Artist Studio Cordwood Workshop Pictures

Finally, I've got some PCEI Artist Studio Cordwood Infill workshop pictures online!

The Cordwood workshop was an unqualified success that exceeded many of our expectations.

There was a great deal of preparation work that was done prior to the workshop. Most of this preparation involved peeling cedar logs, squarely bucking them into 8" long pieces of cordwood with a chainsaw, and generating coarse-grained sawdust.







On the day of the workshop, we met on the deck of the Perrine house and had some quick coffee and breakfast and everybody introduced themselves.



Then we piled into a bus and went to Peter's house to get a closer look at his timber-framed and cordwood infilled sauna.



















We also demonstrated how to mark and buck up cedar logs into 8" rounds while simultaneously generating coarse-grained sawdust.









Then it was off to the Timber Frame. Here, Peter explains how to cleanup the ends of the cordwood rounds using a coarse rasp.



A lot of folks spent some time cleaning up cordwood, including the kids!





















Down the hill, we had a recipe for our special mortar mix nailed to the shed post.



Mixing mortar was one of the day's most laborious and dirty jobs. Every wheelbarrow full of mortar had to be pushed uphill to the studio.













Here is the soaking wet sawdust we used in our mortar mixture to retard and even out the drying process:



Peter demonstrated how to lay two lines of mortar and span it with cordwood to get folks started.





We had some quick learners and very, hard workers!!


















































The workshop participants were really amazing. Many stayed much, much later than we had anticipated, and some even returned well past midnight to perform some crucial late-night tuck pointing.

The final result was absolutely stunning:



The 3' high cordwood "wainscotting" on three sides of the structure, capped with cedar trim boards is absolutely gorgeous. While covering part of the base of the timbers, it also accentuates the timber frame and gives some sense to the final overall scale of the building.

A Video about the Cordwood Infill Workshop

Here is an excellent video about our recent Cordwood Infill workshop here at PCEI:



I've got pictures and information about the cordwood construction process and workshop coming soon...

A Video about Raising Day

Marsha Kay Schoeffler, a local videographer and documentary producer with Marsha Que Sera Productions made an excellent short film about the Timber Frame raising for the PCEI Artist Studio.

Check it out!



Watching this video makes me excited to do another frame raising very soon!

Raising Day!!

Raising Day was an enormous success! Great weather, timbers, food, and drink. Everything went really, really well.

Pictures will tell the story better than words will:

Moving the finished timbers to the job site!

The frame is 100% finished!

The timber frame is complete, chamfered, sanded, organized and stacked in the workshop. We decided to move the timbers to the job site the day before the raising to minimize the timber's exposure to the elements prior to raising the frame.



We fit the whole frame onto my 5'x14' trailer. The weight of the frame was almost more than my poor battered utility trailer could withstand. It was very cool seeing a nice, complete, stacked set of timbers on the trailer...ready for transport to the site.



Me above the frame:



And Peter:



I could not quite get the frame to the job site up the steep and damp hill in one load. It was quite a bit of work to move the timbers into place.

Once the timbers were stacked and organized on site, we finished placing the cedar floor joists and cutting and securing the subfloor on the deck.



Meanwhile, Lisa applied a coat of LandArk penetrating oil to the joinery and endgrain of the timbers:







When everything was in place and ready for the frame raising, we placed a massive blue tarp over the whole thing to keep the timbers protected from direct sun and rain.



Everything is in place for raising day. Now, its just a matter of getting the tools on site and having fun on raising day!

Brace curves are cut!

Earlier in the year, we bartered some elm and cherry for access to Chris Caudill's deluxe bandsaw. Chris is a local amateur woodworker, and we appreciate his help.

We used his bandsaw to cut curves into all of the knee braces. They turned out great!





Its good to see the knee braces completely finished. The lighter colored braces came from an elm tree that grew at PCEI. The darker braces came from elm in East City Park. All of these elm died from disease.

They will look stunning and live on in the PCEI Artists' studio!

Preparing the floor system

In preparation for the frame raising, we decided to focus on finishing the floor system for the studio. The first step was to brush and paint the foundation steel. It turned out looking great. Two coats of Rustoleum should help preserve this metal, even though it will not be directly exposed to the elements.



I used a natural tone stain on the sill plate timbers. These timbers will bare the brunt of exposure to the elements, mainly water. We decided to really coat these timbers with a liberal amount of protecting stain in an effort to preserve them better. These timbers will need periodic maintenance over the years.

The stain darkened the wood somewhat, but they look very good. We decided to leave the sill plate timbers rough-cut (not planed and sanded). The salvaged piece of Douglas Fir turned out looking very rich and dark.





After setting the timbers onto the piers, we found that the sill plates were essentially perfectly square! I guess it really pays to test fit in the workshop!



We drilled holes through the timbers and through the metal. Into these holes we placed 1/2" anchor bolts. The J portion of the anchor bolts rests on top, and we chiseled a small groove to recess the top end of the J-bolt. This allows us to tighten the nut on the bottom.

Here is Peter drilling holes in the timber.



The sill plates look pretty good once they are all put together:



We hung 2x8 cedar floor joists between the larger sill plate timbers. We used cedar due to city code: all floor joists on a pier foundation must be at least 18" from grade...unless you use treated joist lumber or naturally rot-resistant joist lumber (then they have to be at least 12" from grade).

The city ran the span numbers and found that Western Red Cedar would work on this span, assuming we used a 3/4" plywood subfloor. We went that route.



The joists were hung in such a way that the plywood will sit perfectly flush with the tops of the sill plate timbers. We need to special order an additional 2 cedar 2x8 joists to finish the floor system, which will happen prior to raising day!



Less than 5 days until raising day. I think we're going to make it!