Traditional Building Techniques and Structures

This is the handbook for the Fox Maple School’s timber framing workshop. There was a time when the only way you could get it was by attending a workshop. This workbook contains over 250 pages of in-depth technical information on the joinery, design, and construction of traditional timber frames. Illustrated with over 230 photos and CAD drawings. Included are frame plans, design and engineering formulas, rule-of-thumb guidelines, shop setup, builder’s math, joinery design criteria, practical timber-framing tips, and more. If you are a builder, architect, engineer, or an aspiring owner-builder, A Timber Framer's Workshop will provide the information you need. This book is highly recommended by timber-framing teachers.

If you want to know how to make your own yurt (portable Mongolian round house), then this is the book to get. Written by a master yurt builder, who has also taught many courses on yurt building and traveled to Mongolia while researching this book. This beautiful little book is clear, well illustrated, and to the point.

This is a reprint of a classic book, published in 1914, for making your own primitive shelters with no more tools than an axe and a knife. D. C. Beard was an artist, backwoodsman, and one of the two principal founders of the Boy Scouts movement. His book illustrates everything from Indian hogans, wigwams, and lean-tos to modest log cabins, hearths, and chimneys. This is a fun little book to have around, although I would rely upon other references if I was building a real home for myself.

Tedd Benson effectively started the modern revival in timber framing with his excellent do-it-yourself book, Building the Timber Frame House. This book is an updated version to include modern developments and energy-efficient construction. It is a beautifully illustrated, “coffee table” quality design-and-build guide to timber-frame homes that includes all facets of timber-frame building construction. Benson’s books are highly recommended by timber-framing teachers.

This is a beautiful “coffee table” book about timber-frame construction. It’s not a how-to book, but it does have a wide variety of pictures, several sketches, and rough floor plans to help you design and plan the timber-framed home of your dreams.

Several professional builders have recommended this book as absolutely the best manual for building a log home. Robert Chambers is an experienced log homebuilder, teacher, and coauthor of Log Building Standards: The Building Code for Handcrafted Log Homes. It is filled with helpful photographs and illustrations that guide you through all the steps for making a tight, well-finished, professional-style log home, including timber selection, planning, log dressing, roof trusses, special tools, and log treatment. For the latest information on log home building seminars and techniques, check out Robert’s log building web site at www.logbuilding.org.

Written and recommended by professional builders, this is probably the best design/build book for the owner-builder seeking to build a mostly traditional home. It covers all aspects of building your own home, including site selection, finance, subcontractors, foundations, plumbing, heating, ventilation, insulation, framing, finish work, roofing, passive solar principles, heat calculations, and so on. The focus is on traditional stick-frame and post-and-beam construction. The writing is easy to understand and the book is filled with clear illustrations.

This is the definitive book about and for life in a tipi. It offers designs and layouts for a variety of tipi styles, plus pros and cons for different styles. Also has information on brain tanning, moccasins, Indian containers, tipi ceremonies, and so on. In the 1950s, the authors fully embraced the lifestyle and ways of traditional Native Americans, becoming “adopted” by Chief One Bull and his wife Scarlet Whirlwind. At a time when most Indians had lost the knowledge of their traditional crafts, the Laubins sought out Indian elders to learn their skills before they were lost forever.

Unlike the prior books, this is modern post and beam timber framing for dummies. This book is for the owner builder who would like to do his framing right, using modern hardware and methods, and has no illusions about being (or becoming) a master craftsman in the art of timber framing.