The American Society of Civil Engineers maintains a list of historic landmarks. If you want to find some near your home, they have a map of all the sites. One historic site that I’ve visited recently is the Crozet tunnel.
A boring machine, which I’ve also heard called a barn drill or a beam drill, was used for creating mortises and other activities in timber frame construction. The replaced the older t-handle augers. They were operated by placing them on the beam and sitting on top of the wooden base. A lever released the bit […]
The library of congress maintains the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). If you’ve ever wanted to know more about a historic site, search the collection to see what you can find on the Library of Congress website.
Timber framing is a way of building structures with large wooden members. It is very common in historical structures but has largely been replaced by the use of dimensional lumber (e.g. 2x4s). There are, however, groups and companies who still build timber frame structures today. If you are interested, I reccomend you check out the […]
Rebar is a critical component of modern reinforced concrete. Concrete is generally very strong in compression but not in tension so steel reinforcing is required to take the tensile load. The physics of the mechanical bond that transfers load between the concrete and steel is very complex and is very dependent on the pattern of […]