iDRY Vacuum Kilns

Sponsors:

Gonna go up!

Started by Engineer, April 24, 2005, 09:45:27 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

MSU_Keith

Engineer - it sounds like you lead a charmed life.  Maybe I'll move to Vermont where finding a good timberframe crew is as easy as falling off a log.

Another follow up question - What would be the big advantage of the four side planing that you regret not doing - easy and speed of layout, accuracy of joints, or something else I'm missing?

Engineer

Well, there's a lot of them around, some better that others, but most of them don't dedicate their skills to framing.  I'd say that most, if not all, of the "non-corporate" framers are simply carpenters or contractors with some level of timber frame skill or experience.  That's where good references and site visits make all the difference.  My first meeting with Mike and Bert (the guys who built my frame), they both showed up with fat photo albums showing off all their work, with each of them figured prominently in most of the pictures.  I also received some pretty excellent references.   I promised them that I would get them each a pile of photos from my job and an open invitation to come back anytime at all to show the frame to a prospective customer.  I don't often think that highly of someone's work.

As for the planer - most four-siders produce reasonably square and smooth timbers in one pass, and they should stay that way for at least the duration of the construction.  With mine, I had some significantly out-of-square timbers that needed a LOT of help to make them usable.  Even to develop a square edge for a reference face for layout.  It took a lot of effort, man-hours, sweat and extra blades to make that work.  I probably could have saved some money and a LOT of time by having consistently sized and smooth, square timbers on site.  Layout would have been much easier, with maybe the occasional 1/64" facing pass witha planer to clean up or adjust a face.  Of course, if you want roughsawn timbers, you deal with what you have.   :(

Don P

Wow! We got 2 nice frames going up on the FF simultain...simaltan ???...at the same time. Thanks to both you and Kelvin for posting some great pics. Keep up the good work, and keep those pics coming, there's probably more of us going to school on y'all than you know  ;).

Thank You Sponsors!