd layout and cut using his machinist square, and then he'd generally fumble with band-aids.

Poor guy was a mess by the end of week 1. Much better off after the second week. I can't count the number of times we'd have to extract his chisel from the inside of a mortise from him driving it into the corners to clean it out...

Different trades and tools - but both require a high degree of thought and craft. I know if I set foot into a metal shop I'd end up burned and grease covered, and my hands would likely be just as mangled as I learned to use the tools.

Doug Fir can be pretty nasty as a splinter. Reclaimed even more so. I mortised some lovely reclaimed for a friends house - used a drill and 1 1/2" bit - and learned pretty quickly that it is tough to work when really dry. I had a water spray bottle on my horses, and anytime I needed to pare end grain (inside a mortise, or on a shoulder) - I'd give it a good spray, go do some layout, and come back - so much nicer to work.

thinkin'???? hahahaha the only thing I thought about was cutting my frame and raising it. The grueling task of enclosing and finishing, I never put too much thought into. Organic building at it's finest, making decisions/changes on a dime, coming up with solutions, pushing your mind and body to unthinkable levels and always trying to stay four steps ahead...experience of a lifetime. Ain't no 7am-6pm gig, buckle up for some 14-18hr days, with no home to go to after you punch out, this becomes your life/home. Rewards are great, otherwise unobtainable.
A wise man once wrote a note to me with something that will stick with me for the rest of my life, it said "buddy, honeymoon is over once the frame is up"
Enjoy and embrace the process my friend

Firstly, thanks for the words of encouragement. I'm far from discouraged (aside from the weather and lack of time!) and I'm largely enjoying it immensely. Even the relatively simple act of collecting and moving timbers is good fun.

Next... a couple more things I've learnt.

11) If your timber is being delivered to site (and especially if you have a narrow and troublesome site), be sure to plan very carefully exactly where you want your timber stacked and which order you will want them in. And also, how you're going to get them out of the pile. Access to both sides is incredibly useful. Shame I don't really have that!

12) Plan your storage for cut timbers. Outside is fine, but they need to be covered and your system for covering them needs to not cause you problems for unloading. Obviously this only aplies if you don't have a large hanger where you can work!

Lastly, to answer a few specific comments.

@TIMBEAL: Thanks for the video link. That setup is exactly what I'd like, and exactly what I don't have! :-) As for the knots, I'm getting pretty good at avoiding them, but the timbers we've got don't allow total avoidance.

@bmike: My previous home construction work involved welding bike frames. Stick welding and brazing. Another good line of work for random stupid injuries (just because the metal doesn't still look hot, doesn't mean that it isn't!).

@frwinks: There is a proviso to organic house building. Ours is very much an organic project, beginning as a plan to buy a kit frame and erect it ourselves, and having evolved to a simple bolted half-lap frame to finally coming full circle to a timber frame, but this time, home-made. The issue is that you have to remember that decisions made which applied to one plan, don't necessarily apply to all others. So the 2-3 weeks that had been allowed for cutting the frame (more than enough time for the simple half-lap joints) are a little tight when it comes to getting fast enough with square rule to build a complete frame.

The principle thought that keeps me going at the minute (and helps keep me from going completely insane) is that once it's done, I can truely say "I built this!". And that makes me smile. :-)

Yes... it's still going!

13) When through bad planning you find yourself with a lot of people on site expecting to lift a frame that is far from ready, you have to dedicate yourself to management. You can't cut anything. You should just make sure that everyone has something to do, and take responsibility for checking the joints as they're cut to ensure (as best as possible) that they are correct. Trial fitting should just involve pulling timbers together to confirm that everything fits, not spending 4 hours recutting all the joinery which has somehow managed to end up about 2mm out in the worst possible way and in every sense! :-)

14) When raising by hand (using a chain hoist), be aware that depending on your set-up, up to 50cm of chain may be used simply taking the slack out of all of the cords. This means that if you have 3m of chain and you've calculated that it's just enough to lift the frame, you'll run out of chain while the frame is still at an angle.

We had a few screw-ups, and a few scary moments, but one half of the house structure is now standing and pegged. We're having to raise bits before it's all complete because of an imminent shortage of hands. If we're going to find ourselves alone on site with a pile of timber, better to have a few joints left to cut, than to have a large pile of completed timbers and no ability to raise them.