In this hands-on video, Angel from Appalachian Wood walks through the process of scribing a timber post to an irregular stone foundation, from positioning the stone and establishing layout lines to using a contour gauge and story-stick to transfer the stone's profile onto the timber. It's a rare look at a traditional technique used in timber framing and post-and-beam construction, with practical commentary on tools, contact requirements, and how long the grinding actually takes. For more, visit their YouTube channel.

TRANSCRIPT:

So obviously I scribe all my stuff to stone because it's pretty badass. I like it.

The first thing you have to do to scribe something to stone is put your stone where it needs to belong. It had a crosshair on it at some point, but that's exactly what you want to do.

When you lay out a building, you have batter boards with string lines and all that. What you do is drop a plumb line to the stone and position it where you want it. Something like that, nice and flat. Then you draw the point, take that plumb line, move it across that line, and drop another point. Now you have two points that make a line. You can check it and extend that line further. Then you take the other batter board line and make the intersection. Those should be perfectly 90 degrees to each other. Sometimes it works out perfectly; sometimes it doesn't quite.

Setting the post and getting it plumb

Next, you need to set up your posts on there. Before you join anything, before you cut any joinery, you need to scribe your posts to their final position. This is the setup I use, which is also the setup Mr. Chicky uses.

You go like this: place your post on there, and then the trick is to line up the crosshairs you put on the stone with the centerlines you drew on your post. Easier said than done. On top of that, your post needs to be perfectly plumb. That's what I use these offcuts for.

I use two plumb lines because there are two planes on this timber.

So now I can tell the timber is pretty far off this way, which is easy to remedy. I look at this line, then that one. It needs to go that way just a little bit.

You could obviously just use a bubble level, but this is much quicker. Instead of having to hold it up to the line, I just visually check each one.

The scribing tools

Now we need to mark this out. My secret weapon for this is a contour gauge, the kind used for drywall or flooring. You set it against the stone and retrace the contour pretty easily.

The other great tool is a piece of wood with a couple of holes drilled in it. This is actually probably the most vital tool, because I need to find the maximum distance, and then consistently mark that offset at every corner. I'm just doing the corners. You can use the contour gauge to mark the whole contour, but it tends to tilt on you and ends up not very accurate.

Once I have the corners marked, I can use the contour gauge to retrace the contour between them. The trick is when I bring it down and bring it back up, I have to join those two points via the contour gauge. I reference the outside edge, so I have a consistent reference point. Your contour gauge needs to be as wide as your timber, or you can do it in sections using the story stick to mark where the center is.

The tricky part is tracing this onto the timber without moving it.

How long does it take, and how much contact do you need

It doesn't actually take as long as you might think. The setup is probably the hardest part. The scribes themselves, the actual grinding, take roughly an hour per timber, maybe less, depending on how comfortable you are with an angle grinder. This one will probably be 35 to 45 minutes because I have to remove so much material.

The flatter the stone, the easier it is. The more contour you have, the more difficult it's going to be.

As for contact, all the scribes don't have to make 100% contact. The majority of the contact is really just at the perimeter. You can use chalk on the stone to test how much is touching, but the perimeter is really all that needs to. Mr. Chicky has been doing this for a decade, and none of his are mushroomed out. They're all just touching on the perimeter.

If you wanted something more secure over time, you could put grout at the contact point to get 100% contact. You could also anchor them by drilling into the stone, mortising the timber, capturing a threaded rod, and putting a lock nut on.

The grinding process

It's not a one-and-done deal. I grind all that away, bring it back, and test it. Is it what I want? Does it look right? Does it need to be tighter? If it does, I can use some of these smaller points or a log scribe tool, though that tool is over $100, so you may not want one.

You have to plumb it every time you set it back. But it gets easier because eventually it stands up by itself, as opposed to having to attach the braces every single time.

So I'm tracing the contour and marking it at the same time. It's not just zip, zip, zip. You're intimate with it.