AROUND THE FARM

Barn fun
I have always had an appreciation for old barns and how they were built. Recently we came across an 1890s timber frame barn that was in prime condition to be disassembled. You know, not good enough to keep but too good for the match (to burn down). I decided this barn would be a fun project for me to work on. Call it my mid life Corvette if you will. I met up with Mike, a timber framer familiar with what I was getting into, and was able to get the information and help needed to get started. We started on the inside of the barn by removing the oat storage and the loft that created the shop space and collect-all area. We uncovered a few interesting finds such as left over WWII army green paint, chicken crates and dust by the shovelfuls. Once emptied, we started removing the tin roof and the shake shingles. For the shingle removal, I hired roofers who were better and more sure footed than us earth loving sod busters. We saved as many roof boards as we could and all the rafters came off as 26 foot 2x6s, with only 5 of them breaking apart.

Once the roof was off the guys and I started removing the barn’s siding. The pine siding was pretty easy to take down because as I mentioned earlier, it was rotted and ready to come down. After the frame was exposed, every beam was labeled as either girts, bents, bays, collar ties, wall posts, queen posts and braces. Being in the tree business I put my trusty tree labeling machine to work giving each beam a name, location and number. Confidently labeled and stripped of all it coverings, Mike the timber framer and friends slowly took the barn’s frame down. It was fun to pound out the hand carved wooded pegs that held the frame together. I think we only drilled out 2 or 3 stubborn ones. The pegs themselves were not perfectly round but rather looked like whittled pegs with one pointed end. We kept them all. My favorite pegs are the ones that look like a bent arrow where the tendon had pulled on them for so long. We used our delivery truck and forklift to haul the pieces home. Old German timber framer marks indicating where the timbers should go when it was originally built were also fun to decipher.

There was a main floor beam that I thought was not too good because of a huge bow in it. The wall underneath this beam was gone and the beam was bent down 10 inches due to the weight of the barn above. What do you know? After all those years under load, it still righted itself. The beam was a 35 feet long and 8” by 10” and fun to bring home on our 20 foot flat rack truck. The timbers were in pretty good shape except the north wall which was shaded by trees and never dried out. The two queen posts (the tallest vertical posts) from this wall were rotten a quarter of the way through and will be replaced with the floor beam I mentioned earlier.

Once we got everything back to the farm, we cleaned the beams up a little bit, then treated them for powder post beetles. We also needed a few parts so we found another barn that was in similar tear-down condition and took it down for parts. We were not as careful on the second barn but still managed to get a lot of wood. All told I would estimate we brought home 20,000 board feet. This summer (2010) in our few spare moments we will be pouring a foundation to start putting the barn back up here on the farm. Stop by sometime if you’d like to see the barn in progress.

– Paul