Over the Thanksgiving weekend I got to have fun on someone else's dime, so it was pretty much like any other weekend... One of my oldest friends and his father are building a cabin in the woods. See how I made something innocent sound like something disgusting? In all seriousness though, they are actually constructing a timber frame cabin locally that we'll take apart and reassemble at its final location.
We all got together on Black Friday to start the construction, it was light years beyond being trampled in a Wal-Mart parking lot while fighting over the last pair of Chinese Elmo Socks. The first day we moved a lot of the timbers into place, sorted them for location, cut a couple joints and ate delicious chili. This type of large scale joint cutting is excellent practice for smaller scale woodworking. It pays dividends to be able to see details of cutting things like stop mortises and housed dovetails at a large scale. The other added benefit to this is all the extra cool toys you need to do timber framing.
All the beams for the cabin are oak and were just milled so they were nice and green. Green timbers are preferred for timber framing so that when they dry the joints shrink into each other and stay tight, especially ones that are held together with dowels.
 |
| Moving the Big Boys |
This was a great chance to test out some antique tools I have been restoring, some of my friends new
Barr Chisels that we tuned up, a
Prazi Beam Cutter, my
Bad Axe Roubo Beastmaster, and a couple other odds and ends that I have been hoping to try out on a big project.
 |
| Working Hard... or Hardly Working? HAHAHAHAHAA! |
The Bad Axe is not only a beautiful saw but it cuts like a dream, a wonderful sharp saw toothed dream. The handle is super comfortable so we could cut all day with it, the saw plate is huge so we could cut all kinds of joints, it tracks true and was filed perfectly. I can not say enough good things about this saw.
 |
| Ryan Making Use of the Beastmaster |
We experienced a little difficulty with the Prazi because the bar is slightly flexible but it cuts quickly and for rough sizing something it seems like a pretty decent tool to have around. I'll be doing a separate post on this tool with a short video, but I wanted some more experience with it before I gave it a full review. In short, we ended up using our trusty crosscut handsaws to cut these to size and square up the ends.
 |
| Prazi Beam Cutter on a Bosch Worm Drive and a Sweet Beard |
The Barr Chisels, once honed, were a dream. They cut almost as well as the antique we tuned. There was a 1.5" chisel and a 2" slick. Short and sweet, these are awesome and if you are planning on doing some timber framing I highly recommend them.
 |
| Compensate Much? Barr Timber Framing Slick (the left one) |
 |
| FUEL! |
 |
| Scoring Lines to Rip With the Handsaw |
 |
| Squaring Up a Beam End |
 |
| Mortise with Antique 2" and My Tuned Up Stanley 32 in the Background |
If you were a blogger i tell you what you do, you quit your bloggin and you work on the buildin too Imma working on a buildin!
ReplyDelete