2010 Eastern Conference

Pre-Conference Workshops:
October 28th, 2010

These workshops are an opportunity to hone your skills in an all-day intensive session with a small group of participants and expert instructors. Participants will receive 7 Continuing Education Credits for successful completion of each workshop.

A separate registration fee is required and does not include the main conference registration. This fee does include lunch and breaks.

Workshops begin at 8:30 AM, except for the TFBC Working Group, which begins at 9:00 AM.

The Guild is proud to introduce its Apprenticeship Training Program and proud to present this Guild training curriculum component as a pre-conference workshop. Satisfying the classroom element of Section 16, Conservation Techniques, this workshop will cover these topics:

Ethics and standards—Learn about the standards and guidelines involved in the ethical preservation of historic buildings, why materials and craftsmanship matter, and why we do this.

Dismantling techniques—Learn how to plan, organize, and perform a safe dismantling of a timber framed building.

Repair techniques—Learn how to identify and select repairs for timber structures and create effective metal and chemical repairs.

Conservation and preservation techniques—Learn common practices used to conserve and preserve historic timber buildings.

Inspection, surveying, and recording techniques—Learn the tools and techniques used for investigating and documenting historic timber buildings.

Estimating repairs—Learn to identify and quantify the materials, labor, and equipment needed for repairs, including organization of materials, labor, and equipment and calculations of cost and time.

The workshop will provide the carpenter’s point of view using examples from 22 barn restorations in the Upper Midwest, addressing such questions as: How much damage is too much damage? Which types of timber structures are least/most challenging to restore? What can I do to restore a timber frame building?

Take a walk along the pathway of the Timber Frame Apprentice and learn valuable techniques that you can put right to work.

Upon successful completion of this workshop, participants will be issued a certificate indicating completion of the classroom portion of Section 16, Conservation Techniques. Further information about the Guild’s apprenticeship program may be found on our website, www.tfguild.org.

About The Presenter

Rick Collins is the owner of Trillium Dell Timberworks in Knoxville, Illinois. He has led a number of recent Guild projects involving historic structures.

Rick is a past Guild president, a current member of the Guild’s Apprenticeship Committee and a Journeyworker of the Timber Framers Guild.

In an effort to demonstrate plumb line scribe (PLS) as it applies to compound roof systems, we’ll use this project to briefly explain many of the steps necessary to take a project from the initial design parameters to the cutting floor. It is the instructor’s intention to show that PLS is not merely a technique to join funky or poorly sawn material together but also a system that can allow more freedom in design, streamline the drafting process, reduce material costs, and improve the structural capacity of a timber system.

Though the techniques to scribe one timber to another will inevitably take center stage, we’ll also discuss how the freedom provided by PLS can and should effect timber arrangement and joinery choices. The presenter uses its flexibility to help avoid or improve three- and four-way timber intersections, gain more shear area at compression joints, and integrate more visually appealing woods with standard, commercially available timber.

Though this is obviously a physical exercise, participants will also be going over the mental gymnastics required to develop and place the proper reference lines on the layout floor, and to ensure that timbers are laid into successive layups correctly. Please bring copies of Dodge’s recent articles in Timber Framing and the layout tools referenced therein. If time allows, the group will try to join and assemble this roof system. Please bring your hand tools!

About The Presenter

Glenn Dodge, a lifetime resident of New Hampshire, grew up playing and occasionally working on his family’s dairy farm in the little town of New Boston. He fell in love with the many old timber framed hay barns on the property. Glenn worked building log homes through college, graduated from NHTI with an Engineering degree in 1987, and has been designing and building timber framed structures ever since. In 1993, he started studying and modifying the French scribe system to allow for more freedom of design and material choice—he now uses it exclusively. Glenn is still happily living in New Boston, now with his wife and three children.