Scott Fotheringham

Scott is our Timber Engineering Manger. He joined Carpenter Oak & Woodland in 2004 primarily because of his love of working with wood, and having managed both our framing yards, he took up the challenge of developing our rapidly growing Timber Engineering business in 2006. Scott, (being much older than he actualy looks!) has many years experience in the construction industry as a Quantity Surveyor and Contracts Manager, and brings us a great depth of knowledge from having managed a number of different construction businesses.

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Previous posts

• Revised Part L
• Engineered timber
• Past project revisited
• Directory of Oak Frame Architects
• Whisky brings warmth to timber framed homes

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By Scott Fotheringham

I’ve just been asked to explain my earlier post, and why should the change incur more cost?

The explanation requires a knowledge of processing. Timber used in glulam will have knots and imperfections in it. All trees have branches. In order to pass a C24 grade the knots etc will be of a certain size, edge spacing etc etc. The bigger ones are cut out, and the timber either side of the knot or imperfection is finger jointed and glued back together. In order to achieve the higher C28 grade, the automatic grading machine is adjusted, and the timber run through again removing further knots or other imperfections that previously passed the C24 but failed the C28 grading. The result is more cutting and gluing and a higher waste of timber. But also to be taken into consideration is shutting down the automated production line while the adjustments are made to the grading settings, then running the small batch of timber, then shutting the line down again while the grading settings are adjusted back to normal. The question was asked couldn’t the special run be done at night? The production line turns out 60 metres of timber per minute running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. To shut the production line down for an hour for this special run, has huge cost implications, the sale of 3,600 metres of timber is about £2,500!

I’ll try and explain myself better in the future!!!!!