canoehead

two great looking projects there farmer john. like your dovetailed collar ties. pretty awesome king post trusses. and thanks for the recommendation alec. can we have a timber framing page somewhere? rick

have you tried spraying it with borax? its quite effective.

i bought a paslode IM350 9 years ago, from TP for £300, ex display. it payed for itself in the first job. i bought it for framing houses. its fired tens of thousands of nails, and been serviced only three times, the last one i did, not complicated, it just hasnt needed more servicing. still running on the original 2 batteries. always worked ok whatever the temperature. may well have bought a different make, but at the time there wasn't much choice, and didnt want to be dragging a hose around on a roof or have to run a compressor. cant fault it thou, can really stick in those 90mm framing nails, i have only ever used paslode nails (compatibility issues) its always been horribly reliable, maybe i was lucky, but think its just a v.good bit of kit, even the carry case is well designed and robust.

i'm with you there on stropping. after sharpening and sharpening knives for what seemed like an eternity only to find they'd cut hair on you arm/hand or whatever, but wouldn't cut paper vertically, i found that stropping made all the difference. if you've got a blade with two faces and you've sharpened equally on both sides you are always going to be creating a burr, no matter how many times you remove it when you turn the blade over and sharpen the other side. even stropping in the palm of your hand is enough. ray mears on tv i thank for bringing that to my attention. rick

really, really, really like that. wish i'd had the money or the oak to make my frame in oak. next one maybe. superb.

morten, i like your link. had a look inside the book thankyou amazon, wish i had twelve quid. bosun, gransfors bruks forest axe, and small forest axe. they do exactly what they say on the tin. limbing soft or hardwood and general working, you can do all kinds of craft/carpentry work with them. phenomenal. i didnt understand why until i bought them. they're flat ground and very fine at the leading edge. the steel is very high quality (i imagine a high carbon content), and they are made to an exceptional standard. easy to keep very sharp, and they maintain their edge. they never get so out of shape i can't maintain their razor sharpness with only a diamond router cutter sharpening card i carry in my pocket. rick

that is so good. it looks so even and symmetrical. stunning.

it took me ages, actually, make that years, to figure this out. it wasn't until i started making knives that it finally made sense. essentially sharpening is about 3 things; the intended use of the blade (wether its an axe, saw, knife, plane, or chisel the same thing applies) which is the action of the cut (sawing, chopping, hewing, pairing/slicing); the density/hardness of the material to be cut vs the hardness of your tools cutting edge; and the angle of entry of the blade. these inter-dependant things govern the angle you need to sharpen your tool at. the angles quoted are the angle from the outside face of the blade that you sharpen to the centre of the blade. different blades will cut differently, for different uses, and its hard to achieve an all round tool that works well in all situations. which is why, for instance, you may find it hard to make feather sticks for fire lighting with a hunting type knife, however sharp it is, because the shape of the leading edge of the blade is wrong. this is how we all end up with a shed load of tools. flat and hollow ground blades allow you to pair things more easily than convex ground which allows you to chop more easily. although the exact angle you use to sharpen isnt entirely critical, it can fall well within a range (generally 12.5 -30 degrees), the consistency of maintaining the same angle is more important, honing guides help, but theres a point where you will have to go freestyle, because not everything fits in a honing guide, axes and knives esp. its a thing where you have to spend an amount of time to get it to run right. if you use a mechanical sharpener, like a grinder you need to be really careful you dont heat the edge of the blade, or you will remove the temper from it and it will require you to grind out the whole area you've cooked or you will keep chipping the edge. tomak water wheels are a way to go, but its not so difficult to sharpen by hand. the angle plane blades are set in the body of the plane determines to an extent the angle the blade needs to be sharpened at (generally 25 degrees) you can get away with putting a micro bevel on a blade, but only for so long before the micro bevel is too large and begins to hinder the process of cutting. they are a good way of avoiding having to sharpen the entire face of the cutting part of the blade, but you can only do that for so long before you have to completely re-grind the face. the same with chisels. 25 degrees will give you a finer point of entry which allows you to pair things, and 30 degrees will give you a better chopping edge. too fine an angle of entry is counter productive for chopping blades as it causes them to stick, yet conversely, to pair something, the finer the angle the finer you can shave things. the key to successfully sharpen double bevelled blades is to try and remember to count how many times you run it over the sharpening stone per face, and make sure its an even amount each side. hope it helps rick

spud, is there an oiler hole behind the clutch assmbly? had checked the one behind the bar and tried air hosing from that side as well, and tried getting a piece of wire in, which only will go so far before it hits what feels like a bend in the oiler duct. thanks rick

thanks will try that. and bar fire sounds like either a) a bad juggling act waiting to happen, or b) something that probably occurs out here quite often in the summer. anyway, thanks sounds like a good tip.

seem to have a blockage somewhere inside the chain oil feed system probably very fine sawdust from milling, because thats when i noticed the problem, (lack of oil flow), not the pick-up tube but inside the body of the saw somewhere, and an air hose wont clear it, and the oil filter wasn't clogged or anything, in-fact it looks pretty clean, any ideas about how i can clear it? thanks rick

hi alec, the outer gable rafters (the outer-side of the ladder), are housed over the wall plates and have a birdsmouth. the principal rafters are morticed into the tie beams, and the common rafters (3x7"s)(and including the larger 4x7"s for the velux's - the 12 i bought) are all seat cut onto raising plates (that sit over the top of the loft floor joists and above the wall plates), lap jointed at the peak, and nailed) they got 9 nails a piece into the foot. wasn't sure just how well that would hold until i tried to rip one out that was slightly proud of the line, to be rehoused, hellishly hard to get out, so no worries about them sliding. (had seen the same rafter housing situation on a 500 year old house i'd done roof repairs to outside of colchester 5 or 6 years ago) (will pm you a close up) rick

here's the frame pretty much complete, just the bathroom extension to finish, the roof of which segues into the main roof (will post when done). the chimney took me 2 1/2 months in 40 degree heat, its 1m deep x 2.2m wide and 10.5m tall, 3 flues, hewn walnut lintels, a 250mm stone face over a 200mm blockwork skin, clay flue liners and vermiculite type insulation. (i'm not a brickie, i didn't even used to lay much block work in the uk, let alone do stone work, that's why it took so long) had to buy in some (12) of the rafters as i ran out of material (sorry to the purists) and had to have a hand lofting those 12 (4x7's x 5m) as they were very green and weighed 300-400 lbs a piece (hard enough to lift on my own, almost impossible to loft) and i didn't want to risk mashing the purlins (more specifically the joints on the purlins) trying to get the rafters in (again sorry for my lack of effort)

really nice carving, sjh and tree puncher, great tutorial, have to have a go now. they have a great energy about them, really.

like it (your collective hedge kent james).

old wood cutter, is that your dad in your avatar with his saw. if it is, that's fantastic. show us your saw then? i would really like a two man cross cut for felling if anyone has one they want to send me (he said cheekily) anyone got any pics, anyone? i used mine yesterday for cross cutting some dry walnut for a lintel, and the saw still felt horrible, only marginally quicker than a bacho hand saw. doh!!! thanks rick

thanks morten and alec, great resource. my issue was trying to figure out how much set to put in the teeth, following a very labored felling the other week when the saw constantly gummed up. sharpness wasn't the issue, and i wondered if it was going to necessitate spraying the blade with something like wd40 before and during the sawing to help try and keep the pine resin off. in the end felled a nice size pine with axe and cross cut for hewing 2 common rafters. alec i like your remark about using one for entertainment, it is that alright. thanks rick

didn't know where else to ask this, anyone still using crosscut saws? is there a difference in either tooth set or fleam angle for re-sharpening a crosscut saw, or between softwood and hardwood? or between cross cutting for logging or felling? thanks rick

really like your kuksa's. they have a lovely fluidity about them, your spoons too. (nice blog)

i loved that episode of grand designs, and i think what ben law did was really inspirational, but to be honest, for me, it was never a consideration; (at the risk of being shouted at) i feel round-wood construction presents too many problems and not enough solutions. what i thought was inspirational was buying a woodland, using it to build from and to help enable a degree of self-sufficiency, which is something i took to heart. i know you only asked a question, but the answer is complicated (for me). my issues with round-wood construction from a structural pov, are that there are no span tables that indicate what size timber you need in what situation. with sawn timber it possible to determine fairly accurately what dimensions you need for posts and beams (there are calc.s all over the place which prove it). in both scribe and square rule framing you can allow between 15-20% wane on any timber, within any size classification, suggesting to me that round-wood is no more than 15-20% stronger; which leads to what i think is the biggest issue in round-wood construction; the assumption that timber being stronger in the round will therefore allow you to downsize the timbers you need, subsequently under allowing for deflection. timbers in a frame have to be stiff as well as strong. timber frame timbers aren't just big because of the clear spans, they also have to absorb beam deflection in live and dead loads. posts and beams need stiffness. the more you remove to house joints the less stiff your beam becomes. what i like about sawn and hewn timber is the (relative) evenness of sizing and meeting places of edges, which eases the integration of other surfaces. where as, working in the round means constant scribing, or for instance, flooring, means cutting the top surface and or a lot of shimming. additionally, its not easy to mate two round surfaces, which limits the type and variety of possible joints you can use, and there-fore the situations in which you can use round-wood. i wouldn't want to set-out and cut an english tying joint at plate level in the round. its complicated enough square. for me, that's what it boils down to, over complicating something that's supposed to be relatively simple and beautiful as a result of its simplicity, for me it would undermine or take that away. if you can solve the structural issues, i guess its a whatever you prefer thing. my background is in traditional carpentry, so i don't really care for working in the round, in terms of general house construction, its too time consuming for me, and doesn't provide the kind of evenness of finish i'm looking for. and if i had built in the round my wife would've left me. what i would like to do (given the opportunity) is build a completely hewn cruck and arch braced truss frame house. anyone?

great barn alec. nice pic. i was thinking riven and hewn. anyone got any examples?

the frame is a mixture of different woods. mainly maritime pine, because that's what i have largely (half the posts, all the sill plates, floor joists, girding beams, tie beams, the roof plates, rafters and purlins) a fair bit of walnut (most of the rest of the posts, most of the braces, all the collar ties, most of the queen posts, most of the girts, and some of the windbraces) some chestnut (braces, windbraces, couple of queen posts, and some of the girts) and oak (windbraces, and all of the pegs). alder and willow braces going in the proposed bathroom extension. i had done a fair bit of restoration work on timber frames when i lived in england and although when you think of timber frames you tend to think of them as oak, often that isn't entirely the case, many species were used, often in conjunction, mainly because they used what was available and appropriate. its about thinking what are the inherent strengths of each species and how can you best utilise them, each situation can require something slightly different, but essentially in framing its either acting in tension or compression, and sometimes both. you could use alder anywhere you would use oak, awesomely strong, stunning coloring. i would have loved to have used oak, (next time if there is one) but don't have much, and i saved the chestnut i had for shingles. it was all about trying to use what resources i had in what i thought was the most useful way. my whole approach harks back hundreds of years to the old ways of doing things, how would we have done this before, when you couldn't just go to the store and buy it? partly because that is my situation, stores don't exist here the same way as back in the first world, and i don't have any money. (alec, do you have any pictures of popple crucks? and are they hewn? i would love to do a cruck frame. have improved my hewing by changing my finishing stroke to one like skinning even worked on very dry walnut hearth lintels) regards rick