Hello,

Because examples exist of the use of 20 + inch diameter trees in various constructions says nothing of whether these trees are appropriate for any particular project. Before you get into handling the trees in question maybe it is an idea to sort out just what they will be used for exactly and if or not these are appropriate for that use. There is evidence here that such trees have been used in large barn construction and evidence that large trees have been used in log constructions. I can see obvious rationale in both of these cases relating to use and scale and efficiency. "Because I have them" and "various demands" don't seem so convincing. I have hewn and used oversized trees for clear reason and also for no other reason than that they were at hand and in the later case I regretted the waste and the amateurishness - in the bad sense of that word - of the endeavor.

Greetings,

Don Wagstaff

Don, availability is a huge factor. In all times past, people used certain things solely for the reason that that is what was available to them. If I could trade them off for locally available smaller white oak I would. But there is just one problem, there is no locally available small diameter white oak. In this county at least, it is almost non existent. Most of its suitable habitat has been cleared for farming, with only a few stands of ancient oak remaining. It's not all grim though, what we lack in white oak is more than made up for in spectacular black walnut and black cherry.

I have done a lot of figuring into how to best use these trees, and each length of log will yield multiple finished timbers. In some cases a single 9 foot section treated carefully may yield as many as 12 separate timbers. In order to accomplish this, after quartering (and in a few cases only halving) the logs dimensioned sections will be cut out of them. These sections will be slightly larger than the finished timbers, and will require cleaning up with the broadaxe. These will all, of course, closely follow the grain of the trees and as such will not be perfectly straight. The will be scribe fitted to each other.

This method isn't something I am just making up as I go along, it is similar to how things were sometimes done in parts of Germany for perhaps over 1000 years, maybe even more. Up until the point where German forests became man-made by virtue of continuous harvest and replanting.

Small dimensioned timbers can be made from small trees, but they can also quite effectively be cut (with an axe) out of much larger trees, which can often times be the most effective way to utilize such trees with surprisingly little waste.

Let's go back to the cabin I posted pictures of. If you look closely you will notice those timbers are all boxed heart, but are only perhaps 6 or 8 inches wide. I find it highly unlikely that all of that wood was just hewn off and wasted. While it is apparent that no saws were used to convert the timbers, it is likely that the 'waste' was split out to be used for other things, an immediately apparent use being the roof of this very building. Such is entirely possible, and was done in the past.

I won't look for it now, but if you try you can find videos online of old world craftsmen cutting boards -not quartered boards- out of a log with nothing but an axe.

DLB

I was wondering about the all heart/pith noticeable in the pictures. Another aspect I see is a lack of score marks such as present in the swing beam Mike posted. Maybe the white wash is just hiding them? It would be interesting to see if the suggested split off sections were used in the roof or elsewhere.

I have seen rafter stock, 2x6 and 2x5, used in rafter stock, they were wipe sawn from wider stock. The knot patterns and saw marks align showing this.

Don't think for one minute that they didn't have cranes.... that's what a gin pole is all about.....

Just cause you can't see them there and now, doesn't mean they didn't use them....

They had the knowledge for sure....

agreed. when i say 'crane' i meant the modern, powered, heavy, rolling down the highway version of it.

its like when i mentioned to an engineer friend that i'm doing a bike ride this weekend. 'how far' he asks. 'around the lake' i say. 'wow, how many miles in a day?' he asks. 'all of it, 188'. it changes the reference point.

his reference is wonder, much like mine when thinking about cathedrals and stone and timber and barns and moving really heavy things. it can be done. has been done. and much of it was human powered. wandering around florence in 2006 blew my mind. all those things i studied in school, life size and larger. simply amazing.

dl, people climb everest 'because its there'. you can do the same with these trees, but i sense that you have a purpose and goal in mind.

seems like a cool project...

Tim,

You don't see score marks because the carpenter was especially careful to remove them, as they would create pockets for water leading in turn to rot. On a swing beam in a barn, that's not important so you wouldn't spend the extra time.

Like I said earlier, there are a few spots elsewhere on the building where there are some axe marks -broadaxe marks, not score marks. Plus I happen to know that there would not be a sawmill in this county for a couple of decades after the time this cabin was built.

Unfortunately, the original roof is long since gone, probably replaced 100 years ago or so. So there is no telling if the split offs were in fact used for that. However, it seems unreasonable to think that so much wood would just go to waste. The settlers were a lot thriftier than all that, so much more so than their descendants.

Mike,
it is truly a wonder what people were able to accomplish in the past. We should remember, however, that people are still accomplishing some of these things in certain parts of the world -sometimes a lot closer to us than you might think. People can be quite clever when they have to use their wits to figure out how to do something with limited resources.

I do have a pretty specific goal in mind.

There is one downside, my plan requires very straight wood to work. Observation has told me that is what I have, at least in the vast majority of these trees. But if I do not have that, then I will have to go to plan b.

It is possible to split a twisted log contrary to its grain, however you will have to use your axe to cut through a lot of traveling grain. An easy species to split will work out about like hackberry using this method, so it is no walk in the park!

What you do is mark a straight line on the end of a log making sure it goes right through the pith of the log, and then mark a matching line on the other side (similar to what you would do when marking for hewing) You then chalk 2 lines along the length of the log, opposite each other.

You make a score along these lines, maybe 3 inches deep or a little more. This can be done with your axe, or if you want a chainsaw works too.

When you split the log, the split will then tend toward the scoring marks you made, since they create a greater line of weakness than the natural grain lines.

A good example of how this works, if you cut a notch the length of a green timber, a split will about always form right down the middle of that notch, even if the grain does not run right with it.

So you understand my method of cutting out smaller timbers, I will try and make up some drawings. -I will be getting a lot of timbers 5x5, with the biggest 8x8 (which will probably largely be cut from the heart, the smaller timbers cut out around it)-

I am still interested in knowing, however, what are some other methods without modern tools that may have been used to split such large trees? If shakes and clapboards were split out of such logs, they had to have some means of splitting them down to size...

Iron Wood (Blue Beech in my neck of the woods) makes nice wedges, you just size them to the job and toss the in the fire wood pile when they wear out. I recently saw a post on the Forestry Forum (?) where dogwood was being used the same way.


Other than Chestnut fence rails my experience is limited to riving bow blanks where the whole idea is to follow those natural grain lines...

I was wrong the wedges post was here in the tools forum:
http://www.tfguild.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=26140#Post26140

And on the FF.