I am building a small timber frame house using green timber (white fir) in a low humidity climate. Timbers check and twist alarmingly - it seems impossible to slow down the drying. Also can only work on it weekends so am perforce slow. I have planed and aligned reference surfaces on timbers that seemed dry, cut the joints, then had more twisting occur. Too much work and timber to just discard and try again.

Are their any techniques to untwist timbers at raising time. Would soaking them and then
applying torsion work ?

Next time and for the replacement timbers I am going to use already dry timbers !

Thanks for any help.