The Framing Yard
In our large premises at Nupend, Gloucestershire we have set up seasoning
sheds for large stocks of beam oak which we buy in as premium grade fresh
sawn oak, carefully monitor and manage for a number of years, depending
upon dimension, and then select and use as air-dried “steady” beam.
This process is essential to our very high quality output and no external elevations are made using green oak with its substantial shrinkage and associated weathersealing problems.
The workshop is essentially a huge floor. On this regularly painted surface, the frames for buildings are laid out flat over marked lines, and scribed for jointing together. This process is practically unchanged for hundreds of years. Whilst the timbers are now levelled accurately using a laser, and the joints are often cut using hand held power tools, the principles of setting-out the frames and marking the joints would be entirely familiar to a medieval carpenter. (The scribing and tooling marks we leave on the timbers are often identical to those we find on ancient frames that we are repairing)