hello everyone tonight

I must apologize for opening up multiple topics on this thread, but as my mind slowly gives up pieces of my past it has a tendency to skip around a bit, like the reconstruction of the Ross Barn (above).

Many aspects of its reconstruction necessitated piles of research to not only faithfully hew and frame its many unusual features-one might say what could be unusual about a 3 bay barn, well lets see, for starters the frame members were unusually large and decidedly not square but rectangular in cross section

why was this a challenge--well as you framed each bent the cross sectional sizes of each of the different rectangular vertical post meant that an adjustment of the length of each connecting girt had to be closely followed--remembering that the wide width of each of these vertical posts in the outlying walls carrying the connecting girts were in line with the girts, and each vertical post were sized differently in that respect

Just to summarize what I am trying to say is that of the 4 cross girts which by the way were 30 foot 10 by 12s, not one ended up the same length, and even all our careful checking and rechecking failed us on the length of one of the cross girts, by 3 inches, the error not being noted until 2 days before the raising

This error was a sneaky one because even though we had framed and checked the bent for true with each brace in place, we failed to check the overall length until the last minute

We were lucky because we had a spare 30 foot timber unused but not yet hewn-so in the space of 30 hours we had to hew and frame a new connecting girt- a feat I will forever thank the hewing and framing team, and un benown to the many that came to see the barn frame rise

Then there were the large barn doors opening on to the threshing floor--they swung inwards on large wooden hinges, the hinges themselves an integral part of the doors skeleton the hinge itself constructed so that the pins were of 1.25 inch oak and the pin itself held by 2 oak brackets firmly placed in the vertical posts

Safety was always on my mind as we began to move up to the second floor level to install the purlin plates and the posts, these members were quite smallish and the 45 foot purlin plates only 7 inches square were delicate to manouever and could have cracked or split as they were being handled

Well have to go

enjoy

NH
richard