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Friday, November 14, 2014

A few concepts...

..to know, about French Timber Framing, before starting.




Since a few weeks two English people join me to help on writing this blog.
We exchanged a lot and I conclude from our discussion that one of the biggest problems is that the  English language does not have translations for French timber framing terms. This is why I decided to keep some French words. But these French words need to be explained, that the purpose of this course.

-        “La sablière”: this word has two meanings, it is the wall-plate(*) - the piece of wood lying on the wall on which carry the rafters. In le trait it is also the theoretical line which represents the lowest plane of the roof. This line is in the same plane as the base line (ligne de trave). It is located at the intersection of the base line and the "lattis". This is the meaning in which we are going to use it.

-       " Le lattis": This word also has two meanings. It is a lath or tiling-batten but in le trait, it refers to the plane of the roof at the top of the rafters to which the tiling-battens are nailed. In French we say it is where the carpenter's work finishes and the tiler's or slater's work begins. When we draw the surface development of this plane - la herse of le lattis - we draw this surface in its true dimensions and angles.

-        “la herse”: a developed view of a plane in which lines in that plane are shown in their true lengths and at their true angles. La herse - or developed surface view - is obtained by 'rotating or folding' a surface into a (usually) horizontal plane about a line sometimes referred to as a hinge-line (for a roof surface the rotation line is “la sablière”).

-     “la vue par bout” or The end view: Is the auxiliary plane developed from perpendiculars to both the elevation and plan of the line formed by the meeting of two planes. It is used to show the end view of a component in that plane. The angle formed where these two planes meet is the dihedral angle. A hip rafter lies along the line formed by the meeting of the side and the end planes of a roof. When the auxiliary plane is developed by hinging it down into the plan view, the end view of the hip rafter is shown in its true dimensions and angles.

-        “le rabattement”: Is the technique we employ to rotate a figure about a line and by which that figure is moved from one plane to another. So to draw la herse of a roof, we have to do le rabattement of the real length of the profile rafter. In this case the line of rotation (the folding line), is la sablière. Another case in which “le rabattement” is used, is to show the underside of a piece of wood by rotating it a ¼ turn.

Note: study case drawn on Concepts_01.pdf file is delimited by the a-b-c-d letters on the drawing on the Concepts_02.pdf file.