Actually, my in-laws have a piece of ground with an abandoned farm on it.
The house is in a terrible state of disrepair (my wife and I considered
renovating it 15 years ago...its too late now) but the barn isn't too bad.  My
father-in-law has a burning desire to torch it (pun intended) but I'd like to
salvage some of the timber.  The construction on this particular barn isn't so
great (some post-and-beam with some large poles thrown in) so I don't know
that its worth all that much.  I'm sure he'd let me salvage as much as I'd
like, and I'm going to pull some boards this weekend to plane and see what
lies beneath.  Given that Pennsylvania is a hardwood state, what could I
expect the sheathing of this barn to be?  The beams?  I know its hard to
speculate, and I'm not sure of the age of this barn, but if I'm lucky it may
be another great source of free lumber.

Any guesses on what was commonly used?

-----Original Message-----
From: LLesniak@a... <LLesniak@a...>

> Given that Pennsylvania is a hardwood state, what could I
>expect the sheathing of this barn to be?  The beams?  I know its hard to
>speculate, and I'm not sure of the age of this barn, but if I'm lucky it
may
>be another great source of free lumber.
>
>Any guesses on what was commonly used?

Sheathing - might be poplar or hemlock - that's what all the sawmills in my
area seem to sell for barn siding - in a discussion with a local sawyer
regarding some board-and-batten siding for one of my dad's barns, the sawyer
told me that most of the barns in the north-western NJ area were sided with
poplar or hemlock.

Beams - I've got a few beams from a couple of the barns on my dad's property
that have undergone renovation - one is oak, a couple appear to be some sort
of fir, not sure what the other is yet. The really old barn is not safe to
walk in, so I'm waiting until they take it down before I try to go in and
i.d. (and snatch up!) the beams...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
William K. Taggart (Bill)
On the road in Philadelphia, PA
wkt@i...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~