Period workshop

[Housewright]

Hi Everyone;

I am curious how many people would be willing and able (time, travel, housing, fee, food, tools, etc.) to attend a multiple-day timber framing workshop set in 17th century America? What I mean is to hew/rive/pit saw materials and cut a small frame with period tools, proportioning, design, layout, etc. from some date such as 1650.

Knowing how much serious interest there is and having a customer to purchase the frame would be encourage such an event.

Thanks;
Jim

[Dave Shepard]

Interesting concept. I don't know a lot about the very early period of timber framing, mostly late 18th, early19th century. What will you do for boring apparatus? I think heavy duty mortise chisels and possibly a spoon bit type t auger was the only thing around then.

[moonhill]

Hi Jim, sounds like a beautiful thing.  Finding a purchaser would be second beautiful thing.    Tim

[Piston]

I would LOVE to do something like that!  I visited the Plymouth Plantation for the first time as an adult this past fall, they had demonstrations on hand hewing and building timberframed homes all by hand.  It was very interesting and made me wanna go cut down some trees and try it myself. 
I don't have any experience in timberframing yet but would love to go and learn from some of you masters..... 8)

[Raphael]

I'd be interested in something along these lines.
Do you have a rough idea when?

Interesting concept. I don't know a lot about the very early period of timber framing, mostly late 18th, early19th century. What will you do for boring apparatus? I think heavy duty mortise chisels and possibly a spoon bit type t auger was the only thing around then.

Twibil and bondaxe...
But that could be a bit early, I tend to jump (historically) from the middle ages into the late 18th, early 19th century.

[moonhill]

Jim, what do you mean by proportioning and design?    Tim

[Stumpkin]

Knowing how much serious interest there is and having a customer to purchase the frame would be encourage such an event.

You should get PBS to film the project and kick in with a little funding.

[Raphael]

I had a thought.
You might be able to find a customer for an historically accurate barn through a high end livestock breeders association (camelids or horses).  Some of those 'farms' are amazing show pieces, there's one near me that has sculpted thatch on all the roofs.

[Thehardway]

Would one enjoy the luxurious accommodations and meals afforded to an early timberwright ?

[Mad Professor]

Yea!!! Scribe RULES!!!

I can layout all angles and set layouts for M + T/braces with a divider, compass, and plumb bob.  Don't need a square, fancy layout tools, or even a tape.  Irregular timbers, Fine!!!

How about accommodations? Fees??? Got a tent-site with a place to shower/crap??? What are WE paying for??? I'll work like a dog but not pay someone to do it!!!!

[moonhill]

Mad Professor, care to elaborate on your location.  Northeast, Florida? 

What do you know of the daisy wheel and proportions? Geometry? Where did 12" come from?  Why not the metric system?  Dare I bring up the Knight Templar.

Tim

[Stumpkin]

I find the time period (1650's) very interesting. When I was doing some geneology research on my family I found my only ancestor that shares my first name -

  Thomas Charles Cormier: Thomas - was born around 1636 in La Rochelle, France. He was the son of master carpenter Robert Cormier and of Marie Piraude. He came to Acadia as a child with his father to work on Nicolas Deny's fort at Saint Peters on Cape Breton. Like his ship-building father, Thomas became a skilled carpenter. Between the ages of 12 and 20, he worked at ship construction, served in the merchant marine, and engaged in the fur trade with coureurs-de-bois. He eventually settled at Port Royal at the age of 32 and married 14 year old Madeleine Girouard.
It appears that Robert returned to France and that his only son, Thomas, stayed in Acadia. The census taken in 1671 in Port-Royal indicates that Thomas Cormier was - like his father - a carpenter by trade, that he was 35 years old and married to 17-year-old Madeleine Girouard. He had a small farm with seven horned animals and seven sheep. Later, Thomas joined Jacques Bourgeois' fledgling colony and settled at Beaubassin. By the 1686 census, Beaubassin, Acadia, age 55 [sic]. With wife and 8 children. They have 4 guns, 40 arpens worked land, 30 cattle, 10 sheep and 15 pigs. he was known as the "richest man in Beaubassin."

I would be nice to learn more about this time period and the tools that they had available.

[Housewright]

Hi Everyone;

Thanks for the replies. I will try to answer the questions, but if I miss one please ask again.

I am thinking this would be a Timber Framers Guild workshop which I have never been involved with planning but I am sure the costs would include an instructor or two and the normal logistics and planning costs. I think, with a group effort, we could come up with the research to know exactly what tools would have been available. With some luck we could find the tools to work with...I know there must be a few people in the good old USA who own a sash-saw we could use.

Tim, what I mean about proportioning and design, is this idea comes from the 14th century workshop the Carpenter's Fellowship put on where they used a daisy wheel to determine the proportions of the building and their bracing design was patterned after a tithe barn of similar period. I think the daisy wheel or some other tradition of sizing the building and timbers could be used.

I am sure we could eat like early settlors, that is if you want to starve to death! Pull up a nice piece of ground and cover up with a deer hide... Now I am really getting carried away. Maybe gore-tex would be allowed after all.

We should add an ethnic origin since carpenters from different places used different tools, methods, measurements, etc. I am not sure what to suggest, there are several traditions. Maybe Plimoth Plantation would sponsor such an event.

I do not know when, other than it should be camping season. If travel was not an issue we could fell and convert (hew, saw, rive) in the traditional period of winter and raise in June which is a common time to raise a barn (in the lull between planting and harvesting crops). Just a thought. More likely it could be in conjunction with a TFG or TTRAG conference. The TTRAG conference in Maine in April may be too soon to pull this together.

It sounds like Mad Professor is ready!!

Stumpkin, wouldn't it be cool to find out one of your carpenter-ancestors invented the square rule method!

Scribe on;
Jim

[Mad Professor]

Mad Professor, care to elaborate on your location.  Northeast, Florida? 

What do you know of the daisy wheel and proportions? Geometry? Where did 12" come from?  Why not the metric system?  Dare I bring up the Knight Templar.

Tim

Northeast USA.

If you use a divider and scribe reference circles for your layout you don't english/metric or even a ruler/tape.  Everything is laid out with the divider, plumb bob, chalkline as are the angles.  The old buildings had these reference circles scribed onto one of the main beams.  If you needed to fix/replace anything that's where you started out.  The layouts are as accurate and true as can be done with anything available today. 

Here's a way to layout a knee brace using only a compass ( divider) and it is all based on the true depth of the knee brace as shown by the diameter of a circle.  Multiples of this same circle are used to layout the mortices to which the brace will be fitted.

[Mad Professor]

Here's how to layout a post and tie:

P.S. laying out perfect 90, 45, 60, 30 , ect. angles is also a simple matter with a divider.

P.P.S. scribe goes way back before knights of templar, see the scribe on the post layout (e.g. star of david)

[moonhill]

You can count me in too.  I have been bumbling around with the daisy wheel and proportions for a few years and not getting the whole picture.  It would be a eye opening experience.  It is my guess the 12 base we use was derived from the proportions of the daisy wheel, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4......but no tenths. 

Tim

[StorminN]

Housewright, that sounds like fun... my uncle's old house in RI had been built in 1663, I remember what that looked like. It would be cool to make a frame with just period tools.

Distance to the workshop would be my only hesitation... Waldoboro is pretty DanG far from where I live (but pretty DanG close to my uncle's place on Damariscotta Lake in Jefferson, where I used to spend summer vacations).

-N.

[Dave Shepard]

DanG, 1663 is a first period house for sure! This sounds like a really fun project, I'll be keeping an eye on your progress.

[Mad Professor]

reviving a somewhat dead post.

Anybody have insights to scribe layouts? And/or real experience?

Newbees have questions how to lay out simple angles? (90,45 60, 30....)?

Might turn out to be an interesting thread.............

[Housewright]

Mad;

I am not a scribe instructor, but ask your question.

Jim

[Raphael]

Only formal scribe layout I've done is the french approach.
Draw it on the shop floor using chalk lines and trammel points, align the timbers above the drawing and transfer the intersections with a plumb bob or bubble scribe.

Otherwise it's all been line em up so they look good and hack them together with whatever comes to hand.  ;-)

[moonhill]

The TFG Mag. cast a bit more light on geometric layout.  There was a drawing of a single daisy wheel which sprouted a 3 dimensional outlay of a frame. Points noon and 2-o'clock represent the front and back gable peaks, while the remaining points formed the bent layout.   The short article was just that, I would like to see more on this secret.  It even mentioned the bankers of the 13th century.  There is much to re-learn.

Tim