HEN I WAS A YOUNG MASONS LABORER IN SCOTLAND BACK IN THE 1970 S, master stone mason Hughie Mathieson would say to me, “You cannae build without the stones, Robbie, you cannae build without the stones!” It was his way of telling me to get the lead out and provide him with more building stones on his scaffold.

With timber framing, you cannae build without the timbers! Now, where are they going to come from?

Recycled Timbers

Years ago, there used to be more old timber frame barns available for salvage than there are now. Jaki and 1 used lots of recycled barn beams at Log End Cottage, Log End Cave, and Earthwood. But, recently, a large barn became available. We heard about it through a friend. As Jaki and I didn’t need timbers at the moment, and a young neighbor did, we put him onto this resource.

But even though the number of available barns has diminished, the use of recycled timbers is still a good strategy. Listen to Jim Juczak, who built a huge 18- sided timber-frame home (with cordwood infilling) near Watertown, New York:

The post and beam frame of our home is made out of recycled beams from a large bowling alley that was being demolished within six miles of our site. 1 asked the destruction foreman if I could get the wood from the ioo-foot curved trusses that were being removed. I got ten of the huge trusses, 400 sheets of used %-inch roofing plywood and about 500 pieces of 2- by 12-inch by 21-foot (6.4-meter) framing lumber. Our cost was $10,000 for what I estimated to be over $50,000 worth of materials. Disassembling the trusses, denailing the lumber, and deroofing the plywood took the better part of a summer. The curved pieces became roof rafters, the straight laminated pieces

became the eighteen vertical posts in the outside wall and the four-by material became the radial floor joists for the second floor. The first floor was radially framed with the two-by-twelve-inch material and covered with two layers of recycled plywood.

Now, $10,000 may seem like a lot, but it supplied virtually all the structural, roof sheathing and flooring materials for a beautiful 3,000 square foot home. As Jim is skilled at scrounging materials like windows, doors, and even plumbing fixtures, the total cost of the home was only about $30,000 or $10 per square foot. Jim tells the full story of this project, with pictures, in my previous book Cordwood Masonry: The State of the Art.

Jim also gives a warning: “Unfortunately, getting all this great stuff into one place can be a detriment. Last June, someone with a housing need greater than my own felt compelled to ‘borrow, without permission,’ a tractor trailer load of salvaged construction lumber from our home site.”

There are people in the salvage business who make a good living by tearing down old warehouses and the like, and selling the materials. In February of 2003, I had a lengthy and informative phone chat with my friend Bob Samuelson, a very successful dealer in recycled materials in the Chicago area. Bob built a io, ooo-square-foot lodge in Wisconsin with huge timbers salvaged from Chicago warehouses that needed to come down. The walls are made from sixteen-by – sixteen-inch timbers, laid like logs. Internal posts are huge. Roof rafters are six – by-tens. Bob’s comments were encouraging.

“Any city, small or major, has a demolition contractor, maybe several,” Bob told me, “and there are plenty of timber frame materials being salvaged all the time. Also, more and more laminated timbers are becoming available. Use the internet or the Yellow Pages to find these contractors. And it’s okay to gently bug them. They’re nice people. If they see that you are trying to do something good for yourself, they will bend over backwards to help. There are around 3,000 demo projects a year, just in Chicago, but it’s a small network and everyone knows everyone else. One person may not have what you want, but there’s a good chance that they know someone who does.”

Some demolition contractors may have recycled materials available, even old hewn timbers, but they are likely to charge a pretty penny for them, as they are in demand as atmospheric pieces in new restaurants and upscale homes. Bob says that Bill Gates of Microsoft fame used mostly recycled timbers on his big expensive house. You can’t blame people for charging what the market will bear; they’ve gone to the trouble of doing the salvage work and need to be reimbursed for their time and effort. But, many of these contractors make their money from the actual demolition, not by selling the materials. They haven’t got storage space to keep up with the rate of teardown. Bob tells me that with landfill charges of $400 to $600 a load, contractors are happy to find a cheaper way to get rid of materials, like bring them to you, for example. “You’re helping them to clean their site,” says Bob.

“Materials can be expensive or cheap and so can haulage, so shop around,” Bob advises. “If you’re not too far from the demolition site, the contractor might deliver to you fairly cheap, but if you are some distance away — say 250 miles or so from the site — expect to pay $400 to $500 for a semi load as a reasonable haulage charge.”

Bob likes to speak in large units: “semi loads.” A semi is a tractor-trailer unit, with, perhaps, a 50-foot (15.2-meter) flatbed trailer. Such a vehicle can carry up to 24 tons, which could be 12,000 to 15,000 board feet of lumber, depending on the density of the wood. This is enough lumber to frame — and complete — a good – sized home.

Bob had some other good tips. He mentioned that utility companies often have old cedar poles that they have replaced with new pressure-treated poles. Often times, only the large butt end (the part that went into the ground) was treated, usually with creosote. The rest of the pole might be in excellent condition and quite suitable for a viga-type rafter system, or tie beams, or internal posts. You can even flatten one or more sides, if you are careful to check the whole piece over for nails and spikes. A metal detector works well for this.

Summing up his commentary on salvaged material, Bob told me, “It’s still there. Old buildings with great materials are coming up all the time, sometimes with virgin growth lumber you can’t even get new.”

For a bargain on recycled timbers, you are going to have to do some legwork (see Cultivating Coincidence below) or make the effort to find the old buildings and tear them down yourself, a strategy better suited for rural areas.

Tearing down old buildings is a lot more dangerous than building a new one. Heavy timbers can fall on you, and they don’t shout a warning first. You can step on rusty nails, get poison ivy, or tangle with nasty dogs.

This is a book about building, not demolition, which is a whole different kettle of fish. The safest way to tear down an old barn, particularly one which is

A cantilever, as in Fig. 2.4, can be thought of as an upside down beam, supported at just one end. It is “upside down” in the sense that its top surface is in tension while its bottom surface is in compression. Note that the unsupported part of the cantilever tends to impart the same kind of upside-down stresses as the supported part. I think of it as being a bit like a first-class lever: the downward pressure of

the overhanging load pivots at the wall (which acts like a fulcrum) and causes an uplifting pressure on the supported portion.

During my researches, I have found writers (some of them engineers) who say that the over-hanging part should be one-third of the supported apart. Others say 40 percent. Some say 50 percent is the absolute limit. Let us think of these numbers as parameters. Personally, I see no reason in house-

recommendation, and if there is a large load on the cantilever, I’d either Fig. 2.14: The Mushwood Cottage. consult a structural engineer or avoid the cantilever altogether.

At Mushwood, our summer cottage (Fig. 2.14), the second-story 29-foot (8.8- meter) diameter geodesic dome is supported by 16 radial four-by-eight joists, which, in turn, are supported by a 22-foot (6.7-meter) diameter cordwood masonry first story and a large post at the center of the building. The overhang of the dome by itself is 3V2 feet (1 meter) beyond the outside edge of the cordwood wall, and the supported portion of the joist is 11 feet (3.35 meters). Dividing 3.5 by 11 gives 31.8 percent—not too bad at all, it would seem, but really it is not very good, as the dome is applying a concentrated load to the end of the cantilever.

In the case of a concentrated load, an overhang of 25 percent should be thought of as the limit (Clark, 1966, p. 189). However, Jaki and I wanted a three – foot walkway all around the deck, also to be supported by the radial rafters. Snow sliding off the dome accumulates on this deck, a heavy distributed load. If a lot of snow slides off the dome at once, we re looking at an impact load. Adding the 3-foot deck to the зї/2-foot dome overhang, we have a total cantilever of 6V2 feet (1.98 meters). The supported portion of the joist is still 11 feet. The new relationship is 6.5/11 = 59 percent, which exceeds anyone’s rule of cantilever by quite a bit.

We attended to the problem by installing sixteen diagonal supports, which carry the line of thrust from the dome through the diagonals (which are in compression) to the floating slab foundation that supports the cordwood

Fig. 2.16: The principal members of this basic bent framing plan are the Posts, Tie Beam, and Rafters. The secondary members are the Interior Posts, Queen Posts, and Collar Tie. The secondary members are necessary only when bent spans exceed the structural limitations of any of the principal members. Braces are required to make this a rigid structural framework. These joints are made with fine crafted joinery, but such a bent could be constructed using mechanical fasteners and then raised into place. The drawing is by Steve Chappell, author of The Timber Framer’s Workshop (Fox Maple Press, 1999), and is used with permission.

bent as “a transverse structural frame-work.” Jack Sobon, author of Build a Classic Timber-Framed House (see Bibliography) describes a bent as “an assemblage of timber-frame components that can be put together lying flat and then reared up into position.” He adds that bents are usually cross-frames, but adds that they can also be longitudinal wall frames.

There are no bents at our garage, in the sense of transverse frameworks, although the gable ends could have been built flat on the concrete slab and tilted up into position. The longitudinal sidewall framework could have been built that way, too. In the actual event, posts were simply stood up, individually fastened to the slab as described in Chapters 4 and 5, and the girts heaved into place and fastened together with connectors.

Fig. 2.16 shows a typical bent for a traditional timber frame. The installation of the top portion of such a bent is shown in Fig. 2.17. Four such transverse bents

Fig. 2.19, above: Framing plan for Log End Sauna, Fig. 2.20, below: West elevation, Log End Sauna.

(two internal and one at each gable end) would be the major framework for a structure such as the one shown in Fig. 2.18, except that the upstairs of the frame in Fig. 2.18 is a little different; it is a saltbox design instead of the more common gable roof like Figures 2.16 and 2.17.

You could put a plank-and-beam roof on the lower frame of a building like our garage, but we chose pre­made engineered roof trusses to support our shingled roof. The convenience, economy, and strength characteristics of pre-built engineered trusses cannot be over-emphasized, and I will speak more of them in Chapter 4.

There are as many timber frame plans as there are buildings. At one end of the scale, our little cordwood sauna design consists of just 6 major posts, 3 girders, and 6 long rafters, as per Figures 2.19, 2.20 and 2.21. At the other end of the scale are houses of 3,000 square feet and more.

You can design your own structure based on the design principles in this chapter, keeping in mind the various fastening techniques described in Chapters 4 and 5. Unless you are very confident of your own engineering capabilities — or are using a tried and proven plan — you should have a structural engineer check your plans. This is a lot less expensive than going to an engineer and saying, “Please design me a timber frame for this floor plan and such-and-such a snow load.”

In New York State, any home of 1,500 square feet or greater must carry either an architect’s or an engineer’s stamp to get a building permit. (This takes the onus of responsibility off of the local building inspector.) Ki Light, a neighbor of mine, drew the plans for his post-and-beam house (with straw bale infilling) and took them to a local engineer to see if he could get his plans stamped. Ki and his wife spent a couple of hours with the man, and spoke of things like rafter frequency and span. “It took a while to explain straw bale construction to him,” Ki told me, “but, as we’d be laying up the straw bales within a heavy post-and-beam frame, he
was okay with it.” The meeting cost the Lights $100. They received some good advice, and the engineer stamped their plans. In a couple of days they had their permit.

Another strategy that has worked well for some is to bring your seat-of-the – pants structural drawings to a college engineering class and have the class check and critique the plans… under the guidance of the professor, of course!

Finally, there are two sections in Chapter 4: Building Techniques, which also contribute to an understanding of structure. They are Build Quality, Gravity and Inertia, beginning on page 87, and Roof Systems beginning on page 88. I have put them there because they cover building techniques more than structure. But they are important enough to read now, and then again when you get to Chapter 4.

Now, you will need to know where you are going to get your timbers.