One of the greatest tales I have to share is of the time we disassembled an eleven sided silo made entirely of chestnut lumber and reassembled it on top of a mountain in Madison County.
The first time I saw the structure I was stricken with its beauty and uniqueness. It was in weathered condition and I inquired with the owner about their plans for the building. They responded that they were going to burn it. The client I had at the time negotiated a contract for its acquisition and I began the process of designing and constructing a new foundation for this silo on his property.
The new foundation would be a full eight foot tall stone structure that one would enter into before ascending the remaining 34 feet of the wooden silo. We built the walls two feet thick out of sandstone salvaged from an old barn and we incorporated an arched doorway and two arched windows.
The greatest challenge was laying out the eleven sided floor system that would act as a guide for the masons in building the structure. I urge you to give a try… it makes laying out an octagon easy in comparison… my secret weapon at the time was that one of my sister-in-laws just happened to be a high school geometry teacher. It was from a close friend that I found out that an eleven sided object is known as an undecagon.
The question of why would someone build an eleven sided structure really puzzled me and everyone that would view the structure. The people that owned the silo had no idea; it was built before their time. I found other eleven sided silos in the area and talked with those farmers too. All were at a loss as to why they were built with eleven sides, and they also had pondered it over for many years. It appeared that the reason was lost and only the builders knew the secret and had carried it to their grave. Each silo was built a bit different from the other indicating that each was built by the individual farmers… which was only more maddening in that it was formerly common knowledge, and was now lost.
I spent a good bit of time searching for the answer, at the library, on line, and in speaking with many farmers and extension agents, none knew the answer, but from each I gained a clue. One by one the clues all came together and gave me the answer. In a nutshell it came down to human scale and proportion.
If you go to a sawmill you will find that most of the lumber that is produces is sixteen feet long. Of course the reason they cut it that length is because that is what is demanded. And the reason that length is demanded is because most walls are eight feet tall (half of sixteen), which gives us humans plenty of headspace in our homes so as not to bump our heads on the lighting fixtures and such.
Now if a man wants to build a round object like a silo by laying one course of lumber on top of another and nailing it down he is faced with the decision of how long of a piece of wood does he want to work with? The shorter the piece the smoother the exterior roundness of the structure, but that also means more more labor… more boards need be cut and nail down. So the farmer goes to the lumber yard and brings home sixteen foot pieces of lumber, which would be way too long to use, and he cuts them in two… still too long, so he cuts once more giving him four foot lengths, an easy length to work with. And that is exactly how long the individual pieces on this silo were.
But why use eleven of them per course… why not ten or twelve?
Well it turns out that the most efficient diameter of a silo on a small farm is ten feet. This allows for a man to get inside the silo when it is full of grain and allow him to stand in the middle and shovel all the grain out with the least amount of effort on his part. Ahhhh.
So the farmer begins building his silo by drawing on the ground a ten foot circle in order to build the ideal size silo. He goes to his stack of four foot pieces of lumber and one by one lays them around the perimeter of his circle and then finds out that it takes exactly eleven pieces to complete the circle!
Not ten pieces, not sixteen pieces… but eleven pieces. So there was no mysticism to the number eleven, no hidden secret. Just good old country boy practicality… “this is what I have and this is what I want, one step at a time and I’ll get what I need”… and… “this will confuse everyone in the future!”

Originally posted 2015-01-31 14:41:00.

It looks like it it’s going to be tomorrow before I can get to posting a photo of the finished project and writing out the story of why these silos were built with eleven sides. Thank you all so much for your support and kind words. It’s a real pleasure to share with you all the unique projects I’ve built over the years!

Originally posted 2015-01-30 17:00:29.

Not your typical office job. 🙂

Building something different than the standard norm is to be highly commended. I encourage everyone to apply as much artistic influence in their work as they can. And when they are not working, choose to support those do something out of the ordinary.

Originally posted 2015-01-30 16:35:18.

The stone “undecagon” served as a base that we would re-erect an eleven sided silo upon.

The silo was made out of 2by4 chestnut laid flat, one upon another, and then nailed down. Notice the ring of hundreds of pieces ringing around the site waiting to go up. This baby is going to be tall!

We anchored the first few courses down by bolting them to the stone base. Each course had five large nails driven into each board and before nailing we would apply a layer of construction adhesive and silicon caulk to strengthen and to stop water infiltration. Each board was a slightly different size in length, width, and thickness thus it required a great deal of sorting and measuring throughout the construction to keep things tight, plumb, and level.

So, we built an eleven sided stone base to accommodate an eleven sided silo… but, why did the silo have eleven sides?

Originally posted 2015-01-30 16:02:48.

A little cabin in the woods… and, I mean little… four feet by six feet… but, she is made out of 1700’s vintage timbers and has a copper roof… and, is located on a pretty sweet spot of land!

One of the benefits of working with antique wood, and there are so many, is that there is always left-over material.

An old house was in ruins and it was salvaged, the vintage material was used to build a new home, the left-over material was used to build this little cabin. Then the left-over material from that project was used to build a piece of furniture. And once again, the left over material from that was used to build a toolbox.

Originally posted 2015-01-25 15:56:05.

I built this home to have a place to raise my children.

It worked wonderfully… including the little play log cabin.

I post this photo as an encouragement to all my readers that you too can build your own home. I strapped on a toolbelt and spent a year of my life building this home. I drafted the design on graph paper. I went seeking the land. I laid the stone with a good bit of help. I drove most of the nails that hold it together. This house was a major leap in a standard of living for me, all done with determination, sweat, support from my wife, and the blessings of God.

Originally posted 2015-01-24 20:47:04.

I’m thankful I don’t have to haul brick this way. When I first saw this photo I thought it must not be real. The more I look at it though, the more impressed I became… it’s amazing.

The bricks look mighty fine, just as nice as any brick I’ve ever used. And, I imagine they were bought as cheaply as they can be had, I bet he got a better deal than I could. The guy with the bike is paying nothing for shipping and handling and he’s getting some good exercise, no need to go to the gym after work. If the bricks don’t belong to him, then he is likely proud to have a job. If they are his, they are his… not the bankers… which means he will not pay any interest on purchasing them. And once they are put in place, he will enjoy them for the rest of his life, and generations to come will too.

Originally posted 2015-01-22 15:36:42.

For real!

This is “Ellwood”, located in the middle of the area where the Battle of the Wilderness was fought. It served as headquarters at various times for both sides of the war and as a field hospital, which is where Stonewall’s arm became detached and buried. The house was built in the 1700’s and had some pretty distinguished guests over those years… early presidents and figure heads such as Lafayette, but it’s now most remembered for that arm.

We restored the home about five years ago. The outside of the home had been maintained fairly well. Volunteers keep the lawn and grounds well kept and they apply a good coat of paint on the house regularly. The Park Service spent a good amount of money installing the most bizarre maze of steel girders throughout the building’s basement to keep the house from falling in, but the interior was best described as having been the victim of a grenade assault… just a big mess.

All the funding for the interior restoration came from years of donations and we did our part in contributing as well in keeping restoration costs to a minimum. Ellwood is now open to the public… you should go see her… and Stonewall’s arm gravestone, of course.

Originally posted 2015-01-19 14:44:43.

It’s a tradition for timber framers to mount a tree branch up on top of a newly built frame.

I’ve heard several versions of how it all began, and that is all well and good, but what I’ve found important is the festive mood that watching a man climb to the top of the frame and nail an evergreen branch up brings to the site. It’s time to celebrate!

Originally posted 2015-01-17 16:07:40.

I thought I would write today the story of the building of my first home.

At the ripe old age of 20 I undertook the hands-on construction of my first house. It’s a great story and it all turned out well, a wonderful place it was.

But, that’s a story for another day.

You see, last night as I was trying to get to sleep I realized that that house was not my first hands-on build, in fact I had built quite a few homes before that.

So, let me lay it out there for the world to hear… my first owner built home was a cardboard box.

There, I said it.

I know what you are thinking, and no, I was not a homeless child. I lived in a fine little brick rancher, provided by loving parents, in Finer Suburbia. We had the good fortune of living two blocks off of Broad Street where strips of businesses and shops were located, one of them being a furniture store.

Out back of Hawkes Furniture, just a quick bicycle ride away from home, was a cage of sorts, built out of chain link fencing where they would toss the large boxes that their newly made chairs and sofas came packaged in.

This cage was built so that any young man could easily climb over into it (after business hours of course). Now it’s not like I was stealing these boxes mind you, I had after all gotten permission to take all the boxes I wanted… it just felt cooler somehow acquiring them under the illusion of a covert operation.

Some time I could get my Dad to haul them home in his car, sometime I dragged and rolled them home myself, and on one occasion I tried dragging one home with my bike… that one didn’t work out very well, but it did earn me some respect in the neighborhood. “Did you see what that Bradley boy did today?”

There were different kinds of boxes to choose from… chair boxes are great, plenty of room for a young bachelor to hang out in, but if you are expecting guests you really need to have a sofa box. I would cut in a door opening making sure to leave one side intact so that it would hinge, and do the same with windows.

I always found boxes lasted longer inside although my mother’s patience with the intrusion into her living space was limited.

It wasn’t long before other kids in the neighborhood starting joining in on the habitat box craze, and so a box shortage loomed. We made the best of limited resources by trying to “one up” each other with features such as crayoned fireplaces and cuckoo clocks on the wall. Maybe even a pitched roof or add-on chimney. My favorite box was when I managed to score a pile of carpet samples that had been tossed out… hey it was the 60’s and wall-to-wall carpet was the thing to have!

Now, looking back over all the years that have since passed, I see those boxes as formative in my life. I enjoyed the challenge, the process, and the finished result. I learned the value of a homeowner playing a role in the construction of their home.

Decades ago it turns out that I was an accidental trend setter, I was building green, I was building small… tiny in fact. And even mobile, although perhaps not best when pulled behind a bike.

So, I encourage you all to get a box and have some fun!

Noah

Originally posted 2015-01-15 18:43:00.