Is it possible to make high-quality profiled timber with

A solid wooden house for many people is the perfect embodiment of their dream of a cozy and environmentally friendly housing. Currently, the optimal building material for such a house is a profiled beam that allows you to build absolutely smooth and beautiful walls that do not need additional decorative finishing.

However, due to the relatively high cost of this material, not everyone can afford it, so many try to solve this problem differently - for example, to make a profiled bar with their own hands.

Before considering the various options and ways of self-production, it will not be superfluous to know what advantages this can give and how profitable it is.

When self-production will be justified

Depending on the situation, each developer will have its own motivation to action:

• First of all - this is a financial issue. Indeed, in some cases, you can save a lot, but here you need to take into account the time factor;
• Quite often there is a need for non-standard sizes of timber that can not be found from manufacturers and then this is almost the only way out of the situation;
• When there is already a sufficient supply of edged boards and beams, but it is unprofitable to sell it, but for the construction you need exactly the profiled material;
• If there is a need for powerful bearing beams and in this case you can make your own glued timber from thick planks. Such a design is not subject to torsion and cracking, and also withstands higher loads than a similar solid wood beam.

There may be other reasons for such a decision, but in any case, it is necessary to calculate in advance how feasible and justifiable in a particular situation.

Description of methods for self-manufacturing of profiled timber

Depending on the experience and technical equipment of the home workshop, there are several options for their level of complexity.

Making timber from boards

If there is practically no woodworking equipment available, then the simplest way out will be to make a timber from boards.

For these purposes, the Fifty-fifty board, which has suitable dimensions in length and width, is best suited.

1. First of all, you need to build a building berth from scrap materials on which all the work will be done;
2. Then special templates are made, according to which the boards will be laid so as not to measure the spike and groove dimensions of the future timber each time and that all the products are the same;
3. For the production of one timber, you will need three boards that are stacked on each other in length, and the average board is laid with a given offset. As a result of this imposition of planks, a profile is formed in cross section, where a spike forms on one side and a groove on one side;
4. After the boards are laid properly, they only need to be securely fastened to each other. The simplest thing is to hammer them from two sides with ordinary nails, for a more reliable connection you can use metal screws, but in this case you can’t do without a screwdriver;
5. Also, to give strength, you can glue the timber with your own hands, for which, before laying the boards on each other, they are carefully coated with glue. In any case, after that they need to be fastened with nails or screws, since at home it is very difficult to achieve ideally strong gluing of such surfaces. The result is a simplified version of glued laminated timber.

A simple way to refine a rectangular beam

In this case, profiling the timber with your own hands requires at least a hand-held circular saw, but otherwise it will not cause difficulties even for a novice joiner.

• It will also require the construction of sustainable stocks or workbenches for the entire length of the workpiece being processed;
• In this case, the main goal will be to cut the same V-shaped grooves on opposite sides of the rectangular workpiece;
• To accurately mark future grooves, it is necessary to make a template from the bar with the width of the future groove that will be installed along the entire length of the bar exactly in the center. The pattern beats two parallel lines along which cuts will be made;
• On the control lines, using a hand-held circular saw, set at an angle of 45 °, an incision is made along the entire length from opposite sides to a predetermined depth. The result should be a flat V-shaped groove.

• Now, if we place two beams on each other with sides where the grooves are sawn through, then along the entire length there is formed a diamond-shaped cavity of square section, into which the standard bar 50–50 should be laid, to the dimensions of which it is necessary to make grooves.

As a result of such simple actions, you can very quickly turn a rectangular wooden blank into a profiled bar. These are the two most simple and accessible to each method of manufacture.

But in any case, before you do something, it will not be superfluous to familiarize yourself with GOST 9330 -76, which is called "Basic connections of parts made of wood and wood materials." This document contains all the necessary information to correctly calculate the profile depending on the size of the workpiece.

Profile cutting with a manual mill

In this case, the rectangular four-edged square beam will act as a blank, while the main working tool will be a powerful hand mill.

By the way, you should again calculate how profitable it is, because the price of a good tool cannot be small either, and using low-power and cheap, you are unlikely to achieve the desired quality of processing, and the time costs will be much higher.

Step by step instructions in this case will be as follows:

• We build a solid foundation in the form of a building berth or workbench for the entire length of the processed blanks. The support must be stable without backlashes and reels, as well as allow the workpiece to be firmly fixed;
• In addition to the router itself, you will also need a set of special milling nozzles, the shape and size of which will depend on the complexity of the profile you want to choose. With proper experience and quality material you can get products as close as possible to industrial designs;
• When working with a router, it is important to maintain the accuracy of the tool on the intended path. It is desirable that it smoothly moved along stably mounted guides, without jerks and side gaps. The accuracy of the interfacing of the elements depends on the accuracy of the work, and, accordingly, such operational parameters of the future house as heat insulation and wind protection;

Note! If you use a highly revolving milling cutter with sharp cutters, then you can do without additional grinding.

The use of this technology makes it possible in everyday life to cut into a beam a profile of varying complexity that is in no way inferior to industrial designs. There are other ways of profiling, but they require the presence of more complex self-made technical equipment and equipment.

In the future, no matter what type of timber will be used for construction, it is important to comply with the technology, which requires the use of dowels (dowel) for reliable connection of the crowns between each other.

Dowel making

This type of fastener is a wooden cylindrical elements of a certain diameter, which are hammered into the pre-drilled holes in the bars lying on top of each other, additionally fastening them in such a way among themselves.

Making dowels for a bar with your own hands is not difficult enough and anyone can handle it, but in any business there are some subtleties that need to be known.

• Technology dowels should be made of more solid wood species;
• Their diameter should be such that they lightly plug into the technological holes. If the fastener hangs in the hole, then it is practically useless, and if it sits too tight or protrudes above the surface, then this can cause problems when the house shrinks.

There are several simple manufacturing options:

• You can chop birch chocks of the required length into many square blanks, and then manually trim them to a round shape of the desired diameter;
• If there is a lathe for wood, then these elements can be machined quickly;
• As dowels, you can use the unavailable cuttings for shovels and other garden tools. In this case, you just need to cut them into blanks of the desired length.

Tip! Also as the dowels, you can use metal trimming pipes of suitable diameter.

Imitation as a decorative option

Quite often, to create a certain style or inner atmosphere in the interior of the house, an imitation of a bar is used with its own hands. This approach allows to achieve almost complete visual analogy with this bar and has a number of advantages:

• Imitation can be performed on the surface of any material;
• Wood consumption is significantly reduced, and, accordingly, financial costs and time for implementation;
• Such finishing can be done after the house is built at any time, both from inside and outside.

To produce a set of decorative elements for such imitation is quite easy and at home. To do this, you need a pre-calculated volume of the board with a minimum thickness of 50 mm, as well as an electric planer and grinder.

The manufacturing process will be as follows:

• Using the planer, you must smoothly round off the edges of one of the sides of the board, giving it the shape of a rounding, which the beam has;
• Then, with the help of a sander, everything should be thoroughly sanded, removing all flaws and traces from the planer.

The board treated in this way can very imitate not only timber, go and ceiling beams very plausibly. In order to achieve complete similarity, in the corners where the planes of the walls converge, the boards need to be displaced relative to each other by half their width by performing an imitation of cutting a corner of a log house.

If desired, such a "timber" can be toned under valuable wood species, further enhancing the effect of imitation.

Conclusion

As a result of the information presented in the article, it can be concluded that the beam is very widely used in almost all architectural projects of private country houses from any material. If desired, and due patience it can be made independently using the above recommendations.

For more information on this topic, you can also see the video in this article.