Hello,

Last summer I was 12 weeks in a row every day morning till evening hewing birch and douglas fir and pine. I must say after a time, getting out of bed became the hardest part of the day, the rest was real enjoyable even addicting work that I looked forward to doing. My hands are by no means hardened or overly calloused, probably the opposite, on the soft side yet I never felt the need to glove them. Mud won't be a problem because you'll soon have the ground covered with wood chips - in the end I was working in a wood chip trench waist high. You will be busy through more than just the summer if your on your own that is, so maybe a shelter could make sense, personally I enjoyed working out on the occasional rainy day - in which case, a big brimmed hat can be very handy.

The smaller beams I worked were 12 cm x 12 cm some with bends. Holding them with two dogs worked well enough that I never went further than that, though maybe if you went to the trouble of attaching a big rock to a chain and hanging that over the end this might work nicely, I have seen it done where a pit saw was involved.

The explanation of how work was organized is Switzerland sounds similar to what I understand it was in Holland. In fact the family we bought our house from, going back three generations at least, were carpenters as well as dairy farmers as well as the village bicycle repair shop. I use sometimes, some of the woodworking tools they left behind. Of course it's not a good idea to make a comparison but one clear difference is that in Holland this zunftkleidung truly never was adopted.

Greetings,

Don Wagstaff

I have been doing some hewing, likely this summer that will occupy most of my time and so little 'building' progress will be seen for some time. I don't have any pictures tonight, but I plan on working on it some tomorrow and so I will try and remember to bring my camera along!

The availability of standing timber has been the deciding factor in the species used for this frame, and due to the nature of some of the timbers the frame will not be exposed on the exterior but instead covered with siding, perhaps even an insulating envelope.

This project is very unique on many levels, with the building style, methods, and the method of design.
The thought has occurred to me to make this project open to the public in one way or another, whether it would be by documenting it and producing a sort of documentary/instructional from it, or to use it as a model for a series of instructional manuals and/or videos, or even to open it up as a series of workshops.
Possible topics that would be covered could include:
Hand Hewing; Axe and Hand Tool Joinery; Fachwerk and Riegelbau (German Framing techniques); Geometric design and layout; Scribing Joinery

I am just curious to see if there would be any interest in anything along these lines

If I were to organize workshops, I would need to find a more suitable location.

Please respond if any of you all would be interested in anything along these lines, so I know if I need to pursue organizing and developing.

Thanks,

DLB

In the way of an update,

There is a chance that I will be able to build this structure out of white oak. If this is the case then the building will be built in the half-timbered style, with plastered infills. Or it will be built with exposed exterior timbers with a timber infill. In the latter case, the tradition is for the exposed framing members to be richly carved and decorated.

That is all for now, right now things are largely in the logistics stage

I have been working out the design of the shop, and have made a few modifications. The footprint will be a little bit wider, at about 14x24 feet instead of 12x24 as earlier, and the ceilings will be a little higher as well, about 8 1/2 feet or so.

I am working out the enclosure system, inspired by the traditions that the building is based on. as earlier, there are 2 candidates for enclosure.

The first is the way that timbered buildings in Switzerland would have been constructed 3 or 400 years ago, exposed timbers in and out with the cavities filled in with river stone mortared with lime. The surfaces inside and out would then be given a smooth coat of lime plaster.

The other technique of enclosure is to make an all wood structure. Rather than simply nail siding board onto the outside, a technique is going to be used that was used traditionally in much of Switzerland, Bavaria, and the Black Forest.

This technique is to run siding boards from one post to another, and at each post have a vertical trim board attached that hides the nails for the siding, protects the frame and board ends from water, and appears to be an exposed timber itself. The biggest advantage of this is that all of your siding is under 3 feet long, making it much easier to make if you are riving it by hand.

here is a diagram I drew up of the system:

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/ff345/HiddenOrder/Riegelhaus%20Project/scan0001.jpg

The trim boards stick out past the siding, and are given a decorative profile.

In addition, the roof as designed was originally going to be clay tile. This idea has been abandoned and instead the roof will be oak shakes. This in combination will the enclosure methods used will serve to set the building's style back from that of the 1800's to something more along the lines of what might have been built in the 1600's or even the late middle ages.

DLB

Here are some new drawings, working out the actual timber sizes and locations.

I have made a few modifications to the design.

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/ff345/HiddenOrder/Riegelhaus%20Project/IMG_0070.jpg


I also developed a new system of geometry in the development of these drawings which is greatly simplified. More on that later...

DLB

I have made up a parts list of all of the various components needed to build this frame. I will post it here so you can get some idea of what goes into a Fachwerk style frame and so you have a scope of this project.

First, the walls. All wall timbers will be made of White Oak, because they will have exterior exposure. Also, all wall timbers will be hand hewn.

The Posts:
36 ct. 5"x5"x8' Pfost
8 ct. 5"x5"x8' Eckpfost
4 ct. 5"x5"x8' Bundständer

The Braces:
16 ct. 5"x5"x~9' Streben
72 ct.* 4"x5"x3' Riegeln

Sills
2 ct. 6"x8"x24' Grundschwelle
2 ct. 6"x8"x14' Grundschwelle
2 ct. 6"x8"x26' Saumschwelle
2 ct. 6"x8"x16' Saumschwelle

Plates
4 ct. 6"x8"x26' Rähm
4 ct. 6"x8"x16' Rähm

*This number seems big, but they are very short pieces that can easily be cut from longer stock.

The Floor beams, Deckenbalken
11 ct. 6"x6"x14' Balken
11 ct. 6"x6"x16' Balken
19 ct. 6"x6"x20' Balken

The Roof, Dachstuhl
sills:
2 ct. 6"x8"x30' Stuhlschwelle
Purlins
2 ct. 6"x8"x30' Pfette

Liegender Stuhl components
6 ct. 6"x8"x<10'* Binderstrebe/Stuhlsäule
3 ct. 6"x8"x3'* Spanriegel
6 ct. 4"x6"x3'* Jagelbüge

Rafters
42 ct. 4"x6"x15'* Sparren
42 ct. 4"x6"x6'* Aufschiebling

collar ties
21 ct. 4"x6"x3'* Kehlbalken

*exact lengths not known

all in all for the complete structure, there are 317 individual parts. keep in mind, however, that that is for the TOTAL structure, there is no additional material needed in order to enclose the structure or clad it or what have you, aside from this the only other thing needed to support any exterior cladding is rooflath. Also keep in mind, that looks like a lot of mortises and other joints to cut, but when you consider that all of the post mortises are only 1 1/2 to 2" deep it suddenly doesn't seem so bad (actually, I can't think of any single joint off hand that has any depth cut more than 2 inches, aside from the corner joints of the groundsills.

A lot of this cut list may look like gibberish to you right now, since it is in German. The reason for that is a lot of these terms don't translate well, and often times when you do translate them it is to the name of a part in American style framing that isn't quite the same, leading to confusion as to how the frame actually works and goes together. So my opinion is that it is generally best to leave the terms untranslated. Hopefully as the project progresses, the exact nature of a lot of these parts will become clearer. If you are not that patient, I suggest you go to Google.de or Google.ch and look them up!

The number of parts is inflated by the amount of short pieces there are in this frame, which for the purposes of hewing will be cut from much longer stock in most cases. At the same time though, a lot of the longer pieces (joists excepted) will be made of 2 or more shorter pieces, to make manual rtansport a possible task, and to allow me to get higher yields out of every individual tree. (If I am splitting out larger trunks, I can make more efficient use by splitting out shorter sections and splicing them together later) The long purlins, however, will probably be made of individual lengths of good strong white ash.

The walls will be made entirely of white oak, however a significant amount of the roof is going to be made out of mixed hardwoods including ash, hickory, and cherry. A lot of the interior structure, like interior walls, will be made these as well.

That's all for now. I have been cutting down the trees, measuring, and figuring, and now it's just about time to start cutting out timbers! Needless to say, I am more than a little bit excited that I am finally getting to the point of doing some real work!

More updates to come, hopefully soon.

Also, I have eliminated the balconies from the design. The biggest reason is that I could not get them to come out right in relation to the roof and still look good while being functional. With this in mind, I have altered the building to have a little more of a late medieval style, including a double-sloped roof (Aufschiebling).

DLB

DL, we have plenty of shop space and tools.

Mo, I'm not sure I quite understand what you're sayin here?

DLB

Hey DL, It appears I posted on the wrong thread. I was trying for the other one you had awhile back about a workshop. Did you ever get any feedback? Don't want to hijack this one, let me know through a pm.

Cheers.

check your inbox, mo