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Tim is Carpenter Oak & Woodland’s managing director. Tim has extensive experience of managing companies of all sizes, in many business sectors, including construction and building. Tim’s no-nonsense hands-on approach, coupled with his outstanding management experience and commercial acumen, make him the ideal complement to the craft-based skills of the rest of the team.
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This is a great directory and likely to be an invaluable resource for people who are undertaking a project that incorporates an oak frame or indeed any post and beam timber frame construction. The directory is a list of practices across the UK with experience in this form of building. The use of large sections of green timber in a building does present some architectural challenges that not everyone is familiar with. We would certainly recommend using an architect with some knowledge or experience of oak framed homes. You can search by county or postcode and the site sensibly lists architects in adjacent counties as well so you should be able to find someone in your area. Of course we are always here to help you find the right architect for your project but this site is another addition to the ever growing resources available to anyone embarking on a new oak frame house project.
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I'm pleased to say that we have taken on an additional facility close to our Hall Farm yard at Chippenham. 'Westinghouse', as it's now known provides a 15,000 square feet covered facility which we will be using for our highly finished and larger engineered projects where the ability for 4 forklifts carrying 10m beams to waltz around each other will increase our capacity enormously.
I was on site yesterday, and it was a real delight to see the synchronised operation of 10 planers preparing rafters for a current project - although I know that highly skilled craftsmen don't quite share this passion!
Critically for us, although this facility was desperately needed for the extra space, what it does allow us to do is to divide our highly crafted and labour intensive projects from those requiring efficiency and that extra cost advantage that every QS is looking for.
Recession, what recession?!
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I've just been reminded that I haven't written any blogs recently - so here goes.
Just before Christmas I was expressing my concerns over the state of the economy and our industry in particular. 2009 has indeed heralded a lot of turmoil and uncertainty, and I guess to a large extent many of us are still watching and waiting to see how things will pan out. (For what it's worth I'm still convinced that things will get very much worse, and that we still seem to be very much in denial. And surely I can't be the only one thinking that having got into this mess by huge swathes of the population borrowing more than they could afford, the obvious solution is to encourage us all to borrow more????? Are they serious????).
Allegorically, the flow of CV's into us demonstrates just how hard people are finding things, and a lack of work is being widely reported. But this is where we can afford ourselves a wry if tentative smile. We have never been busier! Our Scottish yard is nearing full capacity for the year, and the English yards have fuller order books than I can ever remember. In addition, we are only choosing to price one tenth of the timber engineering enquiries that come into us.
So are we exempt from the problems? Well obviously not, but what we are seeing is that the construction slump is providing opportunities to many (lower contractors prices, increased availability of land etc), and that we are being trusted as a known and reputable safe pair of hands. Having expected these problems, we were able to build cash reserves, and these are now standing us in good stead and allowing us to continue in our quality and training programmes - one of the key factors that differentiates us from others. It also gives us the stability that provides the safe home for our customer's cherished projects.
In a year's time where will any of us be? I've honestly no idea, but for now the future, against all odds, looks surprisingly bright. In the meantime our greatest defence is to continue to strive to be the best that there is. There can be no better qualification for survival?
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I frequently find myself reflecting on the fact that there is such a clear and compelling case for building in timber, and that post and beam construction has so many advantages, but the forestry industry in Britain just doesn't support it.
Don't get me wrong, I like the Forestry Commission. I like their cycle tracks through forests and their maintenance of areas such as the New Forest. But what I do find disappointing is that as a supplier of timber to this industry, it just doesn't happen. It's not just that we often struggle to find a contact to source timber for one of their own projects, as reasonably specified. It's that there is no sign of them responding to the obvious demands for building materials in this country - at least not that we, or our British sawmills can see.
The French do this really well - oak is a commercially grown crop there, and organised harvesting and replanting is commonplace. Is it any wonder then that British oak is so expensive and difficult to find, but that it's readily available from the other side of the channel?
OK, so I'm ranting. But if we, as a commercial organisation (albeit one with a strong conscience) can operate net replanting schemes which won't benefit us financially, isn't it reasonable to ask others who operate with public money to have a serious look at this problem?
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We were looking at a frame last week (not one of ours I hasten to add), where a considerable number of posts and studs had twisted, and we got to discussing why this was.
Trees are both geotropic and phototropic - that is, they generally grow straight down by default, but also grow to the light. While this might imply that the obvious way for a tree to grow is straight up, and that therefore the grain in it should be straight, in reality this is rarely true.
To a greater or lesser extent, all trees have tension built in. As soon as we cut a tree down, the tension will try to dissipate. This means that spiralled grain will try to straighten out, causing twisting along its length. (It is this same principle that makes boards of timber distort and cup - the rings are effectively straightening out with nothing restrain it.) None of this affects the structural strength of the timber, but can, of course look unsightly.
For the purposes of timber framing, our specification does not allow for markedly sloping or spiralling grain, so problematic pieces will be rejected. However, even a small twist can become relevant over a long period, so that a beam of good quality which is perfectly square when it comes off the sawmill, is unlikely to be perfectly square by the time the joints are cut in it.
This twisting effect is why we use the manufacturing methods that we do. We physically lay out the timbers and mark them up in relation to the others so we can take this movement into account, rather than assume the whole beam is square and take the edges or centres at the separate end as datum points.
So, like shrinkage, which we seem so keen to keep talking about, twisting shouldn't be an issue provided that the milling process and the manufacturing process take it into account.
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