I had a topic for this project once upon a time, but it got heavily sidelined into other areas and so here is a new topic.
For those of you who do not know, I am building a timber framed shop for myself. It is to be mostly a small woodworking shop, with office space as well. Right now the floor plan is 100% open, on two levels, so I can do whatever I want with the inside.
This shop is being built largely as a grand experiment. I want to explore traditional tools and methods, and put into practice all I have learned about the German tradition of timber framing. The building will be a typically German style infilled timber frame. The timbers will be exposed, at least on the outside and likely on the inside as well.
The infill technique used is going to be another experiment, trying out my own adaptation of a very old Swiss infill technique. See the infill topic in the enclosure forums for more details about this.
I want to have some practice on both of these techniques, and on the latter especially work out any potential problems before I ever do them for someone else.
The design is that of a traditional Bernese Swiss timber frame. Specifically, it would be classified as a small Stöckli. A Stöckli is one of three buildings on the traditional Bernese farm, where it was the smaller house where the grandparents would live after handing over the family farm to one of their sons (which is traditionally the youngest son, the older sons having all established their own farms or businesses with the help of the father) The other building are the great Bauernhaus, which is a massive structure that serves as the main house, the stables for the livestock at the other end, and storage for hay and equipment above. And there is the Spycher, which is a small granary and storage building.
Now enough of that, back to specifics of the project...
The project, as stated earlier, is also an exploration of traditional methods. To that end, everything but the rafters are going to be hand hewn. The rafters are just going to be 2x6 or 2x8, and relatively close spaced (as is part of the style) and so are not worth hand hewing.
Joints are going to be hand cut using traditional German tools, like the goosewing axe, Zimmeraxt (for which I am using a Gransfors broad axe which is more or less the same in the bit) and Stichaxt. Part of my hope here is to better cultivate my skill with the axe -the Germans historically did not use saws much at all on their joints, but rather used axes. I would like to be able to do this!
Now here is where I would like some contributions. I have 2 designs for the front elevation that I have come up with (the plan will be devised empirically from the front elevation) and I need to choose between them. They are basically the same, and to the casual observer they may appear identical. I won't explain the differences other than that they are designed using two different modes of Geometry. Whichever one you think looks better, let me know and if there are any specific reasons please let me know.
Here they are:
This first one is designed using the geometric mode of Ad Triangulum. the geometry is based on equilateral triangles, hexagons, and hexagrams. the daisy wheel is a form of ad triangulum.
http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/ff345/HiddenOrder/Riegelhaus%20Project/IMG_0033.jpg for a larger image for those of you not using firefox
The second is designed with Ad Quadratum, which is geometry derived from squares, octagons, and octagrams.
http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/ff345/HiddenOrder/Riegelhaus%20Project/IMG_0035.jpgNote that for the geometries here I tried something new. I made the roof framing the primary focus of my geometry, and then derived the geometry of the walls from that. It proved to be a much easier technique than designing the geometry of the whole elevation at once.
The building here is 2 stories high, but the ceilings are low at around 7 feet. This keeps the building from looking overly tall. There is a balcony running along each long wall.
I have no idea what the roof pitches are, they do not come out to even numbers or anything remotely similar to an even number.
I am debating what to use for building timbers. The rafters will be dimensioned pine lumber, but everything else I have to make myself. At this point, I do not know whether or not I will use native lumber or get some pine logs to use, or both.
I intend to thoroughly record every step of this project for educational purposes, and for reviewing the techniques I am experimenting with. I would also like to make it open for anyone who would like to contribute in any way
DLB
