Jim Heimbach, Worker in Wood, 2982 West Hillsdale Road, Athol, ID (2026)

07/18/2025

I have completed the entire timber frame portion of our timber frame home. Actually I can hardly believe that I am actually done! On Monday we erected the hammer beam entry porch, which you see in the pictures. It came together so well! One of the aspects of the main timber frame that I would change is to have the timbers milled a little large so that I could plane down to the exact dimensions specified in the plan. As it was I had to do geometric gymnastics to ensure that things came together properly even though the beams were up to a quarter or three-eighths small. I avoided that on the hammer beam entry porch, but there are always little niggly problems to solve no matter what.

07/13/2025

I figure that since I have been working on the timber frame for our timber frame home the past two and one-half years I ought to let you all know what I have been up to! Much of the joinery is hand work with a mallet and exceedingly sharp chisel. But I also use power tools where appropriate. A tool many of you may be unfamiliar with is the chain mortiser I use in to log out a mortise. Essentially it is a vertical chain saw that can be precisely positioned to dig out a mortise by repeatedly plunging it into the beam. The weird looking saw is a japanese "pull saw" which cuts on the pull rather than the push, which is how a traditional western saw works. I'll warn you, if you ever use a Japanese saw you'll never go back, they are that good and work that well.
The video begins with the 8x8 timber sitting on my heavy-duty timber framed saw horses, the first thing I made when I began work on our timber frame. I had already spent at least half a day precisely laying out where all the joinery was to be located. I use a sharp marking knife to make my lines after which I run a pencil down them to make them stand out. I use a marking knife because it is the most precise method to mark where to cut and chisel. With a line cut with a knife I can precisely place my chisel into the cut and know that I have positioned it exactly with a precision less than a thousandth of an inch.
In this video I am performing the joinery on the king post, one of the last and most important timbers in our hammer-beam entry porch, which will comprise the magnum opus of our entire timber frame home. :-) It's position is at the front and top. It has a fork at the top where the ridge beam sits and two rafters, one from each side, set into a "V"-shaped notch on either side of the fork. The large through tenon inserts into the collar beam. While paring down the tenon to its final size you'll see me use an aluminum template to test the width of the tenon. In this case it needed to be exactly two inches thick. You'll see that beam later in the video where I test fit the king post's tenon into its mortise (hole) in its center.
At the end of fitting the through tenon into the collar beam I do some work on the collar beam where the king post joins to it. The reason is that the collar beam was not planed flat. It was thicker in the center than on the edges. This caused the king post to sit proud of the collar beam by more than a sixteenth of an inch, which I was not satisfied with, so I pared the collar beam down so that the king post would sit on it without a gap.
If you look carefully while I was using the chain mortiser on the fork on the end of the beam you might notice at one point the chain mortiser tilting to the left as I was using it. That caused the mortise to cut out of level. That is why I clamped on the two pieces of wood so I could secure the chain mortiser more securely and prevent the tilting. Cutting a mortise on the very end of the beam is unusual and presented this problem to be solved.
The video is a time-lapse of my work on the king post for almost an entire day. It is meticulous and time-consuming, but very rewarding. It is a wonderful feeling to be able to actually walk into, live in, and be protected and sheltered by the strength and beauty of something you made. A timber frame is essentially a very large piece of furniture, basically "furniture in the large." It makes for an exceedingly strong and solid home. The feeling of a well-made timber frame is distinctly different from a stick built home. It has an intangible feeling of strength and solidity. You can actually hear the difference if you pay attention.

06/14/2025

This past weekend has been the culmination of two and a half years of planning and painstaking timber frame joinery performed in a small, inadequate shop and outdoors under an overhang. During the past year I have had the assistance of two wonderful young men who have exhibited amazing skill, ingenuity, and diligence in doing timber frame joinery alongside with me.
I have also had the help, encouragement, and just hard work of others who came alongside to erect our timber frame home last October and then June 7th, when we rose from the ground and erected the main timber frame which you see in the video. Thanks everyone! It has been quite an adventure. I realize now what an enormous endeavor I set upon three years ago and could not have accomplished it without a LOT of help! Thank you Noah for putting the video together!

04/04/2022

I have moved to Idaho. My woodworking machinery is in storage and many need to be repaired due to rough handling by the movers. I do have a woodworking project in mind, though. I will be timber framing my new home starting with a 24 x 48 garage with living quarters. I plan to eventually also build timber frames for my woodworking shop and final home as well.

I have about ten large, mostly ponderosa pines, felled on my property ready for sawing. I have a portable sawmill scheduled to arrive later this month and a TYM T474 Compact tractor that should be delivered this week.

For those who may not know what a timber frame is - it is the old, tried-and-true method of home construction, and, really, it is mortise and tenon furniture building in the large. You live in what you build. If you have ever heard of a "barn raising" what they are raising is the timber frame for the barn. Combined with Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) it can result in an amazingly energy efficient structure. It is beautiful, it is extremely strong, even being used for homes subject to hurricanes, and can last for centuries.

Although I have built a timber frame 8 x 10 shed, that is not the same as building an entire compound of timber frame structures, so I will be learning a new skill - again! I am excited to begin.

The picture is of the ponderosa pines felled by Kootenai Electric that are now lying on my property. These I will have sawn into timbers. Later this fall I will have my own Hud-Son sawmill delivered, but for now I am hiring a portable sawmill to come and saw the beams I will use for my first project, a timber frame garage and apartment.

05/28/2020

Well, its been a while since I have posted, but since I have actually created something, although rather simple, I thought I would share it with you.

First, a little of the back story - I teach 4th & 5th grade at a private Christian school. One of the most challenging aspects of teaching is class management. Over the years I have settled on a system using "Heimbucks" printed "money" named after me. :-) Students earn Heimbucks by good behavior, participation in class, winning class contests, and any number of things worth encouraging in class. Then every few weeks we have an "Heimbauction" where they bid on or purchase items I have scrounged together. I have also offered to make things that I have auctioned. One of those items was a family name plate suitable for hanging on a front door, or something similar. One of my students, Genesis, purchased two of these name plates for her family, both for her own and for her mother's families. This is the story of their creation.

The wood is spalted birch from a birch tree that grew in my daughter and son-in-law’s back yard in Healdsburg, CA. The logs from the tree lay in their back yard for at least a year, perhaps two, where they encountered the moist conditions of rainy northern California winters. While they lay there I had noticed on our occasional visits that they had sprouted ears of fungus along the trunk. The process of wood decomposition had begun. Though they had planned to slab the logs into boards,they eventually realized that they probably would not use them, and that they were no longer in a condition to use. So they offered the logs to me to use for burning in my wood stove which we use to heat our house in the winter.

I hauled the birch logs over the winding roads of Mount Saint Helena to my Lake County home where I began to split them for firewood. As I split several logs I noticed in the normally uninteresting light-color of birch wood an unusual coloring and marking, which is called “spalting” in woodworking circles. Spalting occurs as fungus invades the wood in a succession of different species, each requiring its own specific growing conditions, of moisture content, degree of wood decomposition, and acidity. What results is a discoloration, or coloration, if you will, ranging from black, dark brown, chocolate brown, golden brown, blond, fine lines of black, a whole variety of colorful figuring in the wood. These patterns of fungus invasion are highly prized by woodworkers. I decided that, rather than split the wood for burning, I would cut it with my band saw into small boards to use for some unknown future project.

I dried the wood for several years in my shop, and did eventually create two unusual woodworking projects made as Christmas gifts for Matt & Cody, a six-pack beer tote, and a set of napkin rings.

When it came to a “Heimbauction” in, probably the last half of the 2018-2019 school year I offered to build name plates as one of the auction items. With her earned Heimbucks Genesis bid for two of them. I brought a sample of the different woods I have collected over the years in my garage, including the spalted birch pieces I had been saving. Genesis decided on a single piece of one inch thick spalted birch for her family’s name plates. They would be a matching set created by sawing the board in half, creating two, book-matched, name plates symbolizing the two families brought together in the marriage.

Because the wood has begun to decompose it is quite light, spongy, and quite weak. To make the wood suitable for name plates I repeatedly soaked them in epoxy thinned with acetone. After many such soakings the resulting wood emerged strong and stable. I sanded them smooth with a series of increasingly fine sandpaper until they were smooth and silky. I burned the family names into the wood with a wood-burning tool, using a typeface I printed and taped to the wood as a pattern.

I finished it with six coats of Minwax Wipe-on Poly, then rubbed it with steel wool, before giving a coat of furniture wax. I am quite satisfied with the result. I think it is fascinating how a plain and ordinary wood becomes extraordinary through the destructive process of decomposition. Maybe there's a lesson for us in that! If challenge, loss and suffering can make wood more interesting and beautiful, perhaps it can do that for us as well.

04/02/2016

The cradle above in my cover photo was shipped out today to a wonderful customer in France whose wife is expecting in the next couple weeks. I'll miss it sitting in our master bedroom, but how much better to be used for what I created it for, a beautiful baby!

01/14/2016

As this past Christmas loomed I thought about what kind of presents I might build. A couple years ago the particular recipients I had in mind had made the wood from several birch trees they cut down from their back yard available to me to take home for firewood, as we like to heat our home as much as we can using our wood stove (though we have central propane-fired furnace). It had lain in their damp and wet Northern California back yard for several months before I managed to haul it over the winding, mountainous, hairpinned road to our home where I planned to split and stack it. I noticed that fungus ears were beginning to sprout on the bark of the logs.
Those of you who know wood realize that birch is a fairly plain, nondescript wood that is not particularly exciting to use in woodworking. However as I prepared to split a number of the pieces I noticed a remarkable patterning showing up in the wood, stripes, marbling, and multiple colors of black, brown and everything in between. I realized that the birch wood was spalted! Well, what is spalting, you ask? It is when wood, when it is damp and moist, is invaded by a succession of fungus species, each depending upon the environment that prior fungus growth produced (ph, moisture, etc.). The wood is actually undergoing the natural process of decomposition, but has not proceeded to the point where it has lost all its integrity and strength. The fungus growth had pe*****ted the entire length of good sized logs and produced an amazing effect! I can't burn this in my wood stove, I thought! So I cut it into slabs with my Agazzani bandsaw and stacked in an out-of-the-way corner of my garage shop, which, truth be known, does not have that many corners to put things in! At the time I had no idea what, or if, I would ever make anything from them.
But that time had come! What better to make a gift from than the wood from their own back yard, which had been transformed, from a plain, ordinary wood, to something extraordinarily beautiful! But what to make? Well, he is an emerging brewmaster, just having completed his first brew. Why not build a beer tote suitable for carrying six bottles of his distinguished creation? Why, yes! And I can use the spalted birch that has air dried in my shop for these two years! And why not make for her napkin rings made from the same? Yes. Decision made!
After perusing the internet for beer tote design ideas, I adapted one to use, improving the rough nailed together joints, with true woodworking joinery. The wood was quite light and soft from the spalting, much more like a light pine, than birch hardwood. I fastened to one side the most singular bottle opener I could find, in the shape of a manly, curling mustachio. I bookmatched the ends to allow the grain to follow the sloping shape of the beer tote. When I finished it with polyurethane I noticed it soaked up an enormous amount significantly strengthening the wood in the process.
The napkin rings I also made from the spalted birch. However the boards I had cut weren't quite thick enough to make a more traditional circular ring, so, after consulting my wife, my ever-ready font of wisdom, I created a flattened ring, which was a more interesting alternative anyway. I first attempted to drill holes almost an inch and a quarter in diameter, but found that the partially decomposed wood shattered. I gave up drilling that size after two of my rings were broken. I reduced the hole size to three quarters of an inch and finally succeeded in drilling out the rest of the rings, drilling three holes in a row into the center of each ring. I did end up realizing that I could repair the broken rings quite easily. The porous wood glued extremely well without any trace of where they broke. You will notice them in the pictures as the two rings with the larger holes in them. Because the rings were all hand shaped they differ from one another in slight respects. I particularly like this aesthetic aspect of hand shaped things. They are perfect in their imperfection. Machine routed objects are cold and lifeless in comparison.
I only managed to complete and shape two of the rings before Christmas. When I began to apply a finish I was amazed at how much finish they absorbed. I ended up literally bathing them both in a Tupperware dish of finish until they absorbed all they could, which was a substantial amount. They turned out very nicely, and the finish, as I found finishing the beer tote, substantially strengthened them.
That gave me an idea. When it came to completing the rest of them, I decided to try an experiment. I have System Three epoxy that I use to fill cracks and defects in the wood in my projects. What if I soak the napkin rings in epoxy thinned with acetone to permit it to pe*****te more thoroughly? This I proceeded to do. The ten rings absorbed an amazing quantity of epoxy, at least two or three cups of it! I was quite amazed. Having been thinned by acetone the epoxy took quite a while to harden taking several days below my wood stove.
But it turned out really well. The rings were much heavier, stronger, and solid than they had been initially, quite hard actually! After sanding to 220 grit, I began applying a polyurethane finish, which is durable and water resistant. I like to use Minwax's Wipe-On Poly, which is highly rated by Fine Woodworking magazine. After about five coats, sanding with 400 grit sandpaper, and then, for the final two coats, smoothing with 0000 steel wool, and a final hand rubbing with carnauba furniture wax, the rings were complete. Voilà! I was surprised and thrilled with the result. I think they are quite remarkable, not because of my work, but because of the amazing transformation into an extraordinarily beautiful wood, that ordinary birch can make! I hope you enjoy them as well. Now I get to deliver them!

11/28/2015

So now I have the base built for our new dining table. Our old one was a single pedestal extension table from my wife's grandmother. Since its design caused it to be quite rickety (it wobbled a lot), it was a real treat to put our new base to use for the first time at Thanksgiving. It is solid as a rock!
The tabletop and extensions are not complete yet, as I am still sawing the veneer, but I did cut the plywood core and extension sections to basic size and place them on the base. When I first moved the table in last Wednesday and placed the tabletop into position, I took one look at it and realized that it was too high. I had originally cut my leg blanks at 30 inches, oversize by two inches. I had subsequently chopped out the mortises, cut the tapers, and assembled the whole base having failed to cut the legs down to their final size of 28 inches, so the base was two inches too high! No problem. I hauled it back outside, laid it on its side and proceeded to whack off two inches from each leg. Remember, woodworking is the process of removing wood, so everything was fine. :-) It only becomes a problem when I find I have to add wood to correct a mistake.
Within a couple weeks I should have the whole table with the pull-out extensions all working. I can't wait to show you how it all works. At that time I'll post a video of it in action!

11/11/2015

I am excited about beginning a new project building a dining table with extensions. I am going to hammer veneer the tabletop something I have never tried before. I will be sawing my own veneer with my bandsaw each slice about 3/32 of an inch thick, about as thick as veneer can be, I understand. The aspect of the veneering process I am particularly interested in is the glue I will use in gluing the veneer to the plywood core, hide glue.
Whenever I use something I like to thoroughly understand what it is I am using, so the other evening I did some research on hide glue. This is some of what I learned about this fascinating glue!
1. It is the oldest glue used by humans, used as far back as human history goes. It seems even the earliest recorded humans used it to preserve their paint from moisture. Egyptians used in in their furniture and mural paintings. The Greeks and Romans used it as well.
2. Then its use vanished (how does that happen?!) after the Roman empire collapsed eventually reemerging around 1500 - 1700 AD, although fish glue still remained in use for painting and in illuminating manuscripts.
3. It became a popular glue for making furniture and musical instruments (e.g., the Stradivarius violin) because of the legendary ability of joints glued with hide glue to be reversed and repaired even after hundreds of years! A little heat and moisture and voila, the joint comes apart!
4. What I found particularly interesting is that unflavored gelatin, and a good, nutritious soup made from an animal carcass (chicken or beef bones) are both essentially the same as hide glue. Who would have known? Now, in a pinch, I know I can find glue for my furniture in the grocery aisles, or perhaps cook my own! :-)
5. In hammer veneering I'll use a veneer hammer (not really a hammer, it just looks like one) having a thin, rounded blade of brass that I can lean on, rubbing it across the veneer adhering the veneer to the underlying plywood as the strong force applied to the small area under the hammer forces extra glue out and cools the glue as well. I'll use an iron to heat to liquefy the glue as I work over the surface of the veneer. We'll see how the process goes...

09/19/2015

Yes, we were evacuated due to the Valley Fire. The fire came within 600 yards of our home and my shop in the garage. Thank God our home did not burn! If it had, the cradle on my cover would have burned as well as a number of my other pieces (and my shop as well). My wife, Debra, and I are still waiting for permission to return and see how things are.
The picture is the fire approaching our home Saturday afternoon. It was a bright, sunny day without a cloud in the sky.
Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers!

08/27/2015

I am honored to have had my cradle featured in Wheaton Alumni Magazine! You might recognize the scene pictured in my cover picture, which I took at the photo shoot for the magazine. If you had told me while at Wheaton that I would be featured under "Art," I wouldn't have believed you.

The irony is that when I first arrived at Wheaton and was going through freshman orientation I remember an activity of some sort held in Edmund Chapel where we broke into small groups for a discussion. One of the questions I was asked at that time was "What do you think of aesthetics?" I really didn't even know what it meant, and then, when I learned, I replied (with some youthful disdain), "It really isn't very important to me." How things change! How very ignorant I was!

In VIctor Hugo's Les Misérables Madame Magliore criticizes Bishop Myriel for his garden bed where he has planted only flowers. She thinks it would have been better to have planted salad greens. “Madame Magloire,” retorted the Bishop, “you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful.” He added after a pause, “More so, perhaps.”

I'm with Bishop Myriel.

See Features Page and page 32

http://magazine.wheaton.edu/18/3

Jim Heimbach, Worker in Wood

07/18/2025

07/13/2025

06/14/2025

04/04/2022

05/28/2020

04/02/2016

01/14/2016

11/28/2015

11/11/2015

09/19/2015

08/27/2015

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