Chris Bolton Timberframer

André Jacob Roubo

2011-09-14T19:04:00.000-04:00

I was surprised to find that the Wiki Article on André Jacob Roubo was so scant, given that he published, in his day, one of the masterworks of the state of woodworking in late 18th century France.

To quote:
He wrote a highly influential complete treatise on woodworking that covers practically all the associated trades. This multi-volume work, L'Art du Menuisier (The Art of the Joiner), published between 1769 and 1774 by the Académie des Sciences, contains sections and illustrations on: building carpentry, furniture making, and precious woodworking (ébénisterie), carriage making, and garden woodworking.

I watched an online episode of the The Woodwright's Workshop recently, and am inspired to build Roy Underhill's ||Roubo inspired Workbench from the original engraving.

Having spent some time reading 18th century treatises on lute music of the period, the examples show more and more details after some time seriously considering the proportions, ratio and methods.

I'll need to acquire a top for this stout workbench, and being inspired by a grandmother's "waste not, want not" Depression-era upbringing, I hope to demonstrate that buy builing a workbench such as this, might allow someone interted in the idea that the old techniques and practices, of understanding one of the basic "building blocks" are FAR more sustainable than our current practice of using our available resources for fast and quick.

An invaluable resource on Japanese Architecture and Art

2011-08-07T13:52:00.000-04:00

A great resource for explaining Japenese art and architecture.
Here ...

A couple of useful tools ...

2011-02-01T13:52:00.000-05:00

On the left is a 16 inch Makita beam saw and on the right is a regular 7 1/4 inch blade sidewinder, circular saw. Although the pic saw is around 30 lbs or so, it is relatively easy to handle although a healthy fear and respect for it is always in order.

This is a Makita Chain mortiser which is basically a little plunging chainsaw used to create mortises in beams.

The word of the day ...

2011-02-01T12:23:00.000-05:00

Axometric Projection:
There is a good Wikipedia article explaining how a 2d planar model can be rotated along an axes to create a 3d representation. It was interesting to me that this is not how photography or our eyes work and it is one of the methods that MC Escher expoited in his drawings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axonometric_projection

Some of the people I've worked with

2011-01-27T10:30:00.000-05:00

Here are a few of the people and companies I've had the pleasure of working with over the last few years

Woodenshoe Timberframes
Davidson Log and Timber Frame Homes
Arman Design
Spearhead Timberworks
College of the Rockies

Allegory of Deduction

2010-08-21T01:46:00.000-04:00

http://www.charpentiers.culture.fr/node/545

Cette allégorie de la Déduction (3e quart XVe s.), rarement présente dans les documents, est figurée par un personnage féminin entouré des attributs du charpentier : fil à plomb, hache, planches de bois… et aussi deux livres. On aperçoit un chantier de construction d’une charpente et d’une maison de bois, à l’extérieur.
Texte accompagnant l’enluminure (transcription de Lionel Dumarche) :
"Sans doute j'arrive tard et je suis lente à parler pour avoir droit à une place importante dans cette haute assemblée. Mais je suis pertinente, je fonctionne et suis bien utile pour achever toute belle œuvre. Celle-ci assemblée, il faut lui donner un titre, car plus une œuvre est excellentes de riches matériaux et de bel aspect, plus j'y mets une main prudente pour lui apporter gloire et titre, qui la structure et lui donne ses règles par des moyens si clairs et évidents qu'il n'y reste ni trou ni fente par lesquels elle pourrait être détruite"

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits,
Français 1174, fol. 31v.

A useful glossary of French Scribe techniques

2010-08-21T01:19:00.000-04:00

Here is a usefull glossary of terms of the French Scribed timberframed buildings.
http://www.traditionaltimberframe.com/V1_0/index.php?mod=glossary&ac=glossary

The majority of European traditionally timberframed buildings were constructed using a full sized plan lofted on a level surface, whereas in North America, after the 19th century, most buildings were constructed using a square or mill rule technique. Today, in shops using CNC machines, timbers are identically sized and joined because they are for the most part consistent in dimension. This was not the case in earlier times where inconsistently sized timbers were joined together to fit each other individually.

In many instances in a square rule system of layout, individual pieces such as knee braces are interchangeable whereas in the French Scribe system, each component is individually fitted to it's mating piece.

The Building Tree - Building Products

2010-06-03T23:29:00.000-04:00

I had the opportunity to drop and meet the foks at The Building Tree which has a wide variety of very cool home building supplies. Not a Big Orange Retail Giant type of place.

I really liked the solid surface (post form countertop replacement) made out of the garbage left over from sawmilling operations. It is nice to have a supplier for Land Ark finishes too, and one that I can even walk to at that.

The Building Tree in Nelson BC

A great link on traditional timberframing.

2010-03-28T10:41:00.000-04:00

This is a fine site with video examples of tradional timberframing techniques in France and the rest of Europe. There are well written articles and video and picture galleries too.

http://www.en.charpentiers.culture.fr/

2010-03-28T02:07:00.000-04:00

Another frame goes up in Cranbrook

Guess Who's coming to dinner, or guess who is about to become dinner.

2009-11-10T21:39:00.000-05:00

I did lots of milling today for a timber frame garage project just started. A few tapered posts, some braces and plates were milled just before lunch. Durinig lunch, some pigs stopped by to see what I was having. didn't really know this about pigs, but they LOVE "Smartfood" brand popcorn.

Log cabin under construction - Scandanavian Scribe

2009-10-29T22:13:00.001-04:00

Here are a few recent snaps of a log cabin under construction using the Scandanavian Scribe.
The footprint is 20' x20'

Peeling logs ....

The first couple of rows of the 9 foot cabin walls.ma

Another angle with the hardest working non-human machine in the yard.

The corner detail

Here are the scribe lines just before the chainsaw biscuits get knocked out.

Silly little woodworking projects

2009-09-30T22:14:00.001-04:00

A couple of shots of my instruments - Not timber framing but some nice woodworking

2009-09-30T21:59:00.002-04:00

Renaissance Lute - Curly Maple Back

Baroque Lute - Rosewood Bowl.

The barn gets full

2009-09-24T02:04:00.000-04:00

From the log in the forest

To the mill

To stacked and stickered in the barn

The overseer ...

2009-08-05T22:40:00.005-04:00

It's been a while since the last blog post. This summer was taken up with harvesting, milling, storing and stickering some hard maple and cherry logs.

This maple log that Mike is standing beside was 14 and a half feet, 24 inches at the small end and heavy!!! It pretty much maxed out the mill and the one log filled the back of the truck. There was some nice tiger striping on some of the smaller pieces.

Mike tries out his Alaska sawmill for the first time. A crude but usefull tool.

2009-03-02T23:11:00.002-05:00

1) Steve Y. on the scaffolding at Gile 's Buckingham.
2) The original stone fireplace at the Mayo house.
3) Porch details at the Mayo house.)
4) More porch railing details
5) Yet another view of the porch at Mayo.

The SawmillI

2009-03-02T23:00:00.003-05:00

I found a couple of pictures of one of the tool purchases last fall. This is the sawmill as it sits on the trailer and as soon as the weather warms up a bit, we've got quite a few maple and beech trees to mill. We've also found a couple of rather large cherry trees and at least one smaller walnut tree to mill.

Patrick's House near Wakefield

2008-09-13T21:33:00.006-04:00

Thanks to Les, I met Patrick, who was in the home stretch of getting his frame ready for raising, but needed an extra helper to finish up the myriad of details and odd jobs. I don't have too many pics of the process but below are a few snaps just after the crane left and the majority of the frame was assembled. It was a great day and the frame went together with no problems at all. He is enclosing the structure with a hemp/lime mixture (similar to strawbale in assembly technique) and I'll enclose pictures as that process takes place.

Bob's Place in Lanark Co.

2008-09-13T21:25:00.004-04:00

Bob, the owner/builder was putting up a stackwall log place with a nice masonry heater. It was a real pleasure to work for Bob.

2008-08-07T22:30:00.004-04:00

On Tuesday we arrived at the site to build the trusses which would eventually be "flown" in by a crane. I didn't take many photos other than at lunchtime, where we saw what must have been between 12-18 loon babies floating across the water.

Thursday was a long day as I had to get up at around 5:30 a.m. , have a shower and head to Mike's shop to pick up the come-alongs, to pull the two side of the great room together.

The crane came at about 8:30 and we started to lift the trusses and purlins. After that we flew in the SIP panels (from INUSLSPAN) http://www.insulspan.com/

After the work was finished, at about 5:00 or so, I took a little tour around Buckshot Lake in a 10' Mercury Inflatable boat with the 7.5 hp Mercury engine that I salvaged from my dad's boat. Other than a brief thunderstorm or two, it was a pretty good day all tolled.

2008-07-30T09:04:00.002-04:00

This is a recent raising at Buckshot Lake, near Plevna (quite a bit north of Kingston), Ontario. Randy Roels, a friend of my brother Mike, is the consultant for the timber frame details on the cottage. The view of the lake is magnificent and the owners will enjoy looking out at the view from their framed great room.

College of the Rockies, Fernie Campus Facade Makeover

2008-07-03T17:43:00.007-04:00

Here are a few pics of the facelift given to the College of the Rockies' Fernie Campus.

This was a rather large building at 110 feet in length. I was told it was a shopping mall at one point but is now a sattelite campus for the college. There are 2 bents, one being a hammerbeam and the other a king post structure. Also the windows and door trim were given an improvement.

Before

In the Shop

Some Pics

2008-06-29T13:18:00.003-04:00

Don Ng, a student in the course was kind enough to send along some of his snaps of the shed.

Thanks Don.

2008-06-17T20:09:00.007-04:00

Here a few pictures from the Timber Framing Course.

First Post

2008-06-15T15:27:00.000-04:00

I recently completed a 4 month course in Timber Framing at the College of the Rockies in Cranbrook, British Columbia. This is an excellent all around "dabble your feet in the water" programme that included as many of the aspects of the current timber frame industry as possible within a relatively short time frame. It was expertly guided by instructor Joe Gex-Collet and his sidekick Neil MacDonald.

Here are just a few of the topics covered and there was ample room to apply theoretical classroom learning to the shop floor.

Diploma in Timber Frame Construction

Theoretical and Classroom Topics

Drafting and Design
Trigonometry
Roof Geometry
Computer Aided Design (3 course in DIETRICHS Timber Frame Software and 3 day course in CADWORKS)
Square Rule and French Scribe Layout procedures
Timber Layout and Selection and evaluation
Cost Estimation (Board Foot Calculation, Joinery considerations and budgeting)
Structural Engineering introduction (1 Day Seminar with a Timber Frame Engineer)
Building Code Considerations (1 Day Seminar with the local building inspector)
Shop Organization, Roles and Responsibilities, group and individual organization and leadership topics
Timber framing history, tradtional styles and design methods and features)
Incorporating the "whole house" into the timber frame, including topics such as foundation, HVAC, electrical and plumbing, floorplan, stairs, windows and doors, envelope enclosure etc.)
Bent design, frame and raising considerations

Shop and Practical Work
Tool use and safety
Making a log square using snapped chalklines and either a chainsaw, broadax, portable bandsaw mill)
Sharpening
Joinery Layout and execution (mortise and tenon, dovetails, scarfs, rafter layout etc.)
Joining and Thickness Planing
Application of theoretical topics including square rule layout, roof geometry layout etc.

Projects

Sawhorse plan drafting, layout, joinery and assembly

A small shed building (approximately 8x8 feet) with traditional joinery, king post, ridge and common rafters

A large facade (over 110' long and 21' high) which included a hammerbeam bent, king post and ridge as well as window and door trim. This was all designed and executed by the students of the course.

All in all, it was a great course and a great few months. This type of trainng is well suited to anyone looking to begin a career as a timberframer, or to anyone who'd like to build their own structures and start their own business.