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" A timber-frame home is a celebration of wood on a massive scale. Tall posts grow from the floor and connect overhead in a soaring network of beams, rafters and braces joined with glovelike precision. And the entire structure \u2014 which can last for centuries \u2014 remains exposed as evidence of the craftsman&amp;#039;s skill. But when Don Jackson and his wife, Nita, built the Bradford, N.H., home where they&amp;#039;ve lived since 2003, the building style&amp;#039;s distinctive open spaces were the main attraction. &amp;quot;In our old home, you&amp;#039;d walk through doors from room to room. In a timber frame, it&amp;#039;s just open,&amp;quot; Jackson says. &amp;quot;When you walk in from the front porch, you look straight up 26 ft. It&amp;#039;s like bringing the vastness of the outside indoors.&amp;quot; Today, timber-frame construction, like the project in Ludlow, Vt., shown on these pages, is a relatively high-end option. It lets homebuilders create something more distinctive than conventional platform framing with 2 x 4s and other dimensional lumber. But timber framing existed for millennia as a basic engineering method. &amp;quot;Thousands of years ago, people in China used stone tools to make the beams and purlins, and chisel out mortise-and-tenon joints,&amp;quot; says John S. Miller, a longtime timber framer and the operations head of The Cascade Joinery, a firm in Bellingham, Wash., that designs and builds timber-frame homes. The world&amp;#039;s oldest wooden structures, found on the grounds of Japan&amp;#039;s seventh century Horyu Buddhist temple, were built using timber-framing techniques. In the United States, timber framing was common until the late 1800s. Then, industrial innovation and the need to house a growing population helped push this way of building aside. Sawmills started producing dimensional lumber, which was much easier to transport, cut and erect than large posts and beams. Carpenters found they could use cheap, factory-made nails to assemble these &amp;quot;sticks&amp;quot; into structures in which the walls \u2014 rather than a heavy frame \u2014 supported the weight of the building. Known as balloon framing, the technique required much less skill and time than working with enormous timbers. Though stick framing remains the dominant method of homebuilding in the United States, timber framing began a comeback in the 1970s. &amp;quot;People were attracted to the handcrafted quality of timber framing,&amp;quot; says Marty Birkenkamp, the design manager at Michigan&amp;#039;s Riverbend Timber Framing. The company, which has put up nearly 3000 timber-frame houses since 1979, is one of several hundred firms in the States that design and construct these homes. The difference between today&amp;#039;s timber framing and the way it was done 30 years ago comes down to computer aided design (CAD) and computer numerical control (CNC) manufacturing. These tools enable builders to create designs and move to production quickly. One builder, Tedd Benson of Bensonwood Homes, has gone further by creating a components library of hundreds of predesigned elements, allowing homeowners to get a near-custom design. At Bensonwood, as with most of the firm&amp;#039;s competitors, a home&amp;#039;s entire frame is cut in a factory. The most popular wood is Douglas fir, but builders also use Sitka spruce and other woods. The pieces are assembled to make sure everything fits, then separated and shipped to the home site, along with the structural insulated panels (SIPs) that form the walls. Once the pieces arrive, the typical house goes up in lightning time, often in just a few days. But timber framing generally costs more than stick framing, with prices ranging from $150 to $325 per square foot \u2014 or at least $375,000 for a 2500-sq.-ft. house. For a growing number of homeowners, the added price is worth it. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not cheap,&amp;quot; says Jeff Champgana, who moved into his timber-frame home in Coal Valley, Ill., last June. &amp;quot;But timber framing has inherent strength and beauty, if you find beauty in joinery and how the components are put together. It&amp;#039;s a craft as well as a lifestyle. And I appreciate that.&amp;quot; Step 1: Anatomy of a Timber Frame  The timber-frame difference comes from massive wooden components joined in a cathedral-like framework that requires no interior load-bearing walls. Girts, plates and purlins tie the posts and rafters together, while diagonal knee braces add rigidity. Factory-built structural insulated panels (SIPs) are roof, walls, insulation and window framing all in one.  Step 2: The Factory  Inside the plant of Bensonwood Homes, a timber-frame company in Walpole, N.H., an assembly line of posts and beams awaits final details before shipment and on-site assembly. While each part is cut to exact size and joints are shaped on computer numerical control (CNC) machinery, some things are easier to handle the old-fashioned way \u2014 with a mallet and chisel. Step 3: The Factory  Details such as stopped bevels and chamfers enhance the handcrafted look of a modern timber-frame home. Step 4: The Job Site  Workers assemble a frame out of the factory-shaped timbers on-site. The mortise-and-tenon joints are secured with wooden pegs in the traditional way \u2014 by boring holes and pounding the pegs in \u2014 but using decidedly modern instruments: a heavy-duty electric drill and a dead-blow mallet. Accurate machining produces joints to within 132 in. that generally slip together with a light tapping. If necessary, larger pieces are pulled together with a ratchet puller, commonly called a come-along.  Step 5: The Frame  In the past, barn raisings were a community event \u2014 mostly because many people, or many people&amp;#039;s animals, were needed to lift the heavy frames, also called bents, from the assembly floor. Today, a hydraulic crane hoists each frame while workers guide the structure gently into place. Step 6: The Frame  &amp;quot;Today, we can put 40 or 50 prefab subassemblies together on a construction site, instead of 40,000 or 50,000 individual pieces. It&amp;#039;s not only easier, but much safer,&amp;quot; says Tedd Benson, president of Bensonwood Homes. Precise tenons lock in place as they slip into mortises bored into horizontal plates.  Step 7: The Roof  Larger timber-frame roofs are built of rafters, each lifted into place and set into notches in the plates. In some cases, widely spaced rafters are connected by horizontal purlins. In this home, the Bensonwood team joins the prefabricated roof components on the ground, then calls in the crane to lift the assembly into place. A groove in the roof plate (below) slides onto a horizontal tongue in the post. When the frame is pulled together, the connecting girt will fit securely in the post housing. Step 8: A House With No Nails: Building a Timber-Frame Home - Page 9  Long ago, framers placed lumber between the timbers to hold up interior lath and plaster, and exterior cladding such as clapboard. Today, they use structural insulated panels (SIPs) up to 612 in. thick with R-values of 3.7 to 7 per inch. Each panel has a foam core and an interior and exterior face.  Step 9: The Completed Timber-Frame Home  Unlike conventional studs and joists, a timber frame&amp;#039;s structure is a sculptural element of the interior design. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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