Borgund Stave Church replica Lyme Connecticut

air

compound roof joinery on the west portal entry

north entry portal

First snow

one small sketch, and thousands of pictures to sort through in order to establish details.  Mostly, design decisions that needed to be made where done quickly, without much consideration. Generally, Bossman would show up with lumber and all layout was done on the fly.  The standard center to center approach to timber frame layout was completely over his head.  So actual layout was totally different than the sketch numbers.  And to date, no accurate drawing exists aside from my cad model. The more complicated roof geometry I would refer to my own cad model, which I was not allowed to bring on site.  You see, he didn't want the client to know it wasn't him building the church. 

Mostly Japanese tools and techniques I use in my work 

Naive, upper staging plank I almost got knocked off while Bossman fiddled with the crane.  Hooking the plank, picking it up and dropping it while I was on it.  Was almost a grease spot.

Aisle detail

Although during the process of cutting the timber frame, clear grade scraps were culled and dried to use for these small turnings.  Later when it came time to fabricate these, the material that was used instead was dunage that was left over from lumber deliveries.  Much of it a mixture of hemlock and blue stained pine.

This is a photo of an interior wall.  The wall that separates the chancel area.  The alter goes here.  The alter of a church! And installed right there for all to see by the "builder" is a siding board with a huge fork lift dig.  This is the same guy who not only is willing to claim credit for the work of others, but also berate them daily.  And he installs this above an alter.  This photo speaks for itself as to where the so called "master builders" care level was in regards to the responsibility to not only the trade, but the client.  I wouldn't have used this board in a dog house 

Another area of condensation concern it the primary gallery mud sills.  A decision was made to allow ground to sill contact around the aisle.  An incredible amount of condensation develops daily on the aisle stone and then being absorbed by the mud sills.  After one season of exposure, major signs of decay are showing up.  Left un repaired it will eventually travel to the conventionally framed deck causing  catastrophic  end results

A note about the eaves.  As with bridges, a noticeable amount of condensation forms under the eaves.  As the sun tracks across the roof it is warmed.  Cold moist air condenses on the roof boards that project causing moisture intake.  As mentioned earlier, the roof boards are summer cut eastern white pine.  Left un treated.  After 6 months of exposure, there is already signs that the overhangs are rotting

aisle compound joinery

The Apse compound cooper roof and aisle hip and valley assembly

Cut to speck at a mill in Minnesota.  Picking the low ball bid proved to be a huge mistake.   When they arrived, out of the box, they where unusable.   thousands of shingles  at $2.50 each and 25% or more went right in the burn barrel.  Heart center rot and cracks and loose knots in them. Poorly dimensioned and of unequal widths and thickness tappers,  as well as the compound cuts that make the scale pattern where all different.   What was left had to be recut and re tapered.  I actually fabricated a fixture for the thickness planer that would have made short work of the tapering process but bossman opted to re-taper by hand with a power plane. Adding thousands of billable hours to his wallet.  It was also known that the lengths of the shingles were actually to short for a double coverage shingle roof. The scale pattern essentially reducing the shingle length by seven inches. So, flat sawn shingles with pith rot and loose knots and single coverage.  A recipe for disaster.  What was to me a 100 year roof is now essentially a very pretty 1/4 million dollar tar paper roof      

shingles,