Dutch barn restoration work.

[Dave Shepard]

I've been asked by a few people to post some photos of my Dutch Barn restoration work. I'll put up photo of interest as I find them and try to give a brief explanation of each.

The pile in front is the long timbers for the Canajoharie Barn. These were just rough sawn in my "Shop Tour Video" thread. I finished them last month. They are 10"x12", 10"x13", 10"x16" and 7"x15". All started out as 47' logs from bill m. I was able to get two 7"x15" timbers from one log on both barns, giving me book-matched sleepers. The Canajoharie Barn is 45'-3" long and 45'-2 1/2" wide. Behind the Canajoharie floor is the floor for the first barn, as well as the main frame for that barn. All EWP



Dutch barns were originally built on dry laid foundations, with the center sills supported by large rocks under the purlin posts. Because these barns will be built with full basements, our architect, Jack Sobon, designed Samson Beams to support the sills in the middle of the their spans. The Canajoharie barn is a five bent barn, so it has three Samsons, while the Ephratah barn is a four bent, and has two Samsons. You can see the laps on the tops of the beams where the sills cross over. 12"x12" posts and beams, and 3"x4" double braces. EWP



This shows the Samsons in the Canajohorie Barn model.

[Dave Shepard]

The Ephratah Barn only required four new parts. Three braces, and one new corner post. I rived the new braces from a nasty white oak log and then hewed them to dimension. After I had the stock hewn, I had to layout the walls to scribe in the new parts. In most instances when I say hewn, I am not hewing from a log, but from an oversize bandsawn piece of repair stock. I use a scoring axe and a broad axe to finish, and the appearance is a very good match to the original hewing. Braces were originally riven from oak stock.



One of the new braces scribed into the wall assembly.



Fortunately I had room to layout both walls at the same time. These next two photos show some of the repairs that I had to do. The new bottoms or tops were left long and then scribed into their respective assemblies.



This is the other wall. The first post is the new corner post. I hewed just the two reference faces of this post and scribed it to the plate and brace, and cut the stub tenon on the bottom. Now it's ready for scribing into the gable wall.



Now I've got the gable assembled to scribe the new corner post and some of the repairs. I have to scribe what is basically an English tying joint at the top of the post, as well as scribe in an outshot tie in the middle of the post, which supports a stud above, and a door post below.



The finished corner post with outshot tie scribed in. I tried to rotate the photo, but it made it look like I had the gable wall laid out on the ceiling of the shop. :D

[Dave Shepard]

Anchorbeams. These deserve a post all of their own. Anchorbeams are what make a Dutch barn Dutch. Big, usually rounded, wedged through tenons. And did I say they are big? :D These are 11"x17" and 11"x22", but 12"x24"x30' have been recorded. The small anchorbeams in the Ephratah barn were in the gable, and the larger were in the middle of the barn. The reasoning for this is that the gable anchorbeams only had mow poles from one side, whereas the middle anchorbeams had to support poles from two sides, thereby doubling the loading on the beam. The mow poles were small diameter logs that were simply laid across the beams to support what was most likely wheat that would be threshed on the floor below.

Tenons could be square, oval, or half an octagon. Anchorbeams are not swing beams, that is another style of barn altogether. The anchorbeams span the threshing floor, and, along with two purlin posts, make up an H bent.

[Jim_Rogers]

Thanks for posting the photos.

Jim Rogers

[Brian_Weekley]

Man, those are some really BIG sawhorses.  Oh, wait a minute, that's the model.   :D

Very nice work, Dave!

[Axe Handle Hound]

I'm tired out just by thinking about all that work!  Awesome to see old buildings being saved like that.

In looking at those anchorbeams I had a somewhat random question.  In my very limited understanding, the Dutch apparently came up with the idea for that style of construction and here in the US the beams are likely to be made of a tough hardwood like elm or oak.  What would they have been made of back in Holland or the Netherlands?  Do they have the same type of timber there? 

[Dave Shepard]

In the US Dutch barns are usually white pine or pitch pine. Some New Jersey Dutch barns were oak. I don't know what they were originally, but the timbers were smaller, and not very straight. Those four anchor beams were almost certainly all from one log. That means the log was still over 20" at 100 feet.

[jueston]

looks like an awesome project, i really like the look of the double braces.

[Dave Shepard]

I've started to put together each assembly of the barn I'm working on. There are two new purlin posts in this assembly that have to be scribed to the purlin plate. Any braces going to a new post have to be scribed in as well. There are also four new aisle girts to be scribed in. You can see the first two on the left spanning from the first to second post and the second to the third. Next week I'll fit the other two in. These girts hold the loft joists that come in from the wall posts. There are other smaller repairs that have to be fitted as well, such as two free tenons on two of the braces. They basically just have to have their peg holes pricked in assembly and then pulled apart to get draw-bored. Once I have all of the aisle girts in, I can pull a long tape measure along the length of the assembly and mark the location of the loft joist mortises. Then I will pull everything apart and cut the mortises and store everything and move to the other purlin range.

[clww]

A great thread that I really am enjoying, both reading and seeing all of the great pictures.

[Dave Shepard]

I finished the final assembly of the Canajoharie barn today. I couldn't get the whole thing in one frame, so I did a panorama shot, which is weird, and then I took another from ground level. There was a lot of new stuff in this gable, as it was up against another barn, and most of the studs had been taken out for a hay elevator. I've got a lot of pics from these two barn restorations, but they either don't seem very interesting out of context, or I can't get enough of the assembly in frame with the lens I have.

[Jim_Rogers]

Thanks for posting what you have.

Jim Rogers

[brendonv]

You are an artist.  Awesome.

[Dave Shepard]

I dug up another pic I like. I only made one repair with reclaimed wood. It was a salvaged piece of sill from the barn, and was really knotty and nasty to work, but there was one neat reward when it was all done. The checking in both the salvaged piece and the repaired part went in the same direction, and they both lined up when the part was done.

Repair fitted and pegged, awaiting hewing: