Some clarification on the Vershire Mountain School hinged post bases. The panel screws from upper plate into post end grain are only locators. The real base-to-post connection is an inch and a half vertical pipe (1.9-in. o.d.) welded to the upper plate and inserted into a two inch diameter hole in post end grain. The pipe is, of course, invisible after installation.

In addition to horizontal restraint, this pipe can also provide hold-down capacity via a horizontal bolt/pin through posts and pipe. We did not bother with this in Vershire since structural analysis indicated that barn dead load exceeded predicted uplift by a safe margin (discounting any help from the vertical siding nailed to mudsills anchor bolted to the foundation).

Upper and lower hinge plates were welded together after the raising (the reason for the originally unpainted parts of the fixtures). Lower plates were bolted to the foundation with four three-eighth inch Hilti HVA adhesive anchors, two of which could easily handle side load or zero gravity uplift.

To my knowledge, there is no capacity for illustration on Ask the Experts, but I would be happy to supply PDFs of the shop drawings for the hinged bases. Or perhaps Jim Rogers could post them at his Forestry Forum Website? For future discussion there is a much more elegant prototype hinged post base on the drawing board waiting for an appropriate project.