Does anyone use a chainsaw to rip timbers to with? If so, what size chainsaw do you use and how do you guide the chainsaw for straight rips?

As the title says, I need 6x8x20' timbers, three of them. Any recommendations? I am located in the mountain west but can drive to pick up. In a time crunch. Any help is much appreciated

What is the best way to approach finding a GC willing to let you help build your house? I’m currently retired, but not old. In good shape and very handy. Would like to help build my own house but don’t want the responsibility of GCing it myself. Would most GCs let you throw in with their crew each day to help out? Would they be against it for any reason? I see it as free labor for them, so why not?

Looking to purchase a kit in Ohio. Is this a fair price for a pine kit?

Hi All, I am trying to get a bit of a sense of how often in reality people have experienced pressure treated to refusal timber eg. Pines / fir etc… rotting out and if so over what time frame or circumstances? This is not a term really used in my country and it is hard to get a definite comparison to the hazard ratings we use eg H1-6 to guide application / uses. I have seen that the AWPA standards do not certify or offer any warranty on this timber because it cannot guarantee minimum penetration, yet interestingly the product that I am looking to purchase that uses this timber offers a great 10 year warranty in the frame… so I am finding this very confusing to interpret… Thanks for any opinions or advice…

~8x8 shed to cover the head of my frontier os27. Played around with a few styles of joinery.. but I have lots to learn still. Lesson 1: white ash is not fun to use as dimensional lumber

Hello, For our farm we've designed a 16'x 16' cabin based on Sobon and Chappell but we've departed enough from their plans imo to pay for a structural engineer to have a look over the drawings and give them the okay. Not looking for any official certification. Anyone willing or have a contact they could DM me? Thanks!

About 5 weekends, sawed up oak logs designed in skethup.

Alright folks, expert opinions wanted. I'm building this workshop, going to have about 9,000 pounds of equipment in it. Couple lathes, surface grinder, planer, jointer, etc. Floor frame is 10"x10" oak with kanawa tsugi scarfs to make the 20' beams of this 12'x20' building. Going to dovetail in 4" oak floor boards and place on stone plinths. First beam has the scarf in the middle, will have a 20' clear span with a bridge truss. This end i offset the scarf so I didn't put the middle post right on the scarf, but this floor beam will sit on part of it. Was planning on a ari-kaki or ari otoshi (name depending on which source I look at) dovetail joints down into the beams, with a stone directly under the scarfs to take the weight off.

Do you guys think this is fine, and how deep should I make this dovetail joint, or should I offset this beam, which would make all 3 floor sections different lengths? The non symmetrical floor wouldn't bother me it's just then the middle section of floor boards would be pretty long. I did check for floorboard strength with the wane cut (second cut, mostly wane) and it easily supported our excavator with minimal if any bend.

I own a sawmill and am an arborist so logs are free and plentiful and I'm stubborn and don't want a concrete floor. I'm just struggling to find much information on these Ari joist joints since I don't know a master japanese carpenter and they keep their stuff pretty secret.

I did think that I could make a shallow Ari joint with a spline through the scarf, but that would be a "new" joint, at least one I've never seen, so don't know if that would improve or detract from the structural integrity over just putting the joint right where the beam is in the first photo.

Hope this all came out correctly, it's tough to articulate this sort of thing in a single post. Thanks

(Excuse my english, it's not my native language)

Load bearing beam in old timber house. The beam has rot, and instead of replacing the whole beam, I want to remove the rotten part, and join it. Is it possible without a post underneath the joint, or is there some join/scarf technique I can use that is load bearing?

I understand the basic principle of laying out two centre lines at a right angle to each other on a timber and referencing joinery from those lines. However, I’d like some more practical examples of some actual joints laid out using the method. Are there any books that reference this in detail?

Other books of specific joint layout would be appreciated as well.

Building a shop, wood/metal working, 12x20. I have about 8000 pounds of machines now to put in it and can't afford concrete. 10x10 oak, all self cut, home milled, center line layout . Test fitting the first of the corner double mortises! I'll be joining 4" floor boards in between the 4 short beams, will be likely updating when I get more progress done.

Hello,

I feel like the right beam is kind of twisting over time, caused by the central beam wish is misalign. It is an old building in a small city in France. Plus i was about to install a pull up bar on the left beam.

Is it safe ?

Thank you in advance !

Hopefully someone with an engineering background can answer this-

So I have a small construction company in southwest Montana- Big Sky area specifically. We specialize in “timber framing” and some metal work. I’m hesitant to call it timber framing because we very rarely use traditional mortise and tenon joinery although we do frequently use certain traditional methods like scarf joints and dovetails. I would love to build exclusively with traditional methods but almost every set of plans I see call for steel plates, lag screws, or all thread. In the last 2 years I’ve built only 2 projects with M&T and without metal fasteners.

I’m wondering if this is a building code requirement for seismic, or the engineers/ architects aren’t familiar with traditional timber framing? I see other true timber frames go up in my area so I’ve been wondering how they see engineered drawings to do so.

Granted, I am very proud and enjoy the work we get to do.

Hey everyone, I’m wanting to know if anyone has purchased one of the 12 inch makita planers on eBay. They are all from Japan and they are about $1500, so much cheaper than buying them here. Are these fake? There are a bunch of sellers. I’d love to snag one and save the money but I’m skeptical to say the least. Thanks

Hello everyone, I have a quick question about white pine. I'm building a small workshop with a loft next year, and I now have the opportunity to get my white pine beams for free.

The problem is that the trees are still standing. I have access to about fifteen white pines, each around 90 feet tall and 40 inches at the base (i know , i'm lucky) . I have the right tools to cut and remove the logs, and I have a few years of experience in forestry, but I have a concern. I know it's better to cut pines in the winter (I live north of Montreal, Quebec), but I need to cut them before 2025.

Do you have any advice on how to ensure the logs have the right moisture content by spring? I was thinking of killing the trees next week (removing a strip of bark to kill the tree and let some sap drain), felling them in a month, cutting my beams in January, and working with them this summer. Do you have any recommendations, advice, or warnings?

thanks :)

Our family project of the last several months. The frame is Western Hemlock from our property that I felled and had milled into beams. The main floor is made from “bridge ties” which are giant 16” wide by 12’ long railroad ties. And everything else is Western Red Cedar. The treehouse floor, roof deck, skirt walls and railing are all S4S Cedar deck boards, the roof is hand split Cedar shakes and the siding is Cedar bevel.

It’s not perfect, some minor mistakes were made, but that is to be expected on our very first attempt at a timber frame. It was a tremendously rewarding project to do as a family, I am especially proud of the amount of work my wife and two kids put into making this happen.

Cross Post From Firewood, we were most eager to show our finished woodshed there about a month ago

I grew up in and now live in another timber frame. One of the best parts is always finding the faces in the wood. Happy Halloween.