A Simple Thing

If you are searching for land, here's something to consider.

Early in my teaching career I lived twenty or so miles due west of the school where I taught. Every morning I drove for half an hour pretty much directly into the sun, and in the late afternoon, the same thing. On bright days even really dark sunglasses didn't help. After years of squinting I had developed some fairly sharp horizontal grooves in my forehead. People began to assume that either I was always in deep concentration, or that I had chronic anger issues. So, if you don't want to look like you have six-pack abs on your forehead, search for land east of where you work.

MISTAKES

Often, maybe not every time, mistakes, errors and screw-ups can be a blessing.

About two decades ago we did our first valley system timber frame. The frame was also our largest, most complex work to date. I worried that valley system to death, but in the end it worked out beautifully. What didn’t work out beautifully was a thru-mortise on a post which was visible - or, more correctly - very noticeable as one ascended the staircase which that post framed. The opposing face of that post, where the misplaced mortise occurred, was at floor level on the second floor, mercifully to be hidden at the bottom of a closet in the master bedroom. The thru-mortise was too high on the post by 8 inches, exactly the dimension of the oak girts which should have connected immediately below at both sides of the post. At least I understood how I’d made the stupid mistake. My knee-jerk excuse was I was too fixated on the valley system.

Before they discovered it on their own, I confessed my sin to the clients and offered to replace the post with a properly carved one. Their attitude was to just leave it alone – they’d simply place a plant on the girt where it connected to the post on the staircase side and since the opposite side was in a closet nothing there had to be done. We could cut a new thru-mortise and continue with the raising. Later in the week when we returned to the shop I was still obsessing about that open mortise being fully on display for generations to come. I just had to come up with something. After a day or two of fretting I had a solution. For the “visible to everyone in the world” mortise I carved a plump cat sporting a Cheshire grin with its shoulder going into the errant mortise. For the mortise on the opposite of the post – the one hidden at floor level in the closet I carved a mouse with a cat’s paw engulfing it. This carving took many more hours to carve than would have been required by an accomplished sculptor. But I thoroughly enjoyed the process and I was very pleased by the finished pieces and when I delivered and installed the sculptures, the clients were elated.

A number of years later, while working again in that area of New Jersey, I stopped in to say hello. They were thrilled to tell me that everyone who climbed the stairs asked about the cat. At which point the inquisitor would be taken into the master bedroom, the closet door opened and a closet light switched on. “Oh my” followed by laughter was the universal reaction. The clients felt that the experience brought a lot of joy to their visitors.

-TZ

Man versus Machine

During the early years of the rebirth of timber framing in this country, most all of the practicing companies were on a level playing field. All of us (with two exceptions on opposite ends of the spectrum) used electric hand tools plus chisels, mallets, squares, planes, knives and pencils to fashion our work. Reawakening and relearning a craft which had been in a long slumber for the better part of a century was uplifting, labor-intensive work. And it was a challenge to integrate the mechanical and electrical systems which didn’t exist when timber framing was in its heyday. There was a whole bunch of passion and sharing of information. And there was a commonality of purpose and process. There were scant few, if any, pre-designed, “pick one” timber frame plan brochures. Those who wanted a timber frame weren’t the type to go for something pre-digested and pre-packaged. The craft grew, and, although we were still a very small slice of the construction, beautiful structures were created.

In 1995 a small group of companies accepted the invitation of Hans Hundegger to travel to Germany to view the capabilities of his CNC timber jointing machine, of which perhaps 600 were in use in Northern Europe. The machine was quite a piece of work, stretching to 100’ in length, and, in places, 30’ wide. The joints it formed were unfamiliar, stubby and less than awe-inspiring. There were machine dog marks (incisions put into the timbers by the machine to move the timber timbers down the line) and at those joint edges which ran counter to the grain blow-outs of grain were very noticeable. Present day timber framing in Germany is a whole different animal than what is very much in evidence in quaint German villages and towns such as Rottweil and Bamberg. New timber construction in Germany (as opposed to rehabilitation of historical timber frames) is usually found in roof systems and is hidden behind the flat ceilings much like the situation with gang-nailed 2x trusses in the USA. Thus the work turned out by a Hundegger CNC machine doesn’t need to look fine; it just has to function.

Another objection deals with the orientation of individual timbers. In our shop, all the timbers for a frame are first set on saw horses, inspected on all four sides, and then marked with their placement within the frame. Timbers are organic and even within a high grade some faces have a better appearance than others. If we find a post has an unattractive face, that side will be placed against a wall. If we find that a post has two adjacent faces which bear being hidden, that post is assigned a corner position. A post with four great-looking faces will grace an interior location. The machines do not scrutinize the material the way we do. CNC machines perform at their best when the materials fed into them are homogeneous, materials such as plastics or metals.

Another issue I have is that there are limits to the machine capabilities, and I really do not want our designers to make joinery considerations based on those limits. My greatest objection to the machine, however, is that it will, because of its nature, cause the company which owns it, or rents time on it, to become more removed from, less involved with, the joinery and the timber frame itself. Those companies just won’t care as much since they have less physical and emotional connection to the frame. They will be come mass producers.

Of the six or seven American companies represented on that initial introduction in Germany, we are the only company not won over by the twin desires for higher profits and to become mass producers. I did, however, give the machine one more look years later, after a number of them arrived on this continent and after the machine went through one or two evolutions. A company in Utah that was the North American representative of Hundegger agreed to permit one of our people to come out for a week and observe the new and improved machine at work. We were still not thrilled with the quality of work it produced. If I last another twenty or so years, and if the machine continues to evolve, and if I am willing to alienate the team of artisans it has taken us decades to assemble, I may take another look at the machine. But I doubt it.

-TZ

Green Can be a Bargain

In my first house - which I built in 1971 and 1972 - I layed hardwood floors which I coated with a hard finish. The floors looked beautiful, but as time marched on the cumulative effects of living - dogs running and playing, re-arranging furniture, neglecting to wipe grit and grime off the bottom of shoes - lessend that beauty to the point where I realized that sanding and refinishing were part of my future.

As I began planning my second home I discovered the beauty of patina. Virtually every time I came upon a wooden floor that I really liked it would be: 1) in an old, often really old house; 2) soft wood, most often white pine; or 3) if it had an applied finish, that finish was oil. Decades, if not centuries, of foot traffic, of kids being kids, of pet scratches, of spills, of abrasion, of dirt and dust had worked a wonderful magic on the soft wood. Such floors had a patina so rich and so deep that I had an epiphany - staining is man's attempt to impart to wood surfaces, quickly, the look that takes Mother Nature years and decades to impart. If you can defer gratifications, Mother Nature does it best, by a very wide margin.

So, at the begining of the planning stages of my second house, I procured a quantity of locally harvested one inch thick white pine boards in varying widths. I stacked, stickered, and covered the boards for air drying. Almost a year passed before I was ready to lay the pine. I had a local mill plane the planks down to 3/4", rip them to widths of 4", 6", 8" and 12" (so that the pattern wouldn't be so random), and ship-lap the edges. I could have used cut nails to secure the floor, but chose to screw the floor in place. At each joist center I countersunk a 1" diameter hole half way through the pine, then screwed the board in place, glued in 1" diameter end grain Walnut plugs, and finally cut the plugs flush to the floor with a very sharp chisel. I then coated the floors with boiled linseed oil.

As I surveyed the floors I was underwhelmed. No, it was more than that, I was really disappointed. The floor looked way too white, the walnut plugs were too strong a contrast and floor looked bland. But I had neither the money nor the emotional energy to pull up the floor and try another approach, and I decided to leave it. After the first year, the floors didn't bother me as much. By the third year they began to look like I knew what I was doing. As the pine aged it darkened, going towards a reddish brown; the contract between the pine and walnut became acceptable. Cleanups were done with Murphy's Oil Soap and maintenance consisted of a recoating of oil (no sanding required) about the fifth year. When this house sold in record time, I assumed it was because of the layout, or the beam work, or the site; but, no, the new owners later confided that it was the patina of the floor boards that provided the strongest pull.

What a bargain: a floor made from a fast-growing, locally grown, natural, recyclable, biodegradable, low maintenance, low embodied energy material which was easily installed and which looks its worst when new and looks more beautiful as it is used. This about a green as it gets.

- TZ