Timber framing

“ In our directions for obtaining curved and angular bent timbers, we may be thought to have been a little too minute with the dimensions and figures: under the hand of the shipwright, or person of skill, a tree of almost any possible bend cuts out to valuable purpose: what is wanted is crooked timber, free of large knots;—first and second foot-hooks and knees are, however, most in demand. ”

“ Good timber should be uniform in substance, straight in fibre, and not twisted, warped, or waney. Diagonal knots are particularly objectionable in timber for piles. Good timber should smell sweet when fresh cut, and it has a firm, bright surface, and does not clog the saw. ”

“ Of late years a number of the largest houses have been plastered on the outside, but the appearance of the rest is highly picturesque. They are built of wood and unburnt bricks, but the immense quantity of timber which has been consumed would clearly indicate the vicinity of a large forest, even if one could not see its dark foliage towering on every side above the town. Wood having been of so little value, it has been crammed into the houses, as if the builder’s object had been to hide away as much of it as possible. The whole fabric is a network of timber of all lengths, shapes, and sizes ”

“ The chimneys being near the center, are not connected with the foundation walls. The rear one is constructed in box form, below the first floor, as a receptacle for ashes, and has a small iron door near the bottom for removing the ashes. The principal frame-work is of sound pine or spruce timber, of the sizes mentioned in the estimate below. When practicable, we would use pine timber for all sills and posts, as the least liable to decay, and spruce for the girts and beams, on account of its quality for stiffness. ”

“ However, when timber is required of considerable scantling, it is only in good soils, where the tree increases moderately fast, that timber will attain sufficient size for this, at an age young enough to retain its toughness throughout, or to continue forming firm dense wood on the exterior. ”

“ If this be done, the planks will warp much less than if cut in the opposite direction. The nature of the tree, the soil upon which it is grown, the position of its growth, the period of the year in which it is felled, and the length of time between its felling and converting, are the principal points to be considered; a thorough knowledge and study of which is the only true principle on which we can hope to deal with the warping and converting of timber.
Wood, when it is cut into small pieces, very soon acquires its utmost degree of dryness. ”

“ Man may mar this beautiful natural balance easier than decypher the proximate cause he may throw the new deposit of wood in greater proportion upon the upper part of the stem, rendering his beam more suitable from equality of thickness, and particularly in pines, of cleaner, smaller growthed, more durable timber, thence more valuable. ”

“ From the investigations of naturalists, however, it may be safe to consider that hard-wood trees, as oak and chestnut, should never be cut before they are sixty years old, the average age for felling being from eighty to ninety years, and the average quantity of timber produced by a tree of that age is about a load and a half, or about 75 cubic feet. ”

“ In this manner it should continue two years, if intended for carpentry; and double that time, if intended for joinery; the loss of weight which should take place to render it fit for the purposes of the former being about one-fifth; and for the latter about one-third. In piling it, the sleepers on which the first pieces are laid should be perfectly level, and “out of the wind,” and so firm and solid throughout that they will remain in their original position; for timber, if bent or made to wind before it is seasoned, will generally retain the same form when dried. ”

“ It is a common practice to describe a ring round a portion of the Standard Trees which are to remain—such as the Oak, Ash, &c.—and these, of course, are intended for future timber, the selection being often as bad as it well can be, but the whole system, from the beginning to the end, is most objectionable, and it is matter of astonishment that it should have continued so long. ”

“ A vital difficulty with timber structures generally is the uncertainty that will commonly exist as to how far decay extends in those cases where it has started. Timber does not necessarily show upon its surface the evidences of internal rotting. Memel timber may, indeed, be sometimes found to have become thoroughly unreliable, yet showing no sign of this upon its painted surface. ”

“ When fir trees are intended to be early cut down, or when disease in larch from unfitness of soil may be apprehended, as it is thence of small consequence though their future ability to become great timber be destroyed by closeness, the plants should be retained pretty near each other from the first, that the timber may be tall, straight, and clean. ”

“ This decay is entirely obviated by inserting the wood in an iron shoe, or by placing a thin piece of iron between the wood and the stone. It is said that a hard crust is formed on the timber in contact with the iron, which seems effectually to preserve it; it is, of course, necessary that a free circulation of air round the ends of the timber be provided. The most notable instance of timber decay in contact with stone with which we are acquainted occurred at the coronation of George IV. Westminster Hall was then fitted up, and they began by laying sleepers of yellow pine. ”

“ This disposition to form brush and excrescence might be given by art to almost any kind of tree, excepting the coniferæ and beech, and might be made a source of considerable profit. This could easily be effected by slitting, pricking, and bruising the bark at certain periods of the season. A very beautiful waved timber might also be formed by {54} twisting the stems of trees tight up with round ropes, the screw circles of the rope not being quite close to each other ”

“ Moreover, each nut is set into an oak block, 4 inches in thickness, which rests upon the upper beams of the timber work that is designed to sustain the structure.
All the pieces of wood of the timber work, properly so called, are of spruce, and measure 6x6 inches. Those that are in a direction perpendicular to the foundation walls are 3 feet in length while the longitudinal ones must be long enough to support several screws in order to annul the effect of joints. ”

“ And as these diseases are frequent or rare according to the soils in which the wood grew, it is essential to know whence the timbers employed in buildings came. One forest will produce oak admirable in appearance, but which rapidly decays; another furnishes timber that is always sound. Generally, timber grown on light and dry soils is good; the produce of damp, clayey ground is bad.
“You will have these cross-grained and crooked timbers put on one side; they will do to make the centres for the cellars; they are fit for nothing else, unless it be for firewood. ”

“ On the contrary, we are frequently in receipt of letters from those who have thus built stating that they are delighted not only because they have saved both money and timber, but at the same time have obtained a thoroughly strong frame without the usual interior timbers, which are so much in the way in handling hay or grain. ”

“ In the older sections, the timber has been fantastically turned, much of its splendid grain being lost in convolutions of pillar and balustrade; but modern architects have utilized the timber in all its beauty of rich gold, mahogany-red, maple-tints, and darker shades, with sympathetic display of its traceries that sometimes take the form of ships at sea, heads of animals, or landscapes. ”

“ Speaking generally, it is found that, other things being equal, the most resistant, closest, and toughest timber comes from isolated trees growing in the open: straight and long timber, less marked for the above qualities, comes, on the contrary, from trees grown in close, high forest. ”

“ The bark should be all stripped off, and the rough timber placed under cover in such a situation as will admit of light and air penetrating freely through it. Timber cut and thus treated one season, should not be used until the next. The durability of seasoned timber is infinitely greater than that of green. ”

“ From the same cause we find the external layers of matured pine timber comparatively superior to the quality of the inner layers: in hard wood the exterior layers are generally much inferior to the inner. Boards of sap-wood of fast grown Scots fir, particularly of the outside layers are much better suited—stronger and more lasting, for boxes used as carriage packages, or for machinery or cart lining much exposed to blows and friction; than boards of the best matured red wood of Memel, Swedish, or Norway pine. ”

“ In the nunnery of Davington, near Faversham (now entire) , the timber consists of oak, intermingled with chestnut."
In the fourteenth century, ornamental carpentry had reached a high degree of excellence. There are many examples of ancient timber houses yet remaining in this country: they have massive beams and timbers, and are generally of unnecessary strength. The intermixture of wood, brick, and stone, or wood and plaster, in the exterior of houses, was, for a considerable period, the common style of building in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. ”

“ This plan of baring the roots might be extended to oak trees for knees, baring and pruning about a foot out from the bulb annually. By exposure to the air, the timber of the root would mature and become red wood of sufficient durability. When covered with earth, the root of the oak remains white or sap wood, and soon decays after being dug up, the matured wood of the stem scarcely extending at all underneath the surface of the ground. ”

“ The reason of this is that the annual rings which mark the grain of the timber should be as little disturbed as possible, as they are not all of equal strength and durability, the outer rings being pretty strong, but as they get nearer to the centre the wood is much softer. ”

“ The principle of over-sailing storeys was entirely due to the use of timber in house construction.
(3) Perhaps the chief distinguishing mark of half-timber construction is that the bases of the walls are always constructed of materials which are not damaged by damp in the ground; whilst the upper part, comprising the main body of the house, is constructed of dry timbers so arranged as to be free from rain, and none of the timbers were near enough to the ground to be injured by the dampness arising from it. ”

“ The strength of a good many species used for structural timbers has been tested. The species most used for this class of timber are the Southern pines, Douglas fir, Norway pine, Tamarack, and Red spruce. An important discovery was made several years ago that Western hemlock, generally considered an inferior timber, showed an average strength 88 per cent. as great as that of Douglas fir, one of the best construction timbers in the United States. Strength tests have also been made on fire-killed timber and these have shown that timber killed by fire is almost as strong as green timber. ”

“ In many cases when timber trees are cut down and converted for use, it is found that at the junction of some of the minor branches with the main stem, the roots, as it were, of the branches traverse the surface wood in the form of knots, and that they often assume a commencement of decay, which in the course of time will extend to the wood around them. ”

“ There is indeed among the higher orders—of course with a few exceptions—a prejudice against felling Timber, older than the oldest Timber Tree in existence; and as strong as the most enthusiastic admirer of the beauties of landscape scenery can desire it to be: and so far is this feeling carried, that, by many, Timber of the most unsightly character, and in situations where it can be associated with no idea connected with the scenery, is religiously spared, and spared long after it has ceased to be either useful or ornamental where it stands. ”

“ These defects in timber are sometimes so far within the body of the tree, as to elude the scrutiny of the keenest eye, proving, in some very old trees, that pruning is not an evil of modern date. In a still greater proportion, as to the whole quantity, however, the eye of Ship-builders, or Timber Merchants—all of whom have frequently been bitten—will detect, from external appearances, the snag-pruning, covered over both with wood and bark ”

“ The timber varies very much both in size and quality, but large quantities of fine oak, ash, chestnut, walnut, elm and several other hard woods, exist in the vicinity of the river and its tributaries. The best timber is generally to be found in the narrow belts of wood that border the large stretches of prairie grass. ”

“ It requires to be of clean solid texture, from 12 to 40 feet in length, and at least 8 inches in diameter at small end, or any greater thickness. For the conveniency of transport, oak plank timber is generally squared or planked where grown, and is cut out from 2 1⁄2 to 7 inches in thickness, and from 6 to 18 inches in breadth. Plank is needed of such various dimensions, that any oak tree of clean timber, nearly straight one way, and straight, or with a gentle regular bending, the other, may safely be cut into plank, the section to be in the plane of the {6} curve. ”