Mark:

Thank you for your kind words. Good luck in your endeavors. May your saw cut cut straight and your chisel never chip.

Stan

Stan:

I am both an Architect and a part-time Timber Framer. 23 years in private practice, licensed in Texas and New Mexico. My knowledge of the applicable building codes and laws affecting single family (I assume you are talking about single family homes) housing in California is limited but I might be able to assist you in some way. Feel free to contact me.

Bruce Thacker

Stan,
Hey, we are beginning to communicate, eg information and understanding are flowing in both directions.
RE the traps issue you must also consider that some states and local regulatory agencies have adopted a "protect the consumer at all costs" attitude which makes it almost impossible to gather a reasonable construction for profit company and keep it alive. Ask the guys from Texas about recent state law changes.
Many well intended "new" regulations do not consider the limitations and practicability of systems/materials. These limits place a guarranty burden on the builder which implies everything will last forever. I once had an experience on a public project with more than one boss which ended up creating a theater (read barn) which computed to accomodate a 4' snowload, a force 5 hurricane and a richter siesmic event of scale 6.5 concurrently. How unreal is that ? This, on investigation, was fostered by the local community authorities paranoid about being sued and not being able to afford the insurance premiums. Finding balance between what can be done and what regulations seem to require is a constant challenge.
What are you going to call your high precision custom designed manufactured homes ?
If the cost to build can be kept down you just may have a market to satisy local community affordable housing targets.
good luck.

Thanks for the insight about traps. Most popular building systems can deal with such forces if enough time and money is spent, but the costs of design and construction would probably kill interest in the private sector, unless the upside was pretty high. Sounds like you were dealing with a community that really didn't want the project.

I don't know about Texas, but the risk management experts I have hired to help me in California have made it clear that fear of litigation, and the resulting ridiculously high insurance rates, rather than a desire to protect the consumer, is what drives many seemingly unreasonable construction decisions.

I think we will have a leg up in this regard compared to traditional timber frame building systems once we obtain the approvals we are working to secure. FYI, part of getting our system approved (actually "listed" is the term of art) by ICC-ES (formerly ICBO) for use in the US is extensive analysis by structural engineers to ensure compliance with NDS standards, and destructive testing by independent certified laboratories. In addition, QC manuals from all manufacturers involved must be submitted and approved, eliminating most manufacturer's products from even qualifying for consideration. After ICC-ES listing, product liability insurance can be had for only a medium-sized fortune. The other advantage to obtaining ICC-ES listing is that structural engineers unaccustomed to designing post&beam with mortice & tenon etc. connections can confidently select the appropriate connector to handle the loads they calculate at a joint using a simple table, in the same way they would specify a Simpson joist hanger, for instance. They don't need a lot of experience with timber-frame connnections to make sound decisions quickly and with with confidence, and their E&O insurance rates won't go up if their insurance company finds out they are designing "antique connections" (not my term). Likewise, the plan review guys at the city can use published literature to easily check that the connections are specified correctly, knowing the product has been reviewed by acknowledged experts and is covered by product liability insurance.

In any case, we hope to avoid many of the problems your message suggested, but I doubt we will be able to sidestep all of them.

Re the name of the product, it is called MetalFit in Japan and was marketed for a time (foolishly without thought for product liability concerns) as MasterFit in the US. I am not certain what the final name will be. A google search will lead you to the relevant websites.

re costs, I am currently researching relative costs, a job that is a lot of work if one desires any real accurate comparison. Affordable housing is one type I am currently looking at, but things don't look good at the moment in light of the crushing politics and low quality standards involved. Things look better in upper-median range housing, where cash-flow vs erection time becomes important, and politics less so. In the semi-custom home arena, things look really good. This suits my company well because it is willing to spend it's own money to buy raw land and use its own products in its own projects.

Please guys, don't flame me for writing this: I am not pretending it is better than a timber frame: it is an entirely different product, and one that and will not even appeal to the folks that buy traditional timber frames.

Stan

Good afternoon Stanley old chap
I never slandered you or your houses. You never made it clear initially they were custom one off designs. For a builder/developer to refer to his 30,000 creations as "units" just led me (wrongly as it turns out) to assume they were "Characterless impersonal identikit units..." etc etc. Too many modern houses are that way now.
Anyway, my genuine apologies mate if I apeared to fly off the handle. (Sorry you didnt like my joke either but then not everybody shares the same sense of humour).
I know it bugs you to be asked a lot of questions, but please bear with me. Do you really believe in the integrity and robustness of so-called quality control systems? I used to work for a big American owned manufacturing company. The Chairman was RICH I mean forbes RICH; he payed lousy wages, wouldnt even invest in reliable machinery, insisted on cheapo crappo materials. They were suposed to have all that quality control/assurance ISO stuff in place. In my opinion it was really only there to impress buyers from the BIG house building companies when they came a calling. DOES bribery ever come into it, or have I been over cynicised by the effects of global capital on my world view ?
PS It was my disilusionmant with the global capital profit is god mentality that propmted me to find a less stressful and more rewarding way of living the rest of what remains of my life. That is why I decided to learn (later in life than most), to be a joiner.
Cheers, Jonathan

Jonathan:

No apology necessary.

The concerns you have with QC systems are absolutely valid, IMO. Yes, at worst, they are no more than lip service, intended to deceive the foolish and inexperienced. But not all are bad.

The best QC procedures require bonds, third party verification, and unannounced inspections. But yes, corruption can derail even the best QC program. Your old boss is not alone in using bribes to subvert proper QC procedures, but we would be rash to assume that all men, and by extension all QC programs, are likewise corrupt. It seems you had a very unpleasant experience in the corporate world. Sadly, too few corporations have QC programs aimed at improving senior management, and governments are notably ungoverned.

I would guess that only a minuscule percentage of the people that seek to have a timber frame house made nowadays know much about what goes into making one. Joe Blow thinks that wind is something people did to clocks before Duracell; that a tusk tenon is a kind of walrus tooth; and that a lamb's tongue is something he might eat at a Turkish restaurant. Acknowledging his ignorance, he may study a bit, but in the end he must find A MAN THAT HAS MASTERED A SUCCESSFUL PROCESS AND HAS PROVED OVER TIME (reputation) THAT HE IS WILLING AND ABLE TO FOLLOW THAT PROCESS WITHOUT CUTTING CORNERS. I suppose one finds such a man, or group of men, by asking around, reading the magazines, or searching on the web. Of course, he will inspect houses built by candidates, and ask knowledgeable friends for their advice. Perhaps he will ask to see contractor licenses, guild membership or apprenticeship completion certificates. If he is careful, and lucky, and spends enough time in his search, he may find the craftsman he seeks.

In answer to your question, yes I do have faith in SOUND QC systems, as far as they go. But don't read too much into that. QC procedures are simply evidence that a group of men know what should be done to achieve minimum quality standards. It is not a guarantee that those procedures are the best way to achieve those standards, nor is it a guarantee that they will execute those procedures consistently. The purchaser/consumer must confirm quality independently (often costly and inefficient on any significant scale over a long period of time), or trust in reliable organizations with specialized knowledge to confirm it for him. ISO is one such organization. ICC is another. When manufacturers, inspection organizations, or their employees succumb to corruption, accreditation is revoked, they receive criminal retribution, hopefully, and the reputation of everyone involved is destroyed. What better options are there on the industrial scale?

Henry Disston's advice in 1850 to craftsmen looking for a good handsaw (the most difficult of all hand tools to make properly) was to buy from a manufacturer with a reputation to lose. This is wise advice even today. A good, consistent craftsman knows that quality does not happen by accident: he will have QC procedures in place, even if he doesn't call them QC, and he will be anxious to protect his reputation. A manufacturer too is a group of craftsman, of varying skills and experience that rely on organizational structures to keep everyone moving toward the same goals. Therefore, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the most successful manufacturers have found that an organized QC program, based on careful analysis and documentation of those procedures found effective in keeping their clients happy, is a good tool for building a better reputation. In the world of today, it may be witty for a band of retro macramé artists to scoff at QC, but not a large manufacturer that wants to stay in business. A painful example from the last century: Toyota, Nissan and Honda learned Dr. Deming's lessons well, and then, sadly, taught them to GM and Ford the hard way.

Re profits as God. I feel sorry for people that allow themselves to get caught in that trap. In my experience, wealthy people are terribly miserable, but they don't even know it.

I wish you health and happiness. May your muntins and astragals never meander.

Stan

Hi Stan:
I am always interested in a better product, a chance to make money, interesting designs, green stuff and all that you seem to have in place.
However I am also interested in how this discussion came to take place in the Tool Forum.

Sure makes for good reading,
Curtis

I had wondered the exact same thing as well
What sort of old tools de ye have Stan, and do you ever get chance to use them at all? When you say your folks sailed from England, how far back ago? Covington sounds like an "owlde eynglyshe" type of name. Could be some of your ancesters built some of the frames I was looking at in Suffolk last week.
Cheers Jonathan

Gentlemen:

I was directed to this forum by the managers of the Timber Framing Guild as a result of a web search.

My Grandmother did the geneology, and my brother followed it up in England decades later. Two Covington brothers came to South Carolina around 1720 (I don't recall the exact date) apparently from the Manchester area. The Covington men kept marrying English immigrant women right off the boat (or at least born in England) for many generations afterwards, so my biological links to England are strong and wide. When stationed in Germany, my younger brother visited England and the old churches and libraries where he confirmed the tradition of carpentry. The old English churches kept ledgers of payments to tradesmen, and many of those had been transferred to microfiche and are available to the public. I don't know about the Suffolk frames Jonathan mentioned, but apparrently the old boys did a lot of religious carpentry work.

Covington is indeed an English name, although there are many theories about the origin, some viking via Ireland and others Anglo-saxon, and others having something to do with a tribe that lived in a settlement by a cave (cave=cuffa). Idduno.

As to old tools, I have an good collection of antique saws, mostly US, some British, some Japanese. When I lived in Japan, I had twenty or so custom chisels made for me, and I purchased a lot of planes and saws, and even an adze (I have never used it, but it is cool). The Japanese have a deep love of sharp things, and do a great job of making them.

Of course, I have all the usual carpentry tools, as well as an Inca 12" tablesaw, and a 10" Inca combination jointer/planer, chopsaw, drill press, and a full compliment of hand-held power tools. I use them evenings and weekends to make doors, furniture and remodel the house. I also have a side business making furniture samples. My wife and I came to an agreement: if she keeps silent about the sawdust and the pounding in the basement (she calls it the "temple of testosterone"), I won't complain about the frilly drapes she insists on hanging everywhere.

For what its worth.

Stan

Wow....this sure grew legs whilst I was gone

I just spent two weeks in Japan and am digesting some of the information here in light of what I have seen.
While much of the carpentry I saw was superlative (temples, shrines) some was decidedly more functional esp as relates to finish. And Stan is quite right about repairs, any older structure(as in not rebuilt recently) shows repair. The older buildings showed another wood characteristic as well, movement
150+yr old joints show their age.
The commonality I see in these posts is that everyone here is passionate about what they are doing. To me that is the most important thing and passionate people have passionate "discourse"

Thanks Stan for not taking your ball and going home. I learned some interesting things from this little chat

J.E.B.