I've got a couple of books ( Ted Benson and Jack Sobin) and in the design stage of a woodshed/storage building.

My biggest lingering question is what size beams. My building will be 14 by 16 feet made up of three bents. The end wall bent will span 13 feet unless I put a post in the middle of it. Would 6x6 Hemlock be adequate? I'll be doing most of this myself and don't really have a good feeling for just how maneuverable a stack of fresh wet 7x7 or 8x8 beams will be. 6x6 seems manageable. Can one man move an 8x8 14 foot beam? I'll have a couple of other guys help when raising the bents.

The 13 foot span on the end walls would be acting more as a connecting girt I guess..less strength ok? I'm planning on a traditional roof, so as I see it the weight will be distributed to purlins to principal rafters to posts? So the top of the bent is really just a connecting girt and not a top plate where many rafters sit?

Am I even close on any of this???

One book by Sibin has a basic plan for a garden shed and he specs out 8x8 posts and beams for max spans 12 feet. This seems a little structurally excessive to me? But then his design has many rafters sitting on a top plate.

For my sill, I'm planning on making a "sand box" out of pressure treated wood, and filling it with small stone. The PT wood will be the sill. Since this will primarily be a wood shed, I'm only going to put a wall of vertical boards on the back side, and leave the other sides open. No floor. Sound like this will work well?

A picture of my basic plan:



My Plan Photo

The first thing you should think about is rafter thrust. That's what the 13' tie beam is doing. It's the most critical part of your design. The size of the beam is not as critical as the strenght of the joint where it meets the post. If the beam is bigger, the tenon is bigger, and thus stronger.

But perhaps you should consider modifying your design to change the tension joint into a compression joint. The easiest way to do that is to raise the tie beam so the rafter lands on it, rather than on the post top. CB.

Same here. It looks like the design depicted came from a Benson influence. Here is a look at a traditional english tying joint Clark eludes to.

http://www.tfguild.org/joinery/part2.pdf

6x6, imo, are too small, mostly due to not much room for joinery. 7x's would be about the limit from my perspective. If you have two connectors coming together at the same point on a 6x6 post, it leaves less than a 3 inch tenon and no room for square rule housing. And much less wood around the joint for the strength I would want to see.

Tim

Thanks Guys. Since I lack the expereince of dealing with 8x8 beams...can one man maneuver a 10 foot 8x8? I'll have some help to raise the bents but I'll be cutting the joints myself.

You can handle a 10' 8x8. I would guess it would weigh around 250-300 lbs. It would be a strain to carry it by yourself. Just lift one end at a time (with the fulcrum located in a couple of feet from the ends). If you need to go a distance with it, put it on a dolly or cart of some sort.

Plan on making yourself a timber cart for moving timbers around.

Here is one a customer of mine made:



Here is one that I made, but it wasn't the best design. His worked a lot better than mine did:



I went to the hardware store and got two wheel barrow wheels and a piece of all thread to make the axle.

Good luck with your project.

To move timbers around you can use a stationary roller.
Like this:



You pick up one end or pivot one end up and put it on the roller, then slide it where the timber balances on the center point and then you can rotate it some to set it off onto your saw horses.

Here we were moving 7x10's 22' long with just a sawhorse roller and another roller mounded to a short plank:



As mentioned use a fulcrum and balance points to move timbers.

Jim Rogers

Excellent. I missed this entirely. That tying joint deserved much more thought on my part. Initially thought I could simply my work by separating the tie joint and rafter connection. It would be simpler to just make a truss by putting the rafter on the tie plate, rather than all the fuss involved to reinforce the tying joint with fancy joinery and additional bracing.

Thanks guys.

One more question. I'm planning on using pressure treated wood for the sills, and putting the sills on a bed of gravel. The building it self will have no floor. I don't have too much faith in PT wood, but other than raising it all up on blocks or sonotubes this is the best I could come up with. Sound suitable? Since this is primarily an open wood shed, the sills and post bottoms will be exposed to the weather.