A few years ago we built a chicken coop using wood from a dead spruce on our property. You can see a video of the whole process in parts I and II. We also had a few blog posts with details of the build and plaster walls. We have plans to build a new timber frame workshop classroom for the institute in coming years. In the meantime, we will practice our skills by building a compost hutch. Our goal is to build it using as many supplies from from the local environment.
The hutch measures 18 × 6 ft with three bays. Each bay has replaceable wooden sides and allows for a series of compost piles at different stages of decay. The roof is thatched with wheat straw. The wood may come from nearby trees cut by a neighbor arborist. Although we plan to hew some of the logs, we will likely hire another neighbor with a small mill to cut out the timbers and planks. Our goal is to open up the building of this as a series of workshops over the summer of 2021.

The frame has four bents (segments) held together by a bottom sill and top plate. The rafters are at 50° to facilitate rain and snow running off the thatch. The posts are 6 × 6 in but the sills are only 4 × 6 in as they do not need to support the weight of the frame, just keep the feet of the posts together. The plates are 6 × 6 in. Each bent has two braces measuring 2 × 4 in, as this small frame only needs modest bracing. The top plate also has two braces on each side, measuring 3 × 5 in, although this dimension receives less stress than across the bents (front to back). The rafters are 3 × 5 in at 2 ft on-center spacing with 1-×-3-in purloins at 9-in intervals. The posts are bound into bents by 6-×-6-in beams held by a dovetailed, extended through tenon with wedges. The posts fit in the sills and plates with stub mortise-and-tenon joints. The rafters meet in an open mortise-and-tenon joint at the peak and rest on a bird-mouth joint on the plates.
We’ve gone on to create cut diagrams for each of the timbers.
Sills Posts Braces Plates Rafters
The entire packet of drawings can also be downloaded as a PDF.
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