Tim...your the man!!!!

I am on this huge project in Wisconsin, and the other contractors doing work here all have there transits, lasers, and "whatnots"...I have no issue with that...We even use a little Bosch Laser for "rough in" work...Nevertheless, for real accuracy, predictability, going around corners and (in my view) the very best method, and probably will be for the foreseeable future, is the good old tried and true...water level. It simply is the most accurate and fastest system collectively still for doing this work...

I am planning on dedicating a large section, of the book I am working on, to illustrate traditional layout systems for our craft that typically aren't well described. Part of that is "traditional foundations and their layout systems." Water levels are a huge part of that. I am opening that section with a story from the Mountains of Northern Turkey where I observed the creations of such a device over at least 12 meters long (~100') made from the intestines of a goat, and some hand blown glass vials. This method of finding level is still the most accurate and thousands of years old...

As for long timbers...in general...I do not disagree. Yet, when you are dealing with a lot of them or members over 80 feet...We have found the comparative logistics of "more joints - small timbers) fare outways the logistics of acquiring, moving/transporting, and assembly of larger timbers. At least those over 7.2 meters (~24') in length. So, unless the project site has really nice long timbers that can be hewed out, we find it is always mort cost and time effective to go with joinery and small timbers. As for strength the difference is marginal at best (comparatively) and there is gobs of research (mainly in Japanese unfortunately) that studies this. Frames with "short members" that are "made long" are just as strong in many cases and more importantly...very flexible. This is par to the reason that even the Keel of many ships are still "scarfed" and not a continuous keel or made of several laminated timbers...Both systems are more than applicable and have there strong points (no doubt) historically however, typically short out weights long in overall context of timber frame design from a global perspective in both ship and land based architecture...