Nifty Book - The Steel Square

[zakthor]

Anyone heard of this book?

I found this 25 years ago in a box of discarded books on a sidewalk. I leafed through it and it looked interesting so i took it home. Skimmed it then misplaced it, just found it again.

For the time it was lost i had the memory of this very interesting book but couldnt remember the name. Its practical craft math,

Whats neat to me is that id solve these problems with trig and linear algebra, then stuck with a protractor to draw the angles.

The author of this book was an old timey builder and a savant with the steel square. He developed a set of transforms and algorithms and compute the right cut just by reflecting the square, even iterating. The guy was a self taught math whiz while denying he knew any math.

[zakthor]

Ok im mistaken. This is a different book than the craft math book i thought it was.

Somewhere i have a different book written by a builder about how to frame a roof using a steel square. This is all about using a square but it is pretty formal geometry. The author is an educated architect.

The other one showed how to lay out a curved new england style church roof by iterating with a square, end product looked like an upside down boat.

Ill keep looking.

[masraum]

I'm very interested in the book that you thought it was. I'm generally pretty good at math, but I love reading about alternative ways of doing things.

[Crowbob]

Timely post.

My draped roof azumaya project:

[zakthor]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

Timely post.

My draped roof azumaya project:

Wow!

Are the curved rafters a segment of a circle or log or? Wow you could go nuts making a surface! Awesome!

[Crowbob]

The rafter in the pic is an OSB mock-up that I drew on a 4X8 sheet of 1/2” OSB. The actual rafters will be cut from pressure treated 2x10x8’s. Even though the roof will eventually cover the rafters, I probably will not put a roof on for at least a year, I’m guessing.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

Timely post.

My draped roof azumaya project:

So very, VERY cool! We need photos of the progress.

[herr_oberst]

Originally Posted by zakthor

Somewhere i have a different book written by a builder about how to frame a roof using a steel square. .....

I have the book that came with the speed square (Swanson) but since I'm not gifted with the greatest of the Euclidian minds, a lot of its information (a real deep dive) is sort of useless to me, unfortunately.

Crowbob, that is the coolest pagoda roofed gazebo! You should do a whole thread on that. I know I'd watch.

[vash]

I can pythagorean theorem the heck out of a problem, but I cannot work a saw of any type well, so it is all a moot point.

but that looks like a very cool book.

[Zeke]

The original steel square book by Stanley is the one I have. I used to have lots of books about carpentry and joinery. I threw them all out except the square book (and one other.) That one you can't memorize. The rest are exercises you probably won't use in a practical sense unless you build exquisite furniture.

There's one other book that I saw advertised in all kinds of building and carpentry mags for decades called something like "A treatise in compound sash construction" which must be out of print and I can't find my copy. It's just a little book and it was always $25. I just couldn't see paying that for something I'd never use. One day I bought it just because I could.

I've never seen a compound window sash even in a fancy store front or any fancy five star hotels I've visited such as in San Francisco. Imagine one quarter of a cylinder with a dome top, divided lights and glazed. You be hard pressed to even find someone to form the convex top glass panes today.

I have seen this done in iron:



Imagine those quarter lights done in wood.

[zakthor]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

The rafter in the pic is an OSB mock-up that I drew on a 4X8 sheet of 1/2” OSB. The actual rafters will be cut from pressure treated 2x10x8’s. Even though the roof will eventually cover the rafters, I probably will not put a roof on for at least a year, I’m guessing.

But can you tell me about the curves? To have the roof droop like that between the posts they all have a different arc. Are they simply circles with different radius or something… different?

Circles, Polynomials or exponents?

Sounds really fun. Ive seen sectioned curved beams, is that what youll do?

[Crowbob]

Well, not being a mathemagician, for this project I’ve adopted a formula:

A = trial

B = Error

C = time

D= Finished project

3A + B^4 + C = D.

However, I googleplexed the interwebs and came up with this which, unfortunately, seems to be what is needed for a 10x10 footprint. Mine is 8x8. I don’t know how to scale it down which would make my life a whole lot more easier:

[A930Rocket]

Back in the 90s and early 2000s, we had a framing guru that worked for the company. He would check all of our homes at framing and wrote a book. I never read it, but it was supposed to be pretty good.

https://a.co/d/1P77PkF

[Crowbob]

[MBAtarga]

If you were a neighbor I'd be over helping. This is an intriguing project!

[Zeke]

Designed and submitted by me in 1994. I built it with some minor changes to the tea house itself and the deck extension design was provided by others.



Mosko was a renowned landscape designer from Boulder, CO. d. 2023

The reason I brought this up (again) was that if we had added the azumaya element, I think it would have been much better. The lattice is in a less pitch plane which was tricky enough. The little shingle affair at the top is laughable now.

The OP's structure is going to be very cool.

[Crowbob]

That is beautiful, Zeke. I

I thought about building a tea house but to do even a small simple does get real complicated real fast. I went with an azumaya instead of tea house because tea houses are so steeped in tradition I would feel pressure to construct it in the traditional manner and adhere to true Japanese aesthetic principles. An azumaya is much less formal and very forgiving in its design.

Plus, no way would I ever have the skilz.

And I’m old.

[Crowbob]

I’m pretty close to calling a truce. The weather is about to turn and I’d rather sit in the house arguing with strangers on the interwebs rather than do something artistic, constructive and challenging.

[Zeke]

Nah, man, get back out there. That structure is really cool. If you left just the framing for the winter the aesthetic is very pleasing to look at. Love the top.

[porsche930dude]

Nice I find when I build something big like a shed I have cool ideas but end up just slapping it together with whatever scrap wood I have laying around. I have a super old framing square its hand forged and numbered