Dan's Workshop: Making the Bents

What is a bent? It will probably be easier to show than explain, but I’ll start this post by trying to put some words to it. In timber frame construction a bent is a one-planed structural unit that’s assembled on the ground, rather than adding each timber to the structure one at a time – kind of like a roof truss. In Dan’s case, it was pre-assembling the posts, beams, and kneebraces. He figured it would be easier to do the drilling and pegging on the ground rather than at precarious angles in the air.

In my last workshop post I showed you how Dan was cutting the joints and had also made these…

The next step was starting to assemble the bents. First he drilled holes one-inch holes in the timbers, but then had to trim the corners of the pegs to fit the holes.

So here is Dan’s first bent.

Now we just have to figure out how to raise this thing and set it in place. It’s not exactly light weight!