>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 -- **Please remember to trim posts, as requested in the Terms of Service** To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html -- **Please remember to trim posts, as requested in the Terms of Service** To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to: <http://listserv.icors.org/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>