Timber Construction

We had dinner at the Deschutes Brew Pub in Portland last night. 40 minute wait for seats, so we walked over to Powell's and looked around for a few minutes. When we got back we still had some time to kill.

So we're sitting there waiting for our number to be flashed and I'm looking around at the way the place is built. It's an old building that has been gutted so you can see the original wood beam roof trusses. Big chunks of wood along with some big chunks of iron. Sorry about the picture. Too dim up by the ceiling, too many bright lights everywhere else. Those two dark triangular things sitting on top of the double beam are cast iron. Funny that they would use these elaborate cast iron brackets at the base when they only used simple notches to retain the top ends of the beams.

They've also brought in some new chunks. One is being used as the reception desk. Looking at the end of this block, I can see several cracks. However, on the side where there should be a corresponding crack in the surface, there isn't. Weird.

And then there are the large wood frames they erected to enclose the dining areas. These serve no structural purpose, they are only there for decoration. All the new wood seems to have lots of cracks and splits. None of the old appears to have any.

Update January 2017 replaced missing pictures.