boat soup

I've been working, for sure, but somehow yesterday felt like the first big day of building. It didn't rain, my chisel was sharp, and the need to get going somehow seemed more apparent. (The bigger the project, the longer the rush to deadline?) I finished cutting and shaping my floor joists, made more sawhorses, souped up my mailbox post, and cut a joist pocket in a sill.
The sense of urgency comes partly from the same thing that motivates every Alaska builder – the desire to not get caught without a roof when it gets cold – and partly because I’m timberframing with white spruce. The wood shrinks a lot when it dries, and tends to twist. The best would be to cut it all immediately after it’s milled and get the frame up before the timbers dry. The joinery might stop the timbers from twisting. Instead, I have stacks of timbers cut at various times -- from last week to months ago -- at various stages of drying. So I add a strong sixteenth to my joist ends in the hope they’ll shrink to fit. (The sills that will house them have already shrunk.)
It’s nice to think of timberframing as modular, and it can be in some cases. Every brace in the frame should be identical. But sometimes the qualities of each timber, each piece of once-living wood, make customization necessary. A four-by-six joist might be only three and seven-eighths.
Boat soup is a mix of pine tar, linseed oil, and turpentine. It treats boats and outdoor wood without sealing it in varnish or nasty chemicals. The pine tar I have comes from a boatbuilding supply store, but is made for horses: “Wash and dry hoof. Apply below coronet band of hoof and hoof wall. As a hoof pack, apply to bottom of hoof prior to shoeing.” The tar makes the wood dark and sticky. You have to recoat every year or so, and the wood probably won’t last as long as pressure-treated, but that's fine with me.