Hello from Austin, Texas from a semi-newbie. I may not know the difference between a jack plane and a plow plane if they fell on me, but I've certainly come to appreciate the undeniable beauty of timber frame and its many other properties for some time now.

My husband Bill (Christensen) started greenbuilder.com around the dawn of [internet] time and has, ever since I've known him, insisted on his next home be a timber frame.

Well, we seem to be amassing a rather considerable pile of salvaged logs on our lot now, and are currently doing our homework before we build.

My/our questions...
(Assume we're talking naturally dried, old growth logs here):

1. Is juniper (juniper asheii) suitable for any part of timber framing? Should we stick to using it for vertical members and not for spans?

2. What about various live oaks that our highway department seems bent on cutting down? Are they suitable? Where would such wood be best employed wrt a timber frame?

Thanks for bearing with me and my learning curve, and my apologies for not using precise terms. If you'd rather point me in the direction of books or other reading material, that's fine. I doubt that our gubmint's literature has much on the ash juniper, but I will pull down a lot of those PDF's from the Wood Handbook this week and look them over.