Hi Brad,

I wonder if the owner has given some thought as to only taking down part of the barn - for example dismantling one bay and then reusing the salvaged materials from that bay to fix up the rest of the barn. That way the barn would contain all original materials and its pattern and place in the landscape would be preserved. Missing or lost bays is quite a common feature in old buildings. If this is a square rule barn then a degree of interchangeability should be possible.

I do appreciate your comments that the owner has the ultimte say but just maybe they are not currently aware of all of the options at their disposal.

It would be interesting to see more shots of this barn and then for the forum and moderators (especially R Christian) to provide some input and guidance to the huddled masses.

This cannot be the first time that this situation has been encountered,as your own personal experiences already attest and so presumeably experience based guidance is available from others (e.g. Charles Leik at http://www.thebarnjournal.org ).

Regards

Ken Hume

6x6x8's is a fine sizing on 30''-36'' centers. steve chappell's book... check it out.

p,

what species?
grade?
nominal or full size?
what design loads?

Regardless to what any book says, until the answers to Gabel's questions are known you're truly not sure.

well, refering to the original post, we are talking about white pine aren't we?? and i can assume that the white pine 80 years ago is fairly high grade lumber compaired to what we are using now. and i can also assume that the guy on the working end of the broad axe or adze is cutting to dimensional sizes not nominal.

as far as the design loads are concerned... if he is planning on parking a grand piano,or a car on the floor it is probably not adequate. however (with typical live loads) as long as the flooring material and the primary carrying members are sized properly, a 6x6x8' timber spaced as close to 30" as possible should be about right.

the only reason why i refered to steve's book is that brad probably recieved it while standing in a building at fox maple that was framed that way. steve is one person that i know of that frames floor joists this way, and his book is a viable resourse.

Ok, here are a few more pics of that barn. It's pine, but I'm not sure what species. I'm not sure I can always tell when it's old and oxidized. White pine is rather white when it's green(or very light blonde), but the old barn timbers I have are reddish/orangish in color, but I still think they are white pine. I could be wrong. The beams in this barn have a reddish/orangish color on the outside. Last night I was playing with my new 1953 Delta unisaw (new to me). It is my first table saw and I took some old ratty loolking pine 4X6 scraps that came out of an old barn. They were very dark brown on the outside and very oxidized. I sawed the sides off to see what the wood looked like inside and it had a slighly yellow look to it. At first I thought they might be SYP, but perhaps it's just age of the wood. I'm thinking that they are a white pine. What do you think?



Here are the scraps I cut:
http://pic15.picturetrail.com/VOL621/2555774/7502252/299921469.jpg
http://pic15.picturetrail.com/VOL621/2555774/7502252/299921470.jpg

Brad

I would tend to agree with the white pine assesment, based on the pictures. We see alot of that up here in WI. Although we do see yellow pine sometimes. One way to know for sure is to send a sample to the Forest Products Lab in Madison, WI. They will identify up to 5 samples a year for free.

http://www2.fpl.fs.fed.us/WoodID/idfact.html

I would not assume that older wood is better wood. Some of the old frames have poor quality timbers in them.

it says there 6x6 it never mentions 8' long. Where did the 8' long come in?

Again, I'm not bashing any book, I'm just stating the facts. Until you know the what species? grade? nominal or full size? what design loads? and the exact span you can't make blanket statements that it's ok. Read Paul's post and you'll see that 12' long they fail....