I am wading gently into timber framing by attempting to build a bunk bed frame for my kids. I am giving myself a $250 tool budget. Allowing for mid level quality, what are the bare essentials? I already have a decent DIY carpentry tool bench with drills, clamps, hammers, basic chisels, circular saw, combo/speed/t-square—what are the joinery specific needs?

Thank you

Hi all,

I'm thinking about adding a large living room to my small house and I'd like to do a timber frame construction with straw bale walls. Has anyone done this? If so, is there something that you had to change in a way you designed the frame to accommodate for thicker walls? Did you put the straw bales inside or outside of the frame? I'd like to do it on the outside so I can see the frame from the inside.
Any information you can share is welcome!

Hey everyone, I am building a timber frame house in southern CT, and I am a little stumped by how to insulate it. The house is a reproduction of an 18th century Cape, so I want the inside to look a certain way so i don't want to stick those giant insulation panels to the outside.
My initial idea after some research is to do the following layers that I drew out in the attached pic. I was thinking I could nail some 1X6s inside the 8x8 frame (frame will be white oak), then from the outside in go with cedar clapboard siding, then a house wrap like tyvek, then some pine sheathing or plywood, then a 1" TimberHP Board product, then in between the posts the 5.5"/R20 TimberHP matt, then a vapor barrier, then my lathe for plaster, and then plaster.
What do you guys think?

https://preview.redd.it/b82vgjmul46e1.jpg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1661940dc18eb5c9f29a7a92d20efb83770bc683

Planning to build a shed and many other things. I’ve been hand picking clear Timbers from Home Depot up until now but that’s just going to scale 😱😭. I need mainly 4x4 and 4x6s and willing to pay a premium for CLEAR. Looking to buy directly from a saw mill and have no idea how to find them. Can someone recommend a few?

On a somewhat related topic, also looking to buy a bunch of 8/4 domestic hardwood, mainly cherry. Maybe ~500bf. Is it worth seeking a sawmill for this quantity or should I just buy from my local hardwood dealer. They sell it for ~7bf.

I'm very early in the education stage of potentially having a full size timber frame house built on some land I own. The plot is about 200 acres of forest. I've had regular inquiries about harvesting some of its lumber, but haven't gone beyond taking the names of those that have inquired.

What I'm wondering is whether it would be feasible to use the lumber harvested from the land to construct a timber frame home on the land.

I've read this thread about using green versus dry wood, which seems to indicate that green wood is a viable option. Just wondering whether trying to coordinate the use of lumber from the land is an acceptable approach - assuming the lumber could be milled on-site, or somewhere nearby.

Seems silly to be carting lumber off the land while you're carting lumber harvested elsewhere back onto the land for the build, but maybe I'm missing some obvious reason why this approach would not be practical.

Can a timber frame house be sheathed in the same way as a platform framed house so that the bracing and Timbers are not exposed?

is there a school or book of some sorts that will help teach me how to disassemble an antique barn/know if the barn is viable for transport onto property I want to buy? It is my dream to buy an antique barn someone is trying to get rid of and then insulate it on the exterior with an apartment upstairs and a shop/garage downstairs. I like more DIY as I am not looking to spend a lot of money. I see sometimes some free barns on fb marketplace.

Before I put this truss together(got on a hurry). Is it going to fall into a pile? I'm reticent to pull it back apart. Forgive the mess.

Does anyone know of any resources that explain how the neoclassical Palladian mansions of the early United States were constructed? I read that these buildings were timber framed.

I'm building a timber frame porch out of fairly green White oak. I'm a fairly competent traditional carpenter but new to Timber frame. Will be using connext fasteners and not much traditional joinery. So the porch is a gable with an end truss, a center rafter, and a rafter at the house. It will have 2x tongue and groove Doug fir sheeting. 14' wide x 10' long. My question is, if I cut traditional birds mouths on the rafters, do I need to worry about those timbers warping around the beam? I see a lot of frames essentially lack eaves and I was trying for a pretty minimalist look without framing a roof on top of timber.

I have 3-20' Ash timbers that were supposed to be milled and planed down to the exact dimensions i specified, 7 1/8"x5 1/2". The timbers down the 20' length vary from 7 1/4" to 7 3/4". How can I make these 7 1/8"?

i’m thinking about a makita 2516 router (sits on beam with clamp, has xy hand-wheel movement). anyone have experience running these tools on 120v? or do you use a transformer (not the worst option). i also saw an image of a 2516 name-plated in english and built for 120v…anyone know where that came from? i’ve searched and can find nothing.

I'm using a hand plane to clean and flatten rough-sawn timbers. The problem is that after only a few passes, the hand plane gets gummed up with resin and shavings.

I'm going to apply candle wax to the sole and use mineral spirits to clean.

Does anyone have any other tips? I'd be grateful and thanks.

While burning the slash from building the timber frame today, a photo of it illuminated by the fires seemed apropos. We made the frame entirely from trees we felled ourselves so there was plenty of slash to burn. I posted a while ago when we finished it with pictures. Figured I would share this cool shot I just took.

I want to make a simple post and beam swing set with mortise and tenon joinery.

I want to use pressure treated 6x6s, and bury them in concrete footers. The span from post to post would be 11 feet, and the height from the bottom of the beam to the ground would be 10 feet.

Do you think this would survive the push and pull that swings put on everything? Especially if there was 3 swings on it? Or should I use 8x8s?

I'm putting the finishing touches on my garage frame plans. 20x28. I'll be using doug fir beans for the floors, since it's locally available.

I don't know how to calculate how big to make that center crossbeam. It'll have to carry the ends of the floor joists, plus the support for the roof above. I can add two posts to reduce the span to 14 feet, but I can't do a center post because it's a garage.

Can anyone point me to a resource for calculating loads? Basic floor loads and snow load are readily available, but i don't know how they transfer through the structure.

I've just rebuilt my shop shed, and have an interest in learning timber framing basics.

No need or ability to construct a timber framed structure at this time. I've got a bunch of relatively green rough sawn 2x4 and 1x4/6/12 scrap left over.

The only project I could find a use for would be some sawhorses, as I junked the 14yr old rotten set that's spent a decade outside holding up my scrap lumber heap, not including the new heap left over from building the shed.

Although I've only got an 9" overhang on the eaves(I bought 12' rough sawn lumber, and could make 6'3" long rafters out of it, resulting in an 8" overhang + 1" facia board) I do plan on building some exterior L-bracket type lumber racks off one wall, to store the longer bits of scrap lumber. There is also a bunch os sub-2' cutoffs of 1x12/1x6 that won't fit on the rack, so I need to find a home for them. Most of my woodworking projects, especially those in the near future, such as some electronics project cases will require small bits of wood, so I'd prefer keeping the small scraps around until they can dry and stabilize.