It’s time for a holiday, or so the thinking went 6 months ago. Now I’m not one for sitting by the pool, sunbathing or drinking myself into ...
It’s time for a holiday, or so the thinking went 6 months ago. Now I’m not one for sitting by the pool, sunbathing or drinking myself into oblivion before a good fight each night in a Greek village. Even when I was, shall we say, less wise I went on holiday during the winter to strap a Burton board to my feet and see just how fast I could crash out in some of the most scenic of places that America, Canada, Southern Europe and Scandinavia could offer.
(I’m wondering off again…) So holiday, do something not nothing - ah ha just the thing 5 days in Shropshire learning traditional timber framing. An opportunity to disconnect; Shropshire may as well be the Antarctic as far as O2 are concerned (other, better, network providers are available). An opportubity to “rest” by breaking from the portfolio work and instead spend 5 days turning a pile of French oak into a building. An opportunity to learn some new skills that speak directly to further work next year.
I’m already awake when the alarm sounds at 3:00AM in the morning, ahead of me lay 5 hours of driving accompanied by continous rain, Radio 6 and not an unsubstantial contribution to both Shell and Costa’s profits. I knew I was in the land of dragons when the mobile network disappeared somewhere south west of Birmingham and then even the GPS started to struggle.
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| Early start, long drive and that's before Skoda SatNav does it best to find the longest route |
Our host and tutor, Adam, is greeting us, making coffee as gradually the 7 people who make up the course attendees gather themselves together and go through that always slightly uncomfortable initial meeting ritual (name, in the trade or not, coffee or tea etc). Ours is a mix of ages, experience and ambitions - at this early stage you’d perhaps not guess what we will achieve by the end of the week.
And so we begin, I’ll not go through each day in detail - that would be a spoiler and with my verbose writing turn this into more a dissertation than a blog post. Our first day introduces us to a number of key concepts; the “face”, draw-pegging, just how hard oak is and that, whilst appealing, there’s a good reason why we’ll move to power tools when we can.
That first day was also our introduction to Adam’s wife, Rachel, who did her absolute best to ensure that we’d leave the course on Friday never needing to eat again. Each lunch she made us was of such proportions and good flavor that we were only able to manage a couple of slices of toast in the evenings.
On the conclusion of that first day we’d each managed to make a single, draw-pegged, mortise and tenon joint, eaten enough food to render the very idea of eating anything ever again simply unbelievable and given us an appreciation of very specific, and welcome, commercial emphasis Adam would be placing on the subject.
This, then, would be pragmatic framing, framing for the 21st century where people demand/want things quickly and where we all have bills to pay. We’d not be scribing each joint, thicknessing and planing each timber blank to precise dimensions and using modern products (Compraband for example) and methods as much as possible. That’s not to say this wasn’t about quality - it very much was (as evidenced by an impressive portfolio of work previously completed and Adam’s hawk like watching over those tentative, first cuts/chisels/drillings).
Our common goal over the course of the 5 days was to build a 3m by 3m (approx 9ft by 9ft) , single floored, pitched roof frame. The design of this building is (as Adam admitted!) somewhat over-engineered, featuring all the joints and additional features (bracing, jowl posts etc) required when building a house.
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| A house needs good foundations - the soul of the building |
We used a variety of tools to make the joints, cut and shape the timber. The most basic of these, as you’d expect where hammers and chisels (although of comedy dimensions; 1 1/4” is a precision chisel, 2 3/4” is a decent size and the hand-held circular saw has a 355mm blade with a 160mm depth of cut - this thing; Very Big Circular Saw).
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| Big Tool! |
It would be wrong to focus on the power tools or to see them as some kind of betrayal of the purity of the framing “religion” - what they do is introduce consistency, efficiency and in some cases they simply make things possible. Even the biggest circular saw, the most powerful chain mortice or fastest auger drill still absolutely cannot make the frame for you, make your marking more accurate or fix problems.
As the week progressed our proficiency did to, we got the impression we were ahead of schedule somewhat (and this with us a man down due to unfortunate separation of the relationship between engine and prop-shaft). As Wednesday ended we had the soul (I know, I know) plate down, the jowl and intermediate posts up and rails installed.
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| Braces and rails "sticked" and ready for assembly |
There was frequent head scratching, squinting, holding drawings up, turning them around etc but as the day closed we had them both marked out and some rough machining done.
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| Truss, purlins, rafters and inclement weather inbound |
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| Here's one we made earlier? sole plate to rafters in 4 days |
The Wrap
I could go on for ages, there’s so much I’ve not covered. I should absolutely mention that this was more than a course running 9 to 5. Adam and Rachel socialised with us in Adam’s very own pub. Rachel’s cooking was a highlight of every day. The surroundings in general and the yard with it’s orchard, pods, pigs, chickens and Benji added hugely to the experience.I cannot recommend the course highly enough. You will learn from this course, you will learn “commercial” framing practices and you will be inspired to take it further. I know that I personally have already been measuring up and solidifying some of my plans and will be getting to them once the portfolio work has ended this year.
Adam included a “field trip” to two sites where we saw his frames/work in-situ - again invaluable as it inevitably highlighted additional questions. We gained awareness of techniques such as leading, weep holes, comprabonding, glazing etc that again added immeasurably to the overall experience.
Adam's company is Oakheath and you can read more about their work, courses and see the range of frames they've worked on by visiting them at www.oakheath.co.uk
Credits
- Sound Effects
- Benji - labrador, paramour - most often head saying “pass the biscuit”
- Donkey(s) - they bray
- Hedgehog(s) - looking and sounding suspiciously like Tamworth pigs
- Director
- Adam - owner, tutor, barkeep - most often heard saying “mark the face”
- Producer
- Rachel - owner, spouse, the feeder - most often heard saying “Anyone for seconds?” with a knowing look on her face
- The Players
- Mark and Lee aka The Professionals
- JAB leaving the Marines and off to Idaho - our country will be the poorer when he leaves
- Jon (silent H). Did some work for V Festival but really doesn’t like to talk about it. His beard is bushier but mine is longer
- Jack RSPB national man of mystery, bird police, Tinder advocate and source of endless amusement over the course of the course
- Richard, probably spoke-shaving an entire oak tree into a beautifully finished brace before glass finishing the tenons. ETA on completed joint 2017
- Max, literally bled and sweated on and over the frame (owes Adam for two plasters and should not be trusted with a sharp chisel again)
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| Happy as a pig in... |
