The Concept

     I have always been fascinated with the thought of building a structure the way I enviosioned the Amish would have done it. When talking to a co-worker about building a structure to house tools and the tractor I brought up timberframing and it so happened that he had actually been a contractor and had built timberframe homes for a company in his past in the northeast. This encouraged me to look into it more and I found a contractor in my area who built beautiful timberframe homes but since I am only looking to build a small cottage I found that it was pretty much cost prohibitive. This lead me to find out more so I purchased several books online and began reading and re-reading. The four books I purchased were A Timber Framers Workshop, Timber Frame Construction, The Craft of Modular Post and Beam, and Building the Timber Frame House. All of these books are good and I would recommend each one of them. They each have designs, tool description, joint placement along with alot more and each has it's different perspective.
      I became fascinated with the idea expecially since one of the authors had built his home before he even owned the land. I decided that I didn't have the skills to build a timberframe home so maybe a barn was in order. I poured through websites and found several very informative forums. One of the best was the Timberframers Guild. I believe this is where I got the suggestion to start small. Very small like sawhorses. There were some plans using 6x6's so I decided to jump in. First I needed tools. Many of the books have list of necessary tools and wish list tools so I began to spend some money. I also needed some wood. I had no idea where to buy wood in Florida so I began calling around. Boy did I have alot to learn about wood and sawmills. Apparantly many of the small sawmills have shut down due to the economy but I did find one about 3 hrs form my home. After much thought about different types of wood I decided to purchase two cypress and two southern yellow pine 6x6's and make a sawhorse out of each. I wanted to start with green wood but somehow ended up with kiln dried so I decided to make the best of it and get started. Pictured above is the design I got off of the Timberframers Guild website and and below is the finished southern yellow pine sawhorse. 

After completing the two sawhorses and getting the idea of the characteristics of both types of wood I found I had some wood left over which lead me to start considering the type of joints I would need to cut and could I actually make this work. I had considered several designs but due to logistics, moving timbers, storage etc, I ended up deciding on the Shaker garden toolshed design which I found in a book titled Timber Frame Construction by Jack Sobon and Roger Schroeder. My garage is limited in length so I also had to plan on more joints due to the maximum length beam I can carry in the back of my truck is a little over twelve ft. After the design was determined I decided on trying a joint called Edge Halved Scarf with Bridled Butts. This would enable me to use one top plate and one sill per 10' bay with the joint at supported at the post, instead of a continuous top plate or sill which would have been too long. Below is a pic of my experiment on my sawhorses and I also included the joint for the rafter to sit into the top plate.