Preservation Timber Framing

Traditional repair of timber-framed barns, homes, churches and steeples

Tag: Maine

  • Ice House in a Heat Wave

    Callie and Matt, fitting the middle tie beam
    Callie and Matt, fitting the middle tie beam

    On Friday we erected the Ice House, c. 1770.  This small, 10′ x 13′, frame is an exact replica of the larger barn to which it was found adjacent.  The Ice House had been fully sheathed inside and out, and the wall cavities filled with sawdust, for insulation.  It is extremely rare to find an extant ice house frame, and we were honored to work on it.

    The repairs were first initiated a few years ago, and the frame’s small size allowed its transport to a number of preservation conferences and its use in a semester’s long workshop with high school students.  While the Ice House was an incredible teaching tool, its age and significance prompt us to start looking for a good, final home.

    The final repairs were made with the help of two of this year’s Maine Preservation interns, Callie Douglass, and Matt Corbett.

    "Hewin'" Callie Douglass
    "Hewin'" Callie Douglass

    We began by assembling the deck inside the shop.  The frame required new sills, one of which was cut from a hewn sleeper reclaimed from the Damariscotta Steeple.  We filled in the deck with log joists from a frame that was not able to be salvaged.*

    Callie has experience with new timber frames, and was eager to learn how to preserve old ones.  Her first repair was an under-squinted scarf joint in one of the original 7′ posts.  When she was finished with her scarf, she hewed down the fix to match the old material.  This was the first time Callie had used an adze, but Arron helpfully counseled, “It’s just like golf, Callie, all about the follow through.”  Which may be the only apt analogy between timber framing and golf.  Despite her lack of experience, golfing and otherwise, Callie found she really had a knack for hewing.

    Matt "Look at those Curls" Corbett
    Matt "Look at those Curls" Corbett

    Because of the age of this building, we were repairing, rather than replacing, almost all of the studs, and Matt Corbett performed many of these repairs.  In addition to his historic preservation education, Matt had an undergraduate background in sculpture, so he was acquainted with some of the power tools in our shop.  In the process of repairing the stud feet, however, he most enjoyed the precision of hand tools, and took a shine to hand planing.

    Half Dovetail Mortise
    Half Dovetail Mortise

    After the fixes were complete, we were hoping that the test assembly in the shop would go smoothly.  The “Front Eave” plate fit nicely, with a parade of matching marriage marks down the posts, studs and braces.  The gable tie beams dropped on and stiffened the entire frame.  When we went to drop on the middle tie, however, we noticed that the half dovetail pocket was facing the wrong direction.  A half dovetail is a beautiful joint that allows the tie beam to hold the top of the wall in place, preventing it from spreading with the weight of the rafters.  We were mystified that the Front Eave plate, as labeled by its tag, fit so well, even though the wide part of the dovetail mortise was facing the interior of the building.  The dovetail on the middle tie beam was no help, because the tenon that connected to this plate was so deteriorated that it no longer had a sloped shoulder.  Matt suggested that maybe the original builders had made a mistake, but we shushed him out of reverence for the old timers.

    Tie Beam Wear, Here!
    Tie Beam Wear, Here!

    We took the frame apart, and tried turning the plate end for end, with the dovetail mortise oriented correctly, but nothing fit.  So we switched the plates, thinking that they had been labeled wrong, and there we found our answer.  With the plate on the opposite wall, the joints still didn’t fit, but sunlight streamed in from the upper windows and illuminated our joinery.  We could see a distinct shadow line from the shoulder of the tie beam on what should have been the exterior of the plate.  The old timers who built it had made a mistake (and made the Ice House today all the more interesting in the process).  They reversed the dovetail mortise on one plate and then reduced the tie beam tenon on that end to fit.  So we re-assembled the frame the way it was originally built, and the middle tie slipped easily into place, locking up the frame.  A pretty parade of matching marriage marks left no one the wiser.

    Click on the photos below to see the marriage marks, Matt’s tie beam fix, and more information about our process, and parts and pieces.

    *At PTF, we try to avoid Frankenstein frames, but believe there are cases where reuse of certain rare pieces is appropriate (and better than sending them to a burn pile).

  • Our Biggest Fan

    Goodhue Sketch c. 1900
    Goodhue Sketch c. 1900

    In 1900, Charles Goodhue drew this sketch from the memory of an elderly parishioner.  This is one of the only remaining images that depict the building from this era.  Fortunately, evidence within the building has proven this sketch to be remarkably accurate.

    From the beginning of our involvement in the project, we have been looking forward to restoring the tripartite arched fan to the pediment.  We were unsure whether any evidence for it remained, and if the fan existed at all, whether we would be able to reproduce it accurately.  Much of the pediment had been changed, with three newer openings cut into the sheathing, and one window inserted directly into the space where the fan would have been.

    Arch Evidence
    Arch Evidence

    When stripping the pediment of its last remaining shingles, we found a series of tiny holes outlining a tripartite arch, with two sides flanking the central window, and a central arch likely to have had its apex somewhere in the top half of the window opening.  These holes had the pattern of flashing nails, small nails that were closely set in order to hold up heavy lead flashing.  It seems that the fan drawn in the Goodhue sketch was not a fully permeable louvered fan, but a decorative adornment that likely had a smaller central opening that vented the attic through the lower, central panel of the arch.  We will never know for sure, because the addition of a 20th century window obliterated the central section of sheathing.

    We used a cabinet and furniture maker in Sheepscot to reproduce the fan using a CNC machine.  Along with the Committee to Restore the Abyssinian, we decided to use a non-traditional method of construction because the fan will not be used to vent the attic, and traditionally arched louvers are notoriously difficult to flash and maintain.

    The new fan was flashed in a custom copper cap by The Heritage Company of Waterboro, Maine.  We work with Victor Wright, a fourth generation slate and copper roofing specialist, for virtually all our flashing needs; from soldering entire copper tile roofs, to custom trim flashing such as we needed for this project.

    When we went to pick up the fan, it took four of Victor’s employees to load it safely into the truck.  We were able to muckle the fan out of the truck and between the staging and the front of the church, and assumed that if two of us could carry it, surely we would be able to lift it into position using ropes and our body weight.  We secured two ropes to the ledger carrying the fan, and threaded them over staging ledgers at the top of the tower.  We pulled on the ropes and nothing happened.  Then we hung on each of our ropes and the fan still didn’t move.  Last we both hung on one rope, attached to one side of the fan, and not one corner would budge.  In the end, we needed a winch, attached to the back of Arron’s truck, to lift the fan into position, and we were happy for this safer solution.  Once we had the fan in position, we used timberlocks to secure the fan to the studs behind the pediment.  Click on the photos below for more information:

    Scott the Gnome
    Proud partners
    Winch Hitch
    Fan a-flyin’
    Fan a-floatin’
    Fan Up Front
    Arch Evidence
    Goodhue Sketch c. 1900
    Finished Facade, Finally
    Finished Facade, Finally

  • The Salvage Detectives, Part I

    The most interesting part of working on the Abyssinian has been the process of discovery.  When we first started working on the restoration, we encountered dank apartments and the absence of much of the original truss framing.  There was little architectural documentation of the building at the height of its use, except for a turn-of-the century sketch from an old member’s memory.  But as we’ve carefully removed the latest additions, we’ve discovered telling clues.  When we removed the 1920s plaster and lath, we found the original rough window openings, cut into the adjacent posts and studs.  Likewise, when we removed the vinyl and aluminum siding, and shingles from the front gable, we found evidence of the original trim elements.  The following is first part of a series about how we determined the trim details for the restored front facade.

    CROWN TOWN

    Crown Town
    Crown Town

    After we removed most of the aluminum siding that covered the trim, and found nothing, we lost hope that we would find evidence of the original crown.  We began researching similar buildings in Portland, like Mariner’s Church (1828) and the Fire Museum, in order to make an educated guess. We debated between profiles like a Cyma Recta, or an elongated Cavetto which would have made sense given the building’s Greek Revival silhouette.  But when we began the roofing phase, and finished removing the aluminum, we found the ten-foot long section of the crown pictured here.  It had typical Federal profile which is appropriate for 1828, at the transition between Federal and Greek Revival styles.

    The only remaining section of original crown was found along the rake, the sloped edge of the roof, and this generated a new mystery.  Traditionally, in order for eave crown and raking crown to have the same projection from the building, the molding profile of the raking crown will need be stretched, so that the raking and eave crowns will meet evenly at the corner of the building.  Two separate molding planes (or knives) were required to create these two separate profiles.  Using a slice of the original raking crown molding, and pitch of the roof, we calculated what the eave molding would have had to look like.  The resulting molding profile was squished, the convex portion looking like a crown roll of fat.

    Another solution to the eave/rake crown problem is to allow the raking crown to have a shallower projection, or stand up a little bit more, while the eave crown juts farther out.  Then, the crowns will match at the corners, but the carpenter only needs to cut different backing angles on the rake and eave crowns.   This allows a carpenter to use the same molding cutters, and many do this today.  Given the chubby eave profile calculated from the crown we found on the rake, we surmise that the original carpenters employed this second option.

    BED DOWN

    Bed-crown Clues
    Bed-crown Clues

    Is this just another boring photo of nail holes?  Oh no, it isn’t!  This photo was taken at the underside of the soffit, along the rake.  The ruler measures the distance of a line of nail holes that runs parallel to the rake.  The nail hole at 2 1/2 inches indicates how far beneath the soffit the bed molding was nailed.

    Revealing Paint Lines
    Revealing Paint Lines

    The second photo shows how we used paint lines to determine how far the bed molding projected from the face of the building, 3 1/8 inches.  Combined with the nail holes running beneath the soffit, we were able to guess the projections and angle of the bed molding.  The crown molding profile found on the rake fit these measurements and we guess that the original carpenters not only used the same molding profile for rake and eave crown, they also used it for the bed molding between the flush siding and soffit.  Absent evidence of some other molding profile, re-using the crown profile was our best guess.

    Coming up:  In The City of P, we discover flashing holes that outline a tripartite arch in the Tympanum.

  • !

    Abyssinian before:

    Abyssinian after:

  • Press on Preservation

    Last week, PTF was featured in two more articles, these ones about developments at the Abyssinian.  The DownEast article focuses on the social history of the building as well as the people responsible for its restoration.  It contains some of my favorite stories about the building, including its origin story, and how it was saved from the fire of 1866 by William Wilburforce Ruby, one of the founders’ sons.  Unfortunately, the online copy doesn’t include all the beautiful photos, so be sure to check it out on newsstands.

    The second article, in the Portland Daily Sun, covered a meeting in Boston between HUD, the Committee to Restore the Abyssinian, the Portland Freedom Trail and Boston’s African Meeting house.  HUD has been and is an important potential funding source for the restoration.  The Committee hopes that by completing the facade, they will attract attention and build momentum to fund the next phase.

  • Sill Crazy After All These Years

    We’ve begun work on the Abyssinian Meetinghouse again.  Last week, archaeologists dug test pits in the basement and driveway, while we worked on cutting a new front sill.  After years of damage, no part of the original front sill could be saved.

    Click on the photos below for a complete description.

    Caution, Sill Crazy.
    Fresh Cut Scarf, Ready for Squeezing
    Pre-squeeze Scarf
    Everybody, Get in Line!
    Come Along Little Loggies
    Keys Cut Here
    Tight Sight
    Tighter Tiger

Think we can help? Get in touch.

Cell

(603) 781 5725

Office

(207) 698 1695

Email

Office Manager: Emilee Bolduc

President: Arron Sturgis

Mail

P.O. Box 28, Berwick, ME 03901

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