Making the post and beam timber frame

 Test pieces for half lap joints

First I made many test pieces to try out the best way to make the half lap joint where the horizontal wall beams meet. There is 9 of these joints to make and I wanted to get it right. In the end the simplest one was used.

 Framing bed with beam clamped in place

On the level floor of the house a framing bed made of 3 strong planks is fixed as a template. The 2 long planks correspond to the vertical post positions and another matches the horizontal beam height. All the marking is done on the framing bed and then the cuts are made, first on the posts then the beam. Then the logs are placed back on the bed and checked and readjusted if necessary.

 Post scribed to fit curve of beam

On about half of the joints the top of the post is scribed to make a neat looking junction between the post and beam, it takes over an hour for each scribe, so they are only on the ones seen from the tupa (kitchen/living room)

 Tennons on bottom of wall posts

On the bottom of the posts a 4"x2"x6" long tennon is made, this fits into the mortice joint at the floor beam junctions, which were made last Summer.

 Posts and beam on the framing bed to mark for wind brace positions

The whole lot is then placed on the framing bed for the last time to be marked for the wind brace positions. A flat surface is created on the post and beam to receive the wind brace, these will hopefully work out to be exactly 45 degrees from the side of the post to the underneath of the beam, we will find out when the frame is standing.

"Jenkki saha" cutting the wind brace surfaces.

 

 

Karel the apprentice natural builder

So then after 6 weeks including going to Ireland for my brother Aidan's wedding all the posts and beams are ready and waiting to be put up.

All cleared up

For the end of May and beginning of June me and a helper have been clearing up the site. Because when me and Mick cleared the collapsed mess in the winter off the house base we just piled all the timber next to the house in big piles of roundwood, 2x4`s, 2x5`s, 1x5`s and so on. Most of them broken and all of them with nails or screws in them. Or both. Now we took out all the nails and screws, scraped the fungus off the most important boards and then stacked them in individual piles and covered the stack.

Here is the area where there was big piles of broken nail`y timber but now it looks so clean and empty to me. 

This is the biggest pile we made of all the boards neatly in stacks. And a cover on them. Most of the boards we are able to use again, it was the round wood that broke more and short peaces of them might not come in use. But I am very happy this job is done now and there is not a mess any more.

Re-bailing straw bales 21.5.

Last year was a really bad straw year and we were worried about not getting any but asking around did the job again. We found straw bales from a person in Joensuu who had thought to built a straw bale garage but then did not (for our luck). He had harvested them a few summers ago when it was a good straw year and they were kept well. We collected about 280 of them last autumn and 111 more this spring with a van and trailer and stored them in our shed. But they are way too loose for building a house so they needed to be re-baled. 

This May we loaded them all (in two goes) on the tractor trailer of my dads and drove to our neighbors who has a baler that does small square bales (not the big round ones that are much more common these days).

The re-baling was really fast and went very well. There was four of us doing it.

We brought 391 loose bales and re-baled them into 156 tight bales. So 2.5 loose bales into one tight bale. We need in total 360 tight bales for the house so we still need to pick up 500 loose ones and re-bale them. In good weather of course.

Tight bales with kids and their daddy. The tractor looks tiny... The bales are going back into our shed to wait.