Hi Brad, Don & Mark,

The timber frame of the 3 bay box frame (top pic) was until recently covered in a lead based paint but this was detaching in layers and so was removed by the owner. All the timbers that you can see (and those that you can't see) in that pic are elm except the storey posts which are oak. The jettied house is coated with a pine tar distilate which seems to have been popular for a period but not done much these days. It hides a multitude of sins and brings a uniformity to old framing. Some very old timbers just go black (without painting) and its difficult to say exactly why this happens.

The box framed house originally had more bracing that you can shake a stick at - it had 12 windbraces (6 now missing) and 11 long wall braces (1 never fitted on rear wall due to conflict with a scarf joint in the wall plate, and 8 cross braces (4 now missing). The outside wall bracing is set back from the face by a couple of inches and when covered with daub gives the impression of a sans brace building. As Don notes the jettied house in the lower photo has all of the main framing faced to the outside including the braces. This house has a higher oak content but still has many primary timbers made of elm.

I have yet to do a full survey on the the cruck frame for long wall bracing and obviously cruck frames don't need cross bracing but this would most likely originally have been fitted with wind bracing. When the front roof was raised the windbracing would have been lost on one side as an upper floor through way was created. Many buildings like this now derive most of their structural rigidity from either the wattle & daub panels or later brick infil noggin.



The best infil panel for timber frame is wattle & daub. Recent thermographic photographs taken of the box framed house in mid winter demonstrate that later replacement single skin brick noggin panels were loosing heat at a faster rate than the original daub panels. These panels are only 4.5" thick. Daub panels have the added benefit that they are simple to maintain and remake. The gable truss panels in the top box frame were all replaced by the owner by himself. Its not possible to say with certainty how gaps were cured when the frame was new and drying out but the simple answer might be that any gaps that were opening up were simply raked out and then daubed up again around the edges however I have seen no evidence of this practice. Limewash would have been applied on top of the daub creating a weather coat and this wash tends to find and fill gaps and cracks. Limewash appears to have preservative effect as does layers of soot build up from open hall or smoke bay fires.

I have now prepared a full 3D model of the box frame cottage and am currently experimenting to see if I can produce an equivalent X Ray specs Sketchup view to that shown in the photo. More of this later.

Regards

Ken Hume