Good morning, No activity in my sector so I thought Id stick my nose in here

You should remember that timber to all intents and purposes does not shrink along the grain. (less than one percent, assuming that it is stright grained, - like much of the timber in north America seems to be - unlike our English Oak)

The fact that we build our imberframes with the posts vertical, (thats the theory when we start out anyway), means that unlike the log builders, we do not need to allow for any mechanical settlement.

It is possible to predict the behavior of timber in terms of how it will change shape (kind version), distort / deform (unkind version), but a lot less easy to predict the extent/degree/ammount of movment.
Or rather I should say I dont know a fool-proof method of doing this, but I would suspect there are people who do, so lets here (sic) those ideas -

[This message has been edited by Bill Keir (edited 02-19-99).]