From our good friend, French carpenter yogan. yogan’s work has appeared in four of our building books.

A few months ago with my friends Martin, Thomas and Orso from CopeauXcabanA, we went to the workshop where the new frame of Notre Dame de Paris was being built. All of the framing was done with oak that was 60 to 200 years old.

All the wood was squared on two sides by a sawmill and the other two by axes, following the wood fiber. They used 60 new axes that had been made by master blacksmiths.

In this workshop, 5 months of intensive axe work was necessary to square all the wood for making the framework of the choir and the apse.

Almost 800 trees were used for this part. The longest tie beam was 35×45cm (14″×18″), and 16m (52 feet) long. The largest rafter was 12 meters (40 feet) long.

In the workshop they tested all the frames before sending them to Paris, so we had the chance to climb and see this fabulous framework before it was installed in the cathedral.

Originally (900 years ago) they made all the frames in 12 years; this time it was accomplished in 1½ years.

The reconstruction of Notre Dame de Paris will be finished next summer.

Ten years ago, my friend Menthé and I sneaked into the cathedral, climbed up, took some crazy pictures before the fire!

From these experiences in this magic cathedral, we learned how to square wood with axes and we made our workshop, in CopeauXcabanA with these techniques.

copeauxcabana.fr/projets/atelier

Attic in Kelmscott Manor (near Oxford, UK), home of William Morris, founder of The Arts and Crafts Movement in England. Photo by Frederic H. Evans.

From the chapter of my forthcoming book Live From California: Breaking Free in the ’60s titled “Studying the Art of Building,” which details my trip to England to study real building after giving up on domes.

• From @lloyd.kahn’s Instagram

From The Guardian / The Observer
Kim Willsher
Sat 20 Aug 2022

At Guédelon Castle, the year is 1253 and the minor nobleman, Gilbert Courtenay, has ridden off to fight in the Crusades, leaving his wife in charge of workers building the family’s new home: a modest chateau that befits his social position as a humble knight in the service of King Louis IX.

Here, in a forest clearing in northern Burgundy, history is being remade to the sound of chisel against stone and axe against wood, as 21st-century artisans re-learn and perfect long-forgotten medieval skills.

The Guédelon project was dreamed up as an exercise in “experimental archaeology” 25 years ago. Instead of digging down it has been built upward, using only the tools and methods available in the Middle Ages and, wherever possible, locally sourced materials. Now, in an unforeseen twist of fate, Guédelon is playing a vital role in restoring the structure and soul of Notre Dame cathedral.

Paris’s imposing 13th-century cathedral, a world heritage site, was consumed by fire in April 2019, destroying its complex roof structure, known as La Forêt because of the large number of trees used in its construction. The widespread view was that it would be impossible to rebuild it as it was.

“The roof frame was extremely sophisticated, using techniques that were advanced for the 12th and 13th centuries,” Frédéric Épaud, a medieval wood specialist, tells the Observer.

“After the fire, there were a lot of people saying it would take thousands of trees, and we didn’t have enough of the right ones, and the wood would have to be dried for years, and nobody even knew anything about how to produce beams like they did in the Middle Ages. They said it was impossible.

A number of the companies bidding for the Notre Dame work have already engaged carpenters trained at Guédelon, and more are expected to beat a path to the Burgundy clearing 200km down the autoroute du Soleil from Paris.

It might be quicker and cheaper to turn wooden beams out of a sawmill — especially with French president Emmanuel Macron’s pledge to reopen the ravaged cathedral in 2024 — but you will not find anyone at Guédelon who believes it should be done that way.
Read More …

Hi Lloyd,

I thought of you when I saw these timbers in St. Michael’s Church, Wellington, New Zealand. These timbers are only 100 years old but look medieval. Probably built by very skilled emigré English carpenters but I don’t really know who made them.

Keep up the writing,
Bill Choquette
Wellington

From our good friend yogan, a highly skilled and innovative carpenter in France:

Our last job!

A big tower in colombage (Middle Ages technique of half-timber framing).

We sawed the wood with a mobile horizontal bandsaw, then drew an outline of the entire tower on the floor of our workshop; we then laid the wood on the markings to draw the assemblage.

Only tenons and mortises! No nails or bolts.

It’s a 4.5 × 4.5 × 12 meter (15 by 15 by 40 feet) tower (without the rock foundation).

8.7m³ (94 sq. ft.) of oak and chestnut was used. Almost 18m³ (194 sq. ft.) of uncut logs.

The roof and the walls will be finished this year!

www.cabanophiles.com
yogan.over-blog.com
facebook.com/mryogan
instagram.com/yogancarpenter