Six cuts from one yard
Each service below is a cut sheet pulled from the same rail. The sheet carries the work, the crew and the season it belongs to.
Barn Frame Raising Crews
Four to seven people who live on the same bents for a full day. Our raising crews stack the sills, stand the frame, drive the pegs and close the ridge and are the same hands that cut the joints in the yard the week before.
WPorch Truss Cuts
Porch trusses are cut flat on the floor of the shed and rehearsed upside down before they leave. We size the bottom chord to the porch run, cut the king posts and check the gusset faces square on the bench.
TBeam Repair Splices
Old beams fail at the bearing, at the scarf or under a post. The shed cuts a scarf or a cheek scarf to match the existing section and grain, then sets it dry so the repair reads as part of the frame instead of a patch bolted across it.
MTimber Sourcing Runs
We travel for the right stick. Species, moisture, growth ring and length are checked at the mill before a piece is loaded, so the frame and the barn it belongs to carry matching material rather than whatever was nearest.
SShop Drawing Sets
Drawings are set in the shed office, dimensioned to the joint and checked against cut lengths. Every bent gets a sheet with a mark, and every mark is stamped on a cut tag when the piece is pulled from the pile.
RRaising Day Scheduling
A raising date is held against the weather window, the crane slot and the crew calendar. We publish the day, the gate time and the lift order in advance, and we hold the yard open until the last peg is set.
Boekweg Construction, LLC opens its raising day window and holds a date for each frame as soon as the drawing set is signed and the timber is dry.
From the pencil line to the ridge
Timber framing rewards patience in the yard. A joint that is a sixteenth out at the bench becomes a gap at the plate, so the shed keeps a slow first pass and a fast second one. Drawings are set first, cut tags follow, and the pile is laid out in the order the bents will be raised.
Our crew walks each frame twice before a saw is started. The first walk checks the drawing against the building it belongs to, including the sill height, the door openings and the load path down to the footing. The second walk checks the stock against the drawing: species, moisture, length, and the face that will show when the frame is up.
The six services are not separate businesses standing side by side. They are stages on one rail. A barn frame raising crew depends on a clean drawing set, and a drawing set depends on the timber sourcing run that found the right sticks.
Porch trusses and the weather line
A porch is the hardest frame in the house to keep honest. The truss sits outside the wall, takes the sun on its face and the rain at its end grain, and ties a new roof to an old footing that may have settled. Our porch truss cuts begin with a survey of the existing plate and the footing line, because a truss drawn to the drawing rather than to the wall will gap at one end within a season.
The shed cuts porch trusses flat on the floor, assembles them upside down and checks the gusset faces with a square before they are lifted. Bottom chords are sized for the full porch run, and king posts are marked so the roof plane can be set off a single reference line rather than chasing the ridge.
Where a porch truss has to meet a barn frame, the joint is drawn at the same time as the barn drawings so the two do not fight for the same plate. That coordination is the reason we insist on one drawing set for the whole frame, porch included.
Beam repairs that respect the old frame
Much of our work is repair rather than new construction. A settle in an old porch, a beam checked by a leaking roof, a truss that has lost its bottom chord to rot: these come to the shed for beam repair scarf joints because the alternative is to replace a piece that still has decades of service left.
A scarf is cut to match the grain on both sides of the break, not to hide it. The joint is marked on the drawing, cut in the shed, trial fitted on the bench, and only then carried to the frame. Where a beam has to be scabbed, the scab is sized from the same species and dried to the same moisture as the beam it joins.
On the barn side, a full raising crew is booked only once the site is ready. That means a level footing, a clear laydown area and a crane approach that can reach the ridge without swinging over a power line. We will not raise a frame we cannot lift safely, and we say so early.
The yard at 180 E 700 S
The shed doors open onto a gravel yard with a laydown lane long enough for a forty foot stick. Timber arrives by flatbed, is checked at the gate, and is stickered to dry before it is drawn into the cut list.
Drawings are set in the small office at the north end of the shed, where the shop drawing sets are checked against measured lengths and the schedule for each raising day is written on the wall board. If you are planning a frame or a repair, the contact page has the phone, the email and the hours we keep.
Why the schedule is set early
Raising days are limited by weather, crane availability and the drying of the timber itself. A frame cut from green stock can move a quarter inch at the plate by the time the roof goes on, so we schedule timber sourcing runs ahead of the cut list and allow drying time between the saw and the raise.
Once a date is set, the crew keeps it. The gate opens before daylight, the crane arrives after the laydown is marked, and the lift order is read from the same drawing set the framers cut against. Families who come to watch are welcome, but they stand outside the swing radius and behind the tape.
A raising day ends when the frame is pegged and the ridge is true, not when the clock runs out. If that means a second morning, we plan for it in the schedule rather than rush the pegs.