Doing the first lay up

What's a lay up, you ask (other than an easy basketball shot)?  It is where you take all the timbers in one plane of a timber frame structure and you stack them all precisely the way they will be in the finished building.  The joints are then scribed precisely from one timber to the other so that everything (in theory) fits together just right.  We are being forced to use this much more exacting method by the fact that our timbers have not dried completely true - they have twisted and bowed enough that we can't "persuade" them back to true.  On the upside, we're learning a lot more about the craft of timber framing!

We're using the slab for the work since it is conveniently level and snow/mud free.  This weekend we managed to get the timbers stacked to this point:

First bent mostly stacked

That may not seem like much of an accomplishment, but it takes a lot to get these large pieces of wood precisely placed!  We have to level each timber, make sure it is precisely where it needs to be in relation to the rest of the frame (square to within 1/16") and then transfer all the dimensions at all the joints.  It is a very slow process involving a lot of measuring, slight movements and more measuring until everything is just right.

This morning we got the rafters placed more precisely (in the above picture the one rafter was only very roughly placed).  We also finished scribing some of the joints that we didn't get to on Sunday.  In the morning, we hope to final place the rafters and finish the scribing on this bent.  Then we will either move on to the next bent and eventually scribe the whole frame, or we will stop and do the joinery in this bent to make sure we've done the scribing correctly.  :D  Either way, it feels really good to finally be working on the house again!

Stay tuned because we now have to get a goat shed (or two) built before the end of May.  We needed another project, right?  We have some fun ideas for that structure that should help it go up faster and also make it pretty inexpensive.  Have to see if it works out that way though!