A basic mill to make roof trusses

[Squaredy]

25 minutes ago, Baldbloke said:

 

Hi Graham,

That’s good of you!

Extraction is tricky and time consuming as my wood is on a hill and it’s not clearfell.

My steading roof is hipped and the ends of the trusses do not sit on a wallplate but are built into the wall-and so probably too complicated to manufacture off site.
I’m envisaging a lot of Acrojacks and piecemeal replacement.
Here is some of the same wood. It appears 100% sound.
The existing trusses are largely made up of trunks split in half.
I’m hoping to emulate that for the replacements.

 

The replacement of those timbers is going to be a tricky job.  Respect to you for taking it on, and I would love to see some pics of progress as it takes shape.  Bear in mind that woodworm love Elm (I am sure you know this) so maybe when done the new timbers should be treated to protect them once they have dried a bit.

[Baldbloke]

I didn’t know woodworm loves Elm, but would be treating it anyway. Thanks for the heads up!
I will post pictures but it may be later this summer as I have the house to re harl and to redo the driveway

[Baldbloke]

[Baldbloke]

Some of the woodland

[Baldbloke]

Trusses don’t sit on a wallplate but are built into the top of the wall.



Some of it is needing replacement sooner rather than later[emoji3]

[Squaredy]

1 hour ago, Baldbloke said:

Trusses don’t sit on a wallplate but are built into the top of the wall.



Some of it is needing replacement sooner rather than later

On the plus side you are clearly getting a good amount of natural light into the building..... 

[Baldbloke]

And ventilation [emoji23]

[ucoulddoit]

Hi Baldbloke

 

Looks like a good project to be working on, and interesting to see others speculating a structural engineer might be wary of using the elm as that was my initial reaction......  I had a quick look in the British Standard for timber design, but there is no data for using elm. But google brought up some notes from Trada and it looks like it is about 2/3 the strength of oak. Not sure about the durability though as the trees are quite small diameter, so there will be a lot of sapwood for the timber sizes you're proposing to mill.

 

Are you planning to replace the whole roof or only the rotted timbers? I replaced a roof on a similar but smaller stone outbuilding in which the majority of the timbers needed replacing and went down the route of taking off the whole roof. I also removed the stonework between the rafters to level the wallhead, then cast a 4 inch thick concrete capping beam on top of the stonework to provide a sound support for the new roof and to tie the stonework together as years of damp had weakened the original lime mortar. I found that manufactured softwood roof trusses were cheaper than buying the timbers to make them myself! That approach wouldn't be suitable for a conservation project, but I reckoned it was quicker and cheaper overall rather than trying to repair the original.

 

Andrew

[Baldbloke]

Hi Andrew,

Good point about the balance between replacing all the suspect timbers with new softwood trusses against repairing the damaged sections.
The steading is not listed. However, I’d still like to retain as much of its rustic look as possible and think that an over engineered look would detract from the buildings character.
As a repair I am also hoping not to have to involve the Council or planning permissions. I really cannot abide these people.
I was surprised by how sound the beams were where they are embedded within the granite stonework. Presumably because the lime mortar is still good and it can breathe.

[Baldbloke]

I believe the proposed dimensions of the Elm will be adequate. This especially when you look at the alternative option of wide spacing and the thinness of modern prefabricated softwood trusses.