Green Oak Framing - Workshop Process
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Sorting and Grading the Timber
With a design approved and a schedule established, the necessary timbers are ordered. Upon delivery to our framing yard, they are individually sorted and graded to ensure they are free of defects such as excessive knots, bowing, shake, sap-wood or cross-grain. With each timber allocated a specific position in the frame, they are re-stacked to allow best access as the fabrication progresses. |
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Laying Out the Frame
A structure will usually comprise a number of flat surfaces, or planes. In the workshop, a plane is normally fabricated as a single frame.
A roof truss will typically be laid flat for working on trestles. A wall frame may be laid with its sole and wall plates positioned parallel to one another, with posts placed accross them for marking. Accuracy is paramount. The joints are shaped and fitted, and the frame assembled on the trestles. Each component frame will often be assembled, dismantled and re-assembled two or three times as it progresses through the various stages of its fabrication. |
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Joints
There are many different types of joints. Those most commonly used in timber framing include a variety of mortise and tenon joints, dovetails, bridles, scarfes and housings. Each is applied according to the eventual position of the joint within the structure and the forces acting upon it. In its shaping, precision is of the utmost importance. A loose fitting joint has the potential to shift the stresses it has been designed to withstand onto another part of the frame not necessarily designed to take it. |
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Braces
Braces are fundamental to the rigidity of any frame. They can be cut to a variety of sizes and shapes, depending on their position within the frame. The deflection of their curves are marked and cut in line with the grain of the wood before being positioned across the laid out frame for marking, shaping and fitting.
Where braces are required to take additional load, such as arch or sling braces, their dimensions are increased accordingly - sometimes as large in section as any other timber in the frame. |
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Pegs
All joints are secured with oak pegs, sized according to their position. Through off-set holes, they draw a joint tight when driven in. Even a relatively small sun room can use as many as a hundred pegs - several hundred for larger projects. In the workshop, joints are held temporarily with podgers. |
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Ready To Go
When all the timbers have been shaped and marked, they are carefully stacked to ensure their stability against warping and bowing, ready for transport to site and construction. |
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