Snow and Sloped Housings

A snowish substance dusts the timbers in early morning.

Crazy cuts on Post 2B - the sloped housings
on the sides are desugned to accept girts.

One of a number of jigs Erik created to expedite the routing
of consistently-shaped sloped housings.

A dusting of snow covers the timbers in the early morning. Days this week have proven cloudy but excellent for doing most of the timber framing outdoors. Posts are being cut with sloped housings to accept girts, the beams in the post-and-beam timber frame structure.

December 12: Timber Framing Rolls Along

Each timber is an individual. The tops have unique
shapes that coincide with their eventual position in the frame.

The shaping begins with cuts from several directions.

Another cut with the chain mortiser.

Chiseling and chamfering smooth
the housings and tenons for trouble-free assembly.

A herd of sawhorses laden with timbers in various stages of completion.

Timber framing moved ahead this week as many timbers were drilled, cut, shaped and finalized for assembly.

To our readers: We apologize for having to password-protect Eye on Orcas, but from the beginning this was to be a blog for our family and friends...not the whole world. We needed to resort to passwords after we realized search engines were crawling the blog and a simple search showed it as #1 in Google (how ironic...one normally would be ecstatic!) Thanks for your understanding!

December 4: A Beautiful Week for Joinery

A view of the north porch post through the mortise in the center post.

Joinery layouts are drawn before any cuts are made.

Kaj works on laying out and cutting timbers.

Chiseling away at the Douglas Fir.

The chain mortiser is used for cutting mortises, the void
in the timber which accepts the tenon.

The center porch post features intricate cuts and a keystone.

Rex takes in the view from the front porch and entranceway.

Favorable weather this week permitted much work to be completed on joinery for the front porch and entrance. Before any cuts are made, Erik draws the joinery details in CAD, and then the mortise, tenon and housing areas are measured and marked on the timbers. During timber frame assembly. the tenon is inserted into the mortise, and then the hole in the beam or post is used to guide the drill bit through the tenon so a peg can be inserted. Needless to say, the cuts are made oh, so carefully, so everything fits perfectly.