>The original highly skilled carpenter would have no question about what to
do with the charred mess.

 

cp in bc<

 

 Reminds me of when we were asked to lead a field school at Mt Lebanon
Shaker Village. The project was to repair a two and a half story tall wall
of the timber framed granary. Being the only Shaker granary known in
existence we knew we were dealing with a highly significant historic
structure. 

 

Finding locally available matching species wasn't too difficult with the
exception of the badly rotted Chestnut sill which we replaced with white
oak. Matching the layout system, which was square rule, was straight forward
enough as was matching the original joiner's mortice and tenon joinery. The
difficulty came in trying to find a scarf joint that was appropriate for the
partial top plate replacement. 

 

The carpenter's the Shaker's contracted to frame their buildings had access
to timber long enough to have no need to scarf members in new frames so we
set about looking for buildings where repairs had been done. This proved to
be fairly ineffective because, as we discovered, the Shaker's weren't of a
mind to repair buildings. Their standard practice was to tear them down and
recycle the materials. We were forced to look outside the Village for an
example that was appropriate for the period and place.

 

Turns out the Shaker's weren't into preservation any more than they were
into reproduction.

 

Rudy


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