The Framing Yard
In our large premises at Nupend, Gloucestershire we have set up seasoning sheds for large stocks of beam oak which we monitor for a number of years, depending upon dimension, and either use, or sell, as air-dried “steady” beam.
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 often (but by no means always)the joints are 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.)