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Andy joined Carpenter Oak & Woodland in 2005, to help the company provide a greater focus on customer service, marketing and sales. Andy’s background is varied indeed – helping him to bring a wide range of skills to the team. An avid lover of carpentry, Andy has also spent time in furniture restoration and conservation – something he still enjoys as a hobby.
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Arched braced trusses are probably one of the most majestic forms of truss and we get asked to incorporate them into timber frames on a fairly regular basis. Interestingly this presents frame design and timber engineering challenges that aren’t well understood by many people. The arched brace truss was traditionally designed to be buttressed on each side either by timber aisles or by very thick masonry walls, which in turn were often buttressed. Why? Well, from an engineering perspective the bracing is tucked right into the intersections of the posts and principle rafters and provides very poor triangulation for the forces in the frame. This makes them prone to spreading and in some period buildings there are signs that they have failed to some degree.
Having said this I wouldn’t want to put anyone off them as a style of frame. Obviously if the building is wide enough then aisles can be incorporated down either side and properly engineered these are likely to provide sufficient buttressing in their own right. In addition it’s possible to incorporate some hidden stainless steel reinforcement to ensure the frame doesn’t spread in the next few hundred years!
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