Way back in 2011 when the world was a very different place and I still had some of my own teeth, Bruce and Carole got in touch via letter – yes, pen and paper was an acceptable form of communication back then.

Carole had come across an article in Homebuilding and Renovating magazine in a B & B up in the Highlands of Scotland, and was taken by the story about how we had built our house and wanted to see if there was any way we could erect a timber frame for a future project of theirs in Aberdeenshire. At the time, the timber of choice was to be larch or douglas fir. We corresponded for a while and then Bruce and Carole popped in to see us on a trip down south and we were able to show them at first hand the kind of work we do.

Eventually, 7 years down the line on Tuesday of this week, we put their oak frame up (choice of timber had changed) in the heart of the Cairngorms national park, and so fulfilled Carole’s dream.

The journey through planning, not to mention the 450 miles up to Scotland, was a long one, but plans were finally approved and we designed and fabricated the simple single storey frame which was to create an extension to their vernacular stone longbarn – essentially an open plan kitchen, dining area as a counterpoint to the cosy stone crofters cottage that they had already restored.

As is sometimes the case with geographically distant projects, our first trip to site can be when we actually turn up with the frame. This is obviously fraught with all sorts of potential pratfalls regarding access, scaffolding, groundworks etc which could potentially scupper the raising. Turning up in Scotland and being unable to raise the structure would have made for a much shorter blog though!

As it was, we set off at the crack of dawn on Monday morning having loaded the lorry, only to receive a call from the crane company within the first hour of our journey to say that high winds were forecast in the Cairngorms the following day and that they were pulling out. B*!x$? Not only were we faced with not being able to put the frame up, but there was also the distinct possibility now that we wouldn’t even be able to get the oak off the lorry……

Thankfully, we no longer have to correspond with letters, so emails and phone calls were sent from the M6 motorway to Bruce up in Scotland. Within an hour he had organised for a telehandler and operator to be on site for the following day, and Sylvan and I could settle back into the monotony of our long road trip. Skip forward numerous service station stops and we veered off into the magical landscape of the Cairngorms national park, traversing heather and granite, mountain and moor.

Carole and Bruce hosted us on our weary arrival with a sumptuous meal and a warm welcome. The morning of the raising broke with clear skies and almost no wind! Maybe the crane company just didn’t fancy the job…..

Perfect conditions and the most breathtaking backdrop which took in Lochnagar, a mythical mountain rising to nearly 4000ft and part of the Balmoral estate, meant that the raising zipped along effortlessly.

By mid morning bait (or “fly” as they call it in Aberdeenshire) the jowled posts and wallplates were in place, by lunchtime we had assembled and installed the four trusses with curved collars, and by mid afternoon (tea and Battenburg cake, Balmoral style) we had dropped in the purlins, ridges and wind braces. All that remained was to peg everything together and fix down the purlins and ridge – 150mph winds were not unheard of up here so we didn’t want the roof blowing off.

What a truly amazing experience and thanks to Bruce for mucking in cheerfully with the raising and for Gary and his telehandler for providing expert lifting: calm and assured, just how we like it. Most of all, thanks to Carole for finding that magazine all those years ago and for sticking to her dream.

Presteigne, our local town, is home to a kooky and creative community of people, some of whom have got too much time on their hands.

So it was that one of them, who need not be named (Owen Rimington), decided that what Presteigne needed, to get itself noticed even more, was a shed building competition. Rumour has it that the rather too cleverly titled “Dawn of the Shed” was the chicken that preceded the egg…

Not being nearly busy enough with timber framing (our day job), we decided to support Owen and the Sheep Music backed event. After all, how difficult could it be to build a shed out of recycled materials over the course of a weekend? It might even be fun.

We gathered together as many materials as we could lay our hands on – waste bits of studding, unused and old weatherboarding etc and struck gold with some decaying and dilapidated window frames that our friends Tony and Christine were about to consign to the tip (if such a thing existed in Powys anymore). Now it was time to assemble a team of crack (heads?) guerrilla carpenters who would sweep our funky shed, with a combination of inventiveness, imagination, and distilled genius, to Presteigne immortality…..and the glory of the coveted Shedwrights crown to boot.

As it happens, thankfully, there were no elite, crackerjack carpenters available, so rather like the shed itself, the team was comprised of various recycled, discarded, misfits and vagrants who had nothing better to do, and were attracted by the prospect of free beer and food for a whole weekend.

Saturday arrived and we assembled on site at a leisurely 11am to find that the other competing teams were already busily cutting, hammering, nailing and erecting. Realization struck. We had a lot to do and better get on with it.

Our fag-packet design was shared with the team,

and we knuckled down, sorting the windows,

and building the studwork walls to receive the windows, and fit on the pre-prepared base.

All around us other sheds were taking shape and we were beginning to feel the pressure, and that we’d seriously misjudged something – either our abilities, time, or the quality of the opposition…

Finally at around lunchtime, we had the genesis of something that might one day resemble a shed and we raised three walls, to a distinct lack of fanfare I might add.

Spirits had been raised by this small sign of progress, and buoyed by some hearty supplies that were eaten on the hoof.

We beavered on into the afternoon, continuing with the studding and inserting the crumbling but stylish windows and door frames.

At least now our shed was “lockable” ( we even had a key) although we did have to lean the frame outwards to ensure that the doors could open.

Day one drew to a close, tools were downed and drinks and food were provided in the newly constructed bar.

Competition rules (such as any existed) suggested that no prefabrication was allowed, or the use of any glass. Well, we had ignored the frowned upon use of glass, so, in for a penny….we decided to pooh-pooh the prefabrication clause for good measure and make up the roof trusses back at home. My Saturday (evening) and Sunday morning were therefore not as relaxing as I would have liked, as I frantically endeavored to cobble together some fashionable and eye-catching roof trusses from curved oak offcuts. These were smuggled onto site on Sunday morning by which time everybody was too tired to notice, or too busy, or just didn’t care……I think we got away with it.

The trusses were lifted onto the wallplates, and now we really did have something that was starting to look like something!

For the rest of the afternoon, everything went beserk as boards were ripped, crosscut, and slapped willy nilly onto the outside of our rapidly evolving construction,

whilst around us the other teams seemed to be in a similar frenzied state.

Doug, Coral, Tom, Harold, Peter, Alithea, Dorothy, Jack, Richard and Malcolm put their collective shoulder to the wheel and somehow or other conspired to drag our shed towards a state of presentable completion. A 30 minute stay of grace generously bestowed by the junta of 3 impressively professional looking judges (suited and booted and complete with matching clipboards) gave us just enough time to literally throw on a few sheet of wriggly tin.

The bell tolled. Everyone collapsed in a sweaty heap. Thankfully it was all over.

Not quite in fact. Now we had to face the judges’ “interrogation” and discuss the so called “concept” of our shed.

We tried to impress them with suitably sounding words – “recycled….community…..sustainable….creative”,  but I could tell by the impassive and cold look in their eyes that they could see through my flannel. I might just have well have said “we made it up, didn’t we. Isn’t it obvious?”

Suffice to say we didn’t win. Lewers Firth and his brilliant team of nail gunners from Firth Construction pulled it out of the hat with their inspired hinged extravaganza, and their theatrical, musical unveiling, which clearly swung the deciding vote. Worthy winners.

For once, this really was about taking part.

Thanks to everyone involved for a memorable weekend, and don’t forget to come down to the Sheep Music workshop event this weekend which will be using the sheds as venues.

Sculpture project for Studio Morison

We are timber framers. We generally work in a warm and dry workshop with a more or less flat floor, more or less square and straight timber, interpreting more or less decipherable frame drawings that have been prepared in autocad by a more or less qualified frame designer, building more or less recognizable traditional buildings with walls and a roof.

We are definitely not sculptors. Oh no.

So, imagine our surprise when Ivan and Heather Morison of Studio Morison contacted us to see if we were interested in building a large roundwood sculpture that they had designed and which had been commissioned for a new amenity space near Cambridge.

How large? What? Where? Why?

Our curiosity got the better of us and we made the mistake of taking a trip to the Morison workshop in nearby Weobley to meet Ivan and Heather to talk things through. We looked at their plasticine scale model, inspected the debarked chestnut logs coiled and stacked expectantly outside, scratched our heads and ended up feeling excited by the whole idea.The bait had been set, and before we knew it, we had shaken hands and agreed to fabricate the “Bronze House” – it even had a name…

How?

This was of course the key question that now started to occupy our minds. Night and day. Thinking about constructing a 9m tall structure out of seriously wonky roundwood ended up being quite stressful but with the help of Greg Cohen, the responsible structural engineer, we came up with what felt like a suitable theoretical jointing method. Now we just had to put it into practice.

It worked!

With the 4 tripods now jointed on the ground, it was time to think about erecting them in the yard so we could continue working on the connecting timbers. We booked a crane, 2 telehandlers and a cherrypicker and prayed for a calm clear day, not always a given at the beginning of November…. We got lucky, and were able to successfully assemble the tripods in the air, taking care to brace the feet with 6″ x 2″ timbers to avoid stressing the joints. The tripods were then lifted independently and repositioned relative to each other. I’ve got no idea what the neighbours thought we might have been up to….. With the fundamentals of the structure in place, we could now focus on jointing the upper connecting pieces in place. Everything so far had taken place with the security of the earth beneath our feet, but now we had to step even further outside of our comfort zone with scribing and jointing happening 30 ft up in the air. Painstaking and dangerous work for sure, but slowly, piece by piece the sculpture took shape and 2 weeks ago, we were able to show off our work with an open viewing attended by over 80 interested and inquisitive spectators.

UPDATE – May 2017

The Bronze House – raised!

Last week we went to Cambridge to raise the sculpture which we built for Heather and Ivan Morison. The chestnut timbers had been scorched by the Morisons with a giant blow torch, then tarred and finally rubbed down by hand with a wire brush. The large-scale public sculpture was raised on Hobson’s Square, Trumpington in Cambridge. It sits at the centre of the square referencing the Bronze Age archeology found on the site.

An oak framed barn in Herefordshire

A couple of weeks ago we put up a glamorous rural tractor/storage shed near Leominster in Herefordshire, a stone’s throw from our base at Castle Ring. Richard and Christina commissioned the frame as part of ongoing work and projects associated with their house and grounds. Most people of Richard and Christina’s age might possibly be winding things down and heading for beige knitted tank tops, but not this intrepid couple. Both were positively excited and energised by the whole idea of an oak framed barn to home their vintage Massey Ferguson and visited us in the workshop to see at first hand their frame being built.

Day one

After a couple of weeks in the workshop we were ready for the frame raising in the corner of their bountiful orchard of apples, pear and ripe plums. Christina had given strict instructions to preserve, if possible, a delicate fruiting apple tree right beside the foundations. Would it survive the rigours of a Castle Ring raising? Would there be any apples left by the time we’d finished?

The frame went up smoothly and by 4 o’clock we had finished the main 2 bay structure, complete with a joisted floor platform, single purlin, ridge and windbracing.

Christina and Richard kept us plied with tea and home made cake, which along with all the fruit in the orchard meant we could barely move all day.

Day two

We were more than happy to return to finish off the roof the following day, which involved fitting the common rafters ready to receive the roofing batten and slates.

A lean to structure at the rear of the  building will be used to store and dry logs. A stone “staddle” or plinth was still being sourced for one of the posts, so we made do with some temporary blocks of wood.

By early afternoon we had “topped out” the frame:

…managed to not kill Christina’s precious apple tree:

 …and Richard and Christina were chilling out in their stunning new barn. 

We enjoyed the whole experience as much as they did and look forward to seeing the the barn finished. But please. No more plums!

An Oak Frame balcony

A recent project: the “round the corner” balcony for a new build in Bromyard, Herefordshire, which featured the longest scarf jointed plate we have ever made here at Castle Ring. The house has a contemporary split pitch roof design with lots of modern features. 

3D model of the frame –

Before we started work on the balcony the builders prepared the bases for the concrete staddle stones and posts. Galvanised brackets were built into the wall to receive the tie beams – this means there are no posts against the wall. The brackets have to be millimetre perfect for the balcony to fit. You can’t tell, but behind the camera there’s a lot of stress going on at this stage!

Work begins in the workshop. Here’s Rob chisel marking the joints.

Cross frame “3”.

Frame “4” with table scarfed plate, post and curved bracing all held together with podgers:

Possibly the longest scarf jointed plate we have ever made – over 16m! Poking out the workshop here at Castle Ring:

Balcony scarfed wallplate with rebate. Notice the central mortice which receives the tie beams from the top of the post to the wall bracket:

Wall frame of the balcony finished and ready to come apart for the raising. We left the posts long so that we could cut to length according to the “staddle stones” on site.:

On site:

Table scarf and braces for crossframe 5. Roman numerals much easier to chisel.

The neighbour’s development with a balcony we supplied a few months previously:

The balcony deck will be dropped into the 30mm rebate set down into the oak beams. You can’t see from this photo but the joists drop in with a dovetail joint:

View out from the upstairs living room through the sliding doors.

If you’re worried about the balustrade (or lack of….) it’s going to be made of glass so as not to obstruct the beautiful southerly views of the Malvern hills:

Some of you with long memories may remember an enormous hipped roof we assembled (in 3 stages) in the workshop a some time back – here are a few reminders:

Hips and jack rafters

After myriad problems down on the building site, adding up to a full 9 months delay, we finally got to truck the timbers down to Swansea for the raising. It can be difficult, even disappointing, to break the flow from the workshop to the raising as we are always keen to “finish” the process so that we can properly move on to the next frame. Gnawing away is always the thought that the frame might not fit, or that we’ve lost some vital components somewhere amongst the piles of timber filling up the yard…..or more seriously that we’ve forgotten how it goes together!

Before we could worry too much about such trivial matters we had to worry about the rain. LOTS of it. And then some more. We’d been lucky with dry raisings for a while but now our luck had really run out. On an exposed site looking down towards a misty coastline, we took a soggy battering but had to grit our teeth and keep going as the crane was booked for the day. A couple of strategically placed temporary downpipes ensured that we occasionally received a cold spout of water down the back of the neck to keep our squelching wellies topped up to the brim.

Up and over through the mist

Somehow we survived and made slow but steady progress, assembling the 4 trusses and craning them over the top of the building to the other side through the mist and rain. The trusses were located onto the oak soleplate on the one side, and into holes cut in the masonry on the other. Four “dragon ties” at the corners provided the base for the “hips” and a beautiful internal feature.

Dragon tie with simple decorative detail

Fitting the heavy 6″ x 4″ rafters turned out to be harder and more time consuming than planned – in fact a whole day more time consuming, but on the plus side by the time we had finished, it had stopped raining long enough for us to take a few photos of our work.

Jake and Florian fitting the jacks

Huge prow ready to be glazed.

Shallow pitched truss with brace to ridge

Well we’ve somehow survived our latest batch of raisings – 3 in the space of a week so we thought we’d share with you in a bit more detail what went right and what didn’t, plus what was fun, and what really wasn’t.

We started off with the raising of a douglas fir frame near Knighton, Powys, with the help of our friend Angus from the local village and his telehandler. The 10 minutes drive from our base at Castle Ring was always going to make this raising relatively stress free; knowing that you can realistically forget stuff and get away with it takes a lot of pressure off….and yes, we were half a dozen pegs short at the end of the day, so no dramas.

What went well? The weather (calm and balmy), douglas fir (less than half the weight of green oak so nice and easy on the back), very local (extremely civilised 8.30 morning start).

Nice, light douglas fir…

Assembling the trusses.

Pegging the trusses

Remembering to install the handrail and balustrade which is part of the frame…

Floor joists in place

What didn’t go so well? Angus’ telehandler had a strop and its stabilising feet literally dug its feet in and refused to cooperate from midday. Angus is never one to panic however, and after some grunting and tinkering with a spanner and an oily rag, he was able to temporarily fix the reluctant beast so that we could at least crane the trusses into place.

Lifting the trusses into place

We gave up after that and resorted to manpower to install the purlins and ridge. Again we were more than thankful that it was a small frame and that we weren’t dealing with weighty oak.

Angus helping out after his telehandler woes

Resorting to manpower

When we raise a frame we are generally fairly relaxed about its initial positioning as experience has shown us that we can move it to its exact location at the end of the day. This we do by “tapping” the posts a tiny fraction at a time. Unbelievably you are able to shift a 20 ton frame by an inch or more if you need to.

We expected to be able to do the same with this frame, especially as it was much lighter. No chance. The friction created by the rear and side plates bearing on the masonry walls meant the frame wasn’t going to budge – a bit like Angus’ telehandler. It was stuck fast and we still had 40mm to move! After a brief pow-wow during which we considered ever more outrageous options, including the use of Chinook helicopters, we decided to try and put some tension on the frame.

There were no available trees so we attached a 5 ton ratchet strap to the back of the pickup while we tapped the frame over. It took about an hour, and involved a great deal of jiggery pokery, but we got there in the end.

Gently helping to move the frame

Lesson learnt.

Bright orange frame….you can probably see this from outer space.

Here’s a handful of photos of this frame in the workshop at Castle Ring:

First crossframe assembled in the workshop with the scarfed soleplate laid up and ready for scribing

Chaos in the workshop as all the component timbers are separated to be tenoned, morticed, drilled…

..then it is all reassembled one last time

The douglas fir frame has a fully joisted floor. Here the joists are laid up on the floor beams ready for scribing

A bespoke oak frame – step by step

It doesn’t look much at the moment but this is the arrival from Normandy of the oak for Dave and Viv’s new house in Dinedor Hereford. A detailed cutting list was sent to Granville Bois sawmill three weeks previously and now we’ve got something to get our teeth into in the Castle Ring Oak Frame workshop.

It doesn’t take long to unload and there’s a pleasing symmetry about stacking a pile of oak in our own planted woodland here at Castle Ring:

Once we’ve ferried the timber up to the workshop we can begin the process of getting organised for the weeks ahead:

Before we can start the timber framing per se, we spend a day or 2 sorting out the curves. As you can see they arrive “slabbed” through, complete with bark and sap wood….

…so we shape the required curved braces, collars and slings with a portable bandsaw. Care is taken to follow the grain of the timber which maintains the inherent strength of the wood grain whilst adding a unique quality to the curves. On the downside it is backbreaking work!

Now we can start to lay up the timbers and begin the “scribe rule” process. This is an esoteric and mysterious art that is only revealed to a chosen few……and involves….well I can’t really say. Oh what the hell…., it involves the vertical plotting of the joints of one timber down (or up) into another, usually with the aid of a plumb bob or spirit level.

Here we have started on the first of many crossframes and the collar is being scribed down into the principal rafters and king post.

Dave and Viv’s design is a “storey and a half” with dormers, which means that the tie beams are interrupted upstairs with a raised collar to allow access through the partitions.

We cut the tenons with hand held circular saws and the mortices with this nifty beast…the chain morticer! Not to be messed with.

Once the joints have been cut, we reassemble everything to check they fit and that the overall dimensions of the frame are correct. Stainless steel tapered framing pins or “podgers” which act as removable oak pegs, allow us to pull the joints in nice and tight. This joint is a for a floor beam which benefits from a bevelled housing for extra support.

Almost without realising it things are starting to take shape:

One of the upstairs bedrooms of this 3 bed house has some particularly lovely curved braces:

After 5 weeks in the workshop the frame is now ready to go to site and is loaded up for it’s final journey from Castle Ring:

On site Russell Davies from Hereford is manning the crane for the frame raising:

Pegging up a feature truss with sling braces:

Sometimes it makes sense to put together a whole crossframe rather than lifting in each piece at a time:

Purlins jointed into the truss rafter with a pegged spline:

Taking shape:

Wallplate scarf and cog awaiting tie beam.

This is how far we got by lunchtime:

The ridge height of the L shaped wing comes in at a lower height.

Roof frame with central purlin, wind braces and ridge.

Nice view of all the king posts.

Curved sling braces in the upstairs bedroom.

My feet (not to scale!)

Beautiful patterns.

Topping out the finished oak frame. Dave attaches a fresh oak branch to the highest truss – read more about this timber frame tradition here.

Chatting with Dave, Viv and Jake at the end of a successful frame raising.

Raised in a day!

“It has been great to work with you. The frame is amazing; far more than we imagined. We are grateful to you for being so helpful, straight forward, flexible and easy to work with – a real pleasure.”
Thank you too Dave and Viv.

Finding efficient ways to move big lumps of oak around the workshop is something we take quite seriously, especially as the consequences of not doing so are pain and discomfort, not to mention perspiration and effort. It’s not that we don’t like to build up a healthy warm sweat to keep off winter’s chill on a cold fresh morning………it’s just that sometimes, you just want an easy life!

A large part of the process of timber framing involves flipping over timbers so that we can mark and cut the underside, and then flipping them back again (endlessly). All very well with 6ft studs but not so easy with a 20ft 12″ x 10″ floor beam. Brute force will get the job done (we have the callouses and stretched arms to prove it) but so much easier with some little timber framing cheats.

We use some gigantic spanners to ease the pain, and then as soon as a mortice appears, it’s the perfect place to insert a suitable lever.