Hi TB:

There are 2 swing beam barns in my area that I know of and that I have examined over the years.

Both of the "swing beams" are constructed differently, but do essentially the same job of fully spanning from eve to eve on one side of the threshing floor.

Both are works of art by those that created them, and I really wanted to reconstruct one of them at UCV before I retired, but unfortunately that never happened. The best that I could do was to video tape them and do measurements, and store the information for future use should the buildings themselves disappear.

The one swing beam in the "Barkley Barn" is about 45 feet long, and starts out at 9" square at each end. From that point it tapered on the up side until at the centre it was about 9" by 14" at this point.

At the centre point of the beam a short post about 20" in height stood between another full length upper chord which was 9" square and it also was 45 feet in length. After about 140 years it was still standing straight and true as the day it was built.

Many of the roof boards in this barn was original and measured up to 24' in width, and showed the bite of the teeth of an early vertical blade saw mill.

I do have video tape footage on both barns that I put together for other interested individuals, and is available should anyone visiting this site be interested.

NH