Hello:

I am building a timber frame shed as per Jack Sobon's book. I have all the wood for the girts, collar ties, rafters, joists and braces. In other words all the non 8x8 members. I have cut/made the girts, collar ties and braces. I will do the joists and rafters in the next month and a half. The wood is pine. All the wood is stickered and stacked in our unheated garage. It will not be in sunlight. My plan is next winter to have the 8x8's cut and then work on them over the winter/spring to have a raising spring 2003.

1. Will I run into problems with this approach?

2. Should I auger the peg holes as I am making the members or wait til closer to raising time. I plan to draw pin as suggested.

Thanks and bye...Norm

Hello Norm:
I read your post, and see no problem with your plan from my experience. In fact I believe that alot of the shrinkage will have dissipated and you should have a good tight frame in the end. There could be a little twisting of the long members as they dry and cure though, years ago they worked with green cut timbers but cut usually in the winter when their moisture level was low. Before they had time to cure and twist they were up and were held in a secure manner against twisting to any great extent. This is a fairly small structure you are working on I am sure it will turn out just great --good luck

Norm:
I often make commanders for customers. And I make spare heads for them also.
I've noticed that the holes bored through the spare heads have closed up or distorted and are not round any more, after these heads have been on hand for sometime.
Now I don't bore the holes, in the spare heads, until just before a raising, so that I'll have a spare head on hand if needed during a raising.
This is the only experience I have had in storing timbers with pre-drilled holes. Most of the time the frames go right up and the pegs are in, so that if the holes do distort then I haven't 'seen' it.
I'd be care about pre-drilling holes for pegs. Maybe others will have more info for you.
Good luck with your project.
Jim

Hi, I am sure that either way you go you will end up with a good frame. I myself will probably build this same project (the garden shed) this year.

One thought I wanted to add: in this project the floor joists are 4x6" which connect to pockets in the 8x8" long sills. The plans call for you to reduce the floor joist ends to 4x4". If you cut the floor joists now in green wood the ends will shrink somewhat in both width and height (cross grain) to something like 3.75" square.

Next year if you get your green 8x8" sills and you go to cut the joist pockets in them then I would keep the cross grain depth cut = 4" since the sill will shrink (you will have a little surface step until the joist and sill reach equal moisture content). However, I don't think you need to make the long grain pocket width = 4", I would make it equal to 3.75" or whatever width the floor joist end width has become.

It might be possible to do this elsewhere, in situations where you have long grain/short grain connections between members with different moisture content levels, just be sure that you keep in mind which way the wood will be moving as the moisture changes. Doing this should result in tighter joinery.

Anyone have experience with or comments regarding this approach?

When we, as students, took the workshop at Hancock Shaker Village with Jack Sobon, we build a shed/barn/house/cabin similar to the one in his book. It was mostly pine, but some fir beams also.
We started with the floor joists, then the sills, then the posts, tie beams, plates and finished with rafters.
I'm not sure if he had us start with joists to that we could make our mistakes where these joints wouldn't be seen, or because that's the way he likes to do it.
But we measured all the joist ends and used the smallest of the joists as the width for all the joist ends and the joist pockets in the sills. By doing this the joist were all the same size and inter-changeable and the largest they could be. More than the standard 1/2" reduction for sizing the ends. This also makes the joists stronger. Using this larger than 3 1/2" size we centered the pockets on the 2' mark and cut them to this larger new width.
As we were cutting and erecting this frame in one week there was very little time for shrinkage of the timbers.
This measuring to find the smallest and then using that size as a standard for one shed is the procedure I use now. Therefore you have to have all your joists on hand before you layout and cut your joist pockets on your sills.
My advice would be to follow a similar procedure. But that's just the way I do it.
Good luck with your project. Jim

I have had several opportunities to put together frames that wher cut over extended periods of time. Our church frame was cut in 1815, but some of the pieces used to put it back up were milled six months before we raised it. It was frustrating at times, but it all went together.

Since wood shrinks in the cross grain direction, but not in the long grain direction, drying can cause joints to be loose or tight, depending on which is cut when. The problem with "mapping" shrinkage is it can add a lot of time to the joinery process, and it can easily lead you to the same problem you get when you start trimming table legs to get the wobble out. Eventually you have a table with no legs.

I would recommend cutting everything to the square rule standard you have chosen and leave it at that. We usually work to 1/2" under nominal. As far as predrilling pegs, we NEVER drill pegs until it's time to prep for the raising. The holes become oval shaped when the timber dries, and exposing that much more end grain only adds to shrinkage distortion and checking.

Enjoy your project and remember "It ain't furniture!" I think Jack Sobon first told me that, and I'm sure I had it coming.

Rudy

In Rudys post he said NEVER drill peg holes until your ready to raise. How long can timbers sit before there would be a problem with predrilled holes, and is there anything one can do to help remedy the hole drying process?

Hi John,

I actually said we NEVER drill pegs holes until it's time to prep for the raising. I sure don't want that to infer that anyone who does is wrong. For us it's a precaution based on observation of what we have decided were our own mistakes. It seems the problems are worse with really green wood, but we have seen checks start to happen within days of drilling. The oval hole problem takes quite a bit longer, weeks at least.

I'm not sure of what the best solution is if holes have been drilled already. One idea would be to drive pegs thru the holes that could be taken back out before the raising. That would cut down on rapid drying along the end grain in the peg holes.

For oval holes, you could re-drill before the raisng, but be really careful. It's pretty easy to split the wood along the grain because the bit will tend to "rifle" into the already drilled hole. I would recommend a drill motor with the pipe extension handle, since the bit will want to bind and tear your arm off. The other option would be to use slightly undersized pegs so the pressure perpendicular to the grain is reduced. That would make splitting along the grain less likely at the raising.

Last tip, again based on my own mistakes, is to use parrafin on the pegs for holes in recycled timber and holes that were drilled well ahead of time. We like the blocks that are used for canning jams and jellies. It's a great job for kids at the raising. Just have them wax the tapered part and the pegs drive much better. Of course if the neighbor you invited hits them crooked they still break right off. But that's a different post.

Keep up the good work and as Lenny Brackett says "Cherish your mistakes. They are your best teachers!"

Rudy

Hi Everybody:

I want to thank all for their responses to this post and the one I had vis-vis peg size. I have made hard copies of all these comments/suggestions for future reference.

I am now starting on the rafters. To my horror when I went through my stacked timbers last night I found many had "blue stain" fungus and lots of sap on the non-heartwood parts of the timber. I had them stacked in an unheated garage 1" apart and layers seperated by 5/8" stickers.

I wire brushed off all the visible fungus and restacked the timbers with about 3" between them and stickered layers using 2X2's (actually 1 1/2").

Any further suggestions/comments are welcome.

Thanks again and bye for now...Norm Hart.

Hi Everybody:

I want to thank all for their responses to this post and the one I had vis-vis peg size. I have made hard copies of all these comments/suggestions for future reference.

I am now starting on the rafters. To my horror when I went through my stacked timbers last night I found many had "blue stain" fungus and lots of sap on the non-heartwood parts of the timber. I had them stacked in an unheated garage 1" apart and layers seperated by 5/8" stickers.

I wire brushed off all the visible fungus and restacked the timbers with about 3" between them and stickered layers using 2X2's (actually 1 1/2").

Any further suggestions/comments are welcome.

Thanks again and bye for now...Norm Hart.