On a recent weekend I visited 21 sites in New York from Friday night until Sunday evening. I was touring with some west coast-based members of our timber framing team. The goal is sharing, connecting, and learning from recent and ongoing projects as well as some from our long past. I think I’ll write more about this trip in an upcoming post, as we were all deeply affected, with a Friday night ride on the Buffalo Heritage Carousel and ending with an acapella performance at Christ Church in Rochester and touring the Baroque period organ project there.
The tour left us all pretty stunned. Even for me, who had been part of these projects. Seeing it all together like this was magic, if a bit overwhelming.
Towards the end of Sunday, we were at our longtime clients Tom and Karen’s place in the Finger Lakes when Tom said, “Hey our neighbor Larry stopped by and when he heard you were coming was adamant you guys visit him as well.” Wow, a total warm wind of memory whipped right through. Larry H. We built for him in 1988. And when his name comes up, so do the stories…
We were very young, in years and frankly experience. Towards the end of a home show, Larry comes up to our booth and says, “Hey, I want to build a hexagonal house.” Well sure, we can do that. “And it needs to be 40 feet across.” Sure, we can do that. “And I don’t want ANY posts inside the perimeter.” Uh, Sure, we can…do that. “And I want to send a round stone chimney out through a hole in the middle of the hexagon so we can’t come together in the middle with the timbers.” Well, I THINK we can do that. When would you like to get together? “How about tomorrow morning at 8? See you then.” As he turned and walked away, we looked at each other and asked, “Can we do that?”
I need to say up front that I admire and respect our highly engineered approach to timber framing that defines us today. Coupled with creativity and history, good engineering by our trained professionals helps us meet the codes, and sleep well at night. This, however, was a different time. Those were the cowboy years of the timber framing we know today. Those were heady times.
We first decided that 6 “half trusses”, or right-angle triangles would be the start, defining the 6 hips that make the hexagonal roof. We now had to connect them as we couldn’t end in the very center or add support with terminal posts. We settled on an upside-down bowl as the working vision. The math implied an extraordinary amount of outward thrust on each of the six trusses. At that time, we prided ourselves on frames with no metal. I mean none. And we were working with fresh sawn oak, which was going to shrink and twist a bit. How to handle this wood in tension, which unlike steel is not known for this.
The “bowl” was defined by two rings, one on top connecting the six rafters, one across at the height of the wall-tops, connecting the six half-truss bottom chords. The top ring is in compression, a pretty easy lift for wood, and for oak. The lower ring, however, is in tension, and that was the rub. Wood pegs would simply not do. Our solution, then, was to send each of the 6 horizontal beams in towards the center and hold them there with a series of dovetailed ring-members, which we called “chocks." Like those you’d put behind your truck tires on a steep hill. In this way, we actually used compression to stop the outward pressure that was pulling at those chords.
It was a crazy idea. Somehow, we knew it would work. Marc reminded me that we knew it WAS working when, as we tightened each of the triangles with straps and come-alongs, the temporary support would suddenly, and softly, fall away. I remember it well, now. It was just a bit disconcerting, to be honest. We felt like that famous Roman engineer who, as the temporary bridge supports were dismantled, stood so confidently under his new, untested span.
Thirty-three years ago. Visiting Larry and his family today left us, well, giddy. For Larry too. How cool to stop by such a project, with such an unforgettable character for a client, be welcomed, nourished with a glass of wine, and remanded with stories and cheer. A house shaped like this is certainly not typical, but it fits Larry’s playfulness just fine. And it still takes away my breath, appreciating our many years, including this one.
