 Hi, I'm Thomas Logatel. I've lived in Winnowsky for about six years. And just to pass the time I started doing some woodworking. And I made a few things out of fallen trees. And I got sort of done with that after I made a whole bunch of picnic tables and benches and stuff that are up in Gilbrook Nature Area. And I was offered a space that we're in right now to continue doing this kind of work with found materials. And I started off in here doing that. I made another table and some benches. And pretty much when I got done with that at the same time I was working on that and getting it finished up, I came across a building on East Allen Street in Winnowsky across from the community college. And I saw that they were tearing it down. And I knew it was an old building and I was looking at them tear it down. They tore it down in November and December of last year. So I went in there and introduced myself and saw what they were doing. And I noticed that the material that was coming out of the house was really interesting to me because it's along the same sort of lines of the work that I've been doing, which is hand-hewing timbers. And I saw that there were a lot of hand-hewn timbers getting piled up down there. And I went by a couple of times and I asked the guys that were working doing the job, can I have a few of these scraps? And what I mean by scraps are pieces like this. And that's what it amounted to at first. It was about a pick-up load of all different size pieces. None of the big stuff, just a pick-up load's worth. And then about a week later when the house was completely gone at this point and there was a huge stack of these kind of timbers, the big ones that were actual structure of the house. And Nate DeGesse, who owns EVI Engineers, I think the name of the company is, but he's a developer and he's built a lot of nice buildings in Manuski. He was the man who his company had bought the house to tear it down and build a department building there or whatever. So I got introduced to him and he's sort of a woodworker and he's a sort of a collector of this stuff too. So he has torn down some stuff. He actually moved an entire house from across the street of this house he just tore down. There was a house there that he moved to Burlington, old house, nice house. And I knew about that but I didn't know him. And he told me that he had moved that and he's got a warehouse full of old timbers and I just thought that was really cool. And so he offered to me all of the timbers that came out of the house, virtually all of them except for, I don't know how many, the ones that got away. But I ended up with all of them basically and that amounted to, you know, close to 30 timbers all anywhere from 12 feet to 28 feet long and some shorter ones too. But they were all the structure of the old house. They had been hand-hewn by carpenters back in the 1840s is when this house was built. He also offered to bring them down on this big trailer. So he brought them all down. It was a pretty good size load and I stacked them up over there last December and I covered them with a tarp and said okay, that's great. And then as I was finishing up and doing other things in here, I just came up with the idea of like, hey, why not just redo them into a new old timber structure. I did an inventory of what I had and I kind of thumbnailed an idea of what I could make and it was all based on the timbers that I had to work with. So I looked at them all and I saw which were the good ones, which were the not so good ones, which would work for beams, which would work for posts. And I said, well, I know I got two 24 foot walls. So I made those two things first. Once I got with the 24 foot beams done, then I said, well, how wide can I make it? It's 24 foot long. How wide can I make it? So I went back out to the pile and I looked at it and I looked at it and I studied it and took measurements and said, well, I've got two really nice pieces that are going to work really well for the beams. This is one of them. And the other one is up on the stack. So now I've already made the 120 foot section. And this is the last section. It's the last 20 footer. And I'll be done with it fairly soon. So I will have all four of the walls, posts and wind braces all done, as well as the roof structure element of the whole frame will is also done. So the whole thing is going to be the skeleton and completely done. The last piece I have to work on is this ridge beam. Can you can you talk a little bit about how you found this piece? This ridge beam was floating next to the shore of Lake Champlain, right down by the barge canal. And I saw it one day. It was right after the flood. So the water was really high. This probably broke loose from somewhere where it wasn't really floating. It was stuck. It was either stuck to a structure or it was just stuck on some rocks. And it just stayed there. But when the lake level rose that three feet or so, it rose quite a bit during that flood in June. It floated away. And so hey, it ended up right on the bike path next to the barge canal. It's like, wow, this thing is like a gift. Yeah. So I put it up on the shore. I managed to get it myself just by lifting one end at a time, very slowly moving it inch by inch. And I got it set up nice and stable on some rocks that I kind of put in place for it to sit kind of flat and straight. So it sat there flat and straight out of the water. Must have been really heavy. It was really heavy then. So I just didn't really know what I was going to do with it or if I'd ever do anything with it. I left it there. It was set up at bench height so somebody could go down and sit on it if they wanted to because I'm the bench guy. But it sat there until August. This is sat there until September or even October. And then I got done with almost all the rest of the timber frame. And the whole time I was puzzling, what am I going to do for the ridge beam? It's a 24 foot long building. I really need a 24 foot long ridge beam. So, you know, I had been going down, up and down the bike path a bunch of times, looking at that thing and saying, oh, that thing. I'll use that for something someday. But then it clicked. Like, this is going to be the ridge beam. So then I started thinking, how am I going to get it out of here? I threw a few things against the wall and I finally came up. Well, it's up to me to do it. No one's really going to help me do this and it's too much of a hassle to find somebody can. So I came up with this idea of putting it on a trailer and hauling it behind my electric tricycle. I went down there with two buddies of mine who have been helping me move some of this bigger stuff occasionally. I asked them if they'd helped me and they were pretty psyched about it. So we went down there and bang bang boom. Thing was on my trailer in less than a half an hour. And then I started coming back to Wanooski. Your trailer was hooked onto your bike. I made my trailer into like two pieces. One at the back and one at the front of this. So part of the trailer, my cart's right over there. That's what I used. Say something about these saw horses, where they came from. These saw horses came from St. Peter's Church on Barlow. Is St. Peter's the right one? I think so. What on Barlow? St. Stephen's. St. Stephen's St. Stephen's Church, the old marble church that's on Barlow. It's pretty well known. So I was driving by there. I was driving by there one day. I saw the door wide open. Saw a U-Haul truck out front and I saw them taking pews out. There must have been 60 pews in there. Big, long 16-footers. So I saw those and I went up to the door. It was open and I asked what was going on and they told me we're taking the pews. Okay, yeah, I guess I knew that. But then I said, wow, what about all the other stuff? And it turns out these one by six oak pieces used to be part of the kneelers that went behind the pews. They fold up. I don't know. People know about them, I'm sure. They fold up behind the pews and then they fold down for when you got a kneel. So they didn't want those because there really wasn't much usable wood there. It was all pretty much short pieces. You could see them back there. They're not even four feet long the pieces they made those out of. So they were happy to part with those. And I said, I'll take them all. As soon as I got these timbers, I knew what they were going to be used for. So I made 14 of these saw horses. They've been the whole thing that's made this possible. I got all my saw horses made and then I just started putting the pieces up as I needed them. So each frame was up on saw horses while I made all the joints to fit them together. And now that I'm done making all the joints, I'm getting them stacked up on the saw horses, the heavy pieces, the beams up on the saw horses so I can keep them up high. So when it comes time to move them again, it'll be a lot easier than having to pick them up off the floor. Well, you know, because these timbers were used in a post-in beam, sort of a timber frame, but not a true timber frame, more or less a post-in beam, they used these notches called mortises everywhere. Every single one of these posts and beams that I have had these in them. And there was no way I could work around them. So occasionally, I'd come up to a spot where like this one, where there's just, you have to have wood there. So I fitted and glued what I call Dutchmen into the mortises where I needed them. And there's a bunch of them, especially wherever there's a joint and there's like a place where there was an old mortise. I had to put something in there to make it strong enough. Strong enough. I didn't want to take a chance. Okay, so I've got my lines now and what I'm making now is called a stop cut. And I'm bringing the saw down to my layout line that's going this way. So I've got a line here and I've got a line here. I want to get the saw blade just touching that line on each side. Then I have my stop cut, which gives me the depth. Okay, that's sitting flat and it's right on the line. Because sometimes the grain will dive into the board or it will rise up and then that will cause you problems if you're not paying attention. So you're going into the long grain like you would splitting a log and that is so it's weakest. That's the way it's the weakest. So it just splits off really easily and you can take a lot off at a time. Wow. So then you gotta get down there and if the grain is going nicely you can pretty much not worry too much. And before I get going too far, I like to set my chisel right on my layout line, which will give me a nice mark I won't lose. So now that darn well just about got it. All my lines are looking good. Because I like to have things just so I never make sure that it's fairly flat and it's still a little high in the middle. See how it's rocking? Yeah. That's typically what will happen. It'll be high in the center where the pith is. And this is really nice grain. It's actually there because this has got a dip in it right there. So I need about a can't go wrong with a four and a quarter inch deep. Okay. Looks fairly deep. Always leave the line. So now I'm going to drill. This is a one and a half inch drill bit. It's a two-inch mortise. Kind of hard to screw up. If you tried to use a two-inch drill bit, you could wander off and then you would make it too big. So once you get a section of it established square the way you like it. And it also matters how this is sitting. This is real crooked. You got to make kind of take an account for that. But this is sitting flat level. So a plum cut in this way will be square to the surface. So you just line the chisel up and keep it square to the surface and you follow it down. And you know, I got a lot of respect for the guys who did this back in the day because I know they did it quickly and it's amazing how accurate they were too. Even with the same kind of, you know, nothing square, nothing straight or anything. They got what they needed straight for their reference marks and their critical dimensions and the rest of it was, well, yeah, so what? It's a little bumpy. It's a little crooked. No big deal. And that's what I'm doing too. You don't want, you want to get these mortises to fit as tightly as you can but not so tight that it's really hard to get the pieces together. And in my case, since I'm doing it all by myself, I'm going a little bit looser than maybe what normally would be acceptable. But when you get it all clamped up in the right orientation, square, straight, and flat, then you drill your holes and it's going to hold it there. And when I go to assemble this thing, I'm going to use glue in the mortises because the wood is so dry that it'll suck up that glue and it'll solidify it. I'm not talking carpenter's glue. I'm talking construction adhesive, like super heavy duty, polyurethane, high tech adhesive. And it actually expands when it dries. So any gaps you get in there are going to be completely filled. Once you establish a space for the wood to break off into, it goes a lot quicker. It's a principle of woodworking and metal machining too, that you have to keep clearances around your tools. Otherwise they're just going to go in and just burn up or, you know, you've got to clear the chips. So now that I'm getting down a little deeper, I'm paying attention to how square the chisel looks to the face of the wood. And it just becomes a matter of training your eye. This chisel is the same size as the mortise I'm making. You know, there's the depth I'm going to, so I'm almost there. This side has more to go, but it's getting close. All right, so there we go. Someone's squared off area right there. There's the depth I'm going to, so I'm almost there. I go through this whole reorganization where I got to move things around and they're all heavy. So I make sure when I move them, I don't have to move them again. And so I'm at this point now, all of the mortise and tenon work and everything else, the joinery is done on all of the pieces. So these are going to stay here for quite some time. What's next? What's next is to move this heavy beam, this is the heaviest one of them all, and get it sitting next to that beam on top of the other beam. So those four beams are the four major beams. These, yeah. Those four. And along with the ridge beam, that's all the rest are posts and wooden braces. What I got to do is lift this up to here. This is the center of the beam here. Once I get this in contact with that, then I'm pretty much there. So it's starting to get lighter and lighter down here because we've got that buzzer there. There we go. There it is. Let's see how you line it. Almost. Where this end is, flat to flat. It just sits by itself, but watch what we're going to see. See how easy it is to tip? That's a 250-pound beam and you can move it with your pinky. And if it wanted to go, it would go right over. Because of the amount of twist and non-flatness, you do have to shim it up to get it to work. So I need two or two inches, two and an eighth, and I remember. It's going to go, but it's not going to go easy. I'm telling you. It looks like it's touching. There are other things I got to do, like get all the rafters for it, and I would love nothing else than to have all antique lumber to do the rafters too, but I don't know if that's going to happen. But in lieu of that, I'm going to get rough cut native lumber. The full width, full thickness lumber, similar to the rough cut lumber that came out of the piece of rough cut lumber right here. That came out of the original house. It was 180 years old. It came off the mill just like that, and that's the way I'm leaving everything. The way they hand-hewed it, the way it came off the mill, all the old timbers have all the markings, ax marks, chisel marks, saw marks, all of it intact. It's a great project. I did not do anything to surface anything, to make things flat, straight, square, anything. I just said, this is the way it's going to look. I don't care what I got to do to get this to go together square and true, I'm just going to do it. Which made a headache out of it, but a headache that I really enjoyed. It's a great project.