I have been all over the country searching for good quality timber framed products and so have seen a lot of things that need mentioning about the quality of their timber frame things. As I have traveled I have noticed so many techniques with building the same product, and in particular, the pergola has had a wide span of great ideas to accomplish the same product in a good quality manner.
However, there is one particular thing I saw in Utah, that has quite astonished me with how efficient and beautiful the technique works. For almost all time since the beginning of timber framing, there has been a predicament with the way timber expands and contracts on its own when the moisture rises or the weather changes. If you aren’t knowledgeable in this particular subject, what happens is when the moisture rises, the timber expands to suck up the moisture. And so, your original piece of wood, obviously, isn’t the same size anymore. So, if you had a piece of wood that was built into your pergola, you would have either some cracks or cracks in the wood that wouldn’t have been there originally making the overall pergola a little less than perfect quality. Another problem is because it expands, when it dries out, it doesn’t return to the actual size it once was, so again, you have a great deal of gaps waiting to be noticed. Anyway, so the wood usually needs to be cured first before use, but even if it is cured, you have to allow for the contracting etc.
This particular company has figured out a way to allow nature to do its job, but make the pergola still so professional looking. The contracting happens behind the scenes and they do this with a dovetail joint. For more information, click on one of the links.
