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Timber Frame Construction
All About Post-And-Beam Building
by Jack Sobon & Roger Schroeder

      If you have only dreamed about the beauty of building with timbers, this book will open your eyes. It will convince you that this method is not only practical today for homes and other buildings, but is often less expensive than "stick built" construction.

      Timber frame builder Jack Sobon and writer Roger Schroeder offer this book for builders as well as those wishing to have the work done for them. Here is practical how-to for both beginners and experienced carpenters who want to try this method. Coverage includes: the basics of timber framing, how to design for strength and beauty, how to combine modern tools and time-tested methods, plus dozens of illustrations and photos that make it easy to understand. Timber Frame Construction includes plans to build a 12 x 16 garden tool shed, an appropriately-scaled project for the beginning timber framer.


Build a Classic Timber-Framed House
by Jack A. Sobon

      The timber-framed home is attractive, affordable, and easily expanded to meet the needs of a growing family. With the step-by-step instructions in this book you can build your own classic timber-framed house--one that's enduring, and features a level of craftsmanship rare in modern construction. Following the traditional "hall-and-parlor" home design, architect and builder Jack Sobon carefully and clearly explains:

  • finding the ideal building site
  • creating the master plan
  • selecting the best tree species
  • hewing and milling timbers
  • assembling the frame
  • installing wall sheathing , windows, and doors
  • designing and finishing the interior
  • expanding on the plan.
      One of the best-known and most distinctive figures in the timber-framing revival, Jack Sobon knows how to make home building affordable with economical hand tools, by taking control of the processing of building materials, and through using local inexpensive supplies. The basic house design of this book is easily adapted to meet many different needs.


A Timber Framer's Workshop
Joinery, Design & Construction of Traditional Timber Frames
by Steve Chappell

      Timber Framing has been a part of our building culture and an inspiration to mankind since the Middle Ages. As we enter a new millennium, it is designed to remain as one of building's most enduring forms, not only because of its intrinsic beauty, but because it is a pure and complete structural system.

      Steve Chappell is a builder at heart and a teacher by nature. His journey in timber framing began on the northern coast of California in 1970, when, by chance, he joined a group of individuals in the construction of a joined timber frame. The group was led by a New Englander who grew up playing in his uncle's barn. Inspired by the experience, he moved to Maine in 1973 to study the buildings first hand. Building, teaching, and writing about the craft has been his passion ever since.

      As the founder and director of Fox Maple School of Traditional Building, Chappell has instructed hundreds of individuals over the past 15 years through hands-on workshops from Maine to California, New Mexico to Alaska, and across Canada. He is the Editor & Publisher of Joiners' Quarterly, The Journal of Timber Framing & Traditional Building, a magazine he founded in 1983, in which he has written extensively about timber framing and traditional building. In this book, his nearly 30 years of experience and insight is evident through the subtle nuances that he conveys. His intimacy with the craft is ever present, and his passion contagious. If you want to understand traditional timber framing, read this book. Chappel portrays the craft, with all its nuances, the way it was meant to be.


Timber Framing For the Rest of Us
a guide to contemporary post and beam construction
by Rob Roy

      Post and beam frame structures are integral parts of many building methods, but they require a high degree of craftsmanship, training, time and expense. Until now there has been no authoritative guide for how to use available alternatives.

      Time Framing for the Rest of Us is the first book to describe in depth the timber framing methods used by most contractors, farmers, and owner-builders--methods that use modern metal fasteners, special screws, and commonsense building principles to create post and beam structures in much less time. The book includes everything an owner-builder need to know about building strong and beautiful structural frames from heavy timbers, including:

  • the historical background of timber framing
  • crucial design and structural considerations
  • procuring timbers--including different woods, and recycled materials
  • foundations, roofs, and in-filling considerations
  • descriptions of the common fasteners

      Highly illustrated and practical, the book includes a detailed case study of a timber frame project, a useful appendix of span tables and a bibliography. Enabling "the rest of us" to build like the professionals, it will appeal to owner-builders, contractors and architects alike.

      Rob Roy is a former contractor with eleven previous books to his credit. He has been utilizing timber framing techniques for the past twenty-five years in the construction of homes, as well as in numerous outbuildings at Earthwood Building School, which he founded in 1981 with his wife Jaki.


Living Homes
Stone Masonry, Log, and Strawbale Construction
by Thomas J. Elpel

      Living Homes: Stone Masonry, Log, and Strawbale Construction does not specifically cover timber frame construction, however, the log-building instruction includes innovative techniques that can be applied to timber frame construction, as shown with the support logs and cross-piece in the photo here. Conventional timber framing requires precision craftsmanship to notch the pieces to fit precisely together, but the method taught here doesn't require any notching at all. Instead, holes are drilled into the logs, and rebar pins are sledge-hammered through each log to hold them together.

      Living Homes also covers other important aspects of designing and building a house, especially the all-critical design work to make sure you get the house you want on the budget you can afford. It also covers the nuts and bolts of building footings and foundations, plus stone masonry, log, and strawbale construction, details on roof design and construction, plumbing, wiring, tile-making, masonry stoves and lots more.

      For a more complete description, please click over to Living Homes: Stone Masonry, Log, and Strawbale Construction

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