Timber Frame Dog Kennel

It has been two years since our last dog passed and my wife an I decided to get two Golden Retrievers. We needed a safe place to keep the dogs while we ran errands so we decided to build a 10’ x 14’ Timber Frame kennel. This was also a good project to work on while in isolation due to Covid-19. It took approximately 5 months to finish the timber frame. I still need to add a smaller dog house inside, run a water line and install landscaping. The timelapse in this video just covers the timber frame build.

Where I live in North Florida, Longleaf Pine is the least expensive and most plentiful wood species available. The disadvantage of Longleaf is it’s Janka hardness of 870 compared to Eastern White Pine with a Janka hardness of 380. The other disadvantage is the Longleaf pine oozes a lot of sap as it dries which shows up through the Mahogany stain I used.

For this project, I opted to use a chainsaw to cut the large, deep mortises. A chain mortiser would have been easier and more accurate, but I could not justify the expense for a detached dog kennel structure. I did not have a lot of experience using a chainsaw, but I became more efficient and more accurate over time. I tried to use an electric chainsaw to limit the noise and fumes, but ended up breaking three different models after an hour or two. I finally ended up buying a small 14” Echo Chainsaw to finish the work.

The most unique thing about this project was the use of a Boom Derrick to handle the large beams. The largest beams weighed approximately 400 lbs before cutting to length. The Boom Derrick was constructed using the instructions from the Army Field Manual “FM 5-125 Rigging Techniques, Procedures and Applications”. I cut and stripped the pine poles used to construct the Boom Derrick from my property. I spent approximately $500 total on rigging materials which compares favorably to $500+ per day to rent a boom crane. I initially used a 2500 lb winch and remote from Harbor Freight, but it burned out approximately a third of the way through the project. The winch was under powered and slow to use. I ultimately just connected the winch line to my pickup hitch to lift the beams. In the video, you will see the flow move from left to right with the boom covering most of the range. The raw pine beams are on the left. The boom moves the beams to the saw horses on the slab in the center where they are cut and stained. Finally, the beams are moved to the finished area on the right. The Boom Derrick took about 2 days to construct and rig. Overall it worked much better than I expected. It easily cleared the 14’ height of the structure when attaching the rafters.

I will do a second, shorter video after the entire project is completed with an interior dog house, water line, landscaping etc.

-- Scott