| Floyd - The beeping of a forklift in reverse cuts through a cold morning along the Blue Ridge Parkway, reminding onlookers that they're at a modern construction site, not a 19th-century barn raising.
The project, the raising of an enormous new winery building for Chateau Morrisette, certainly has aspects of both new and old construction. It is a combination of modern-day equipment and the age-old art of the timberwright. The builders may be using powerful forklifts to lift and move the timbers, but it is the carefully cut slots and grooves that allow them to fit the timbers together.
A small, smelly black and white dog wanders through piles of massive timbers, seemingly unaware of the timber framers using a bucket truck to reach the rafters of the growing structure. Once up there, they will guide a timber into place as a crane lowers it from above. Slowly, the new winery is taking shape.
Eventually, it will be 54 feet tall and more than 30,000 square-feet (A football field is 48,000 square-feet). The interior will be cavernous - the tall walls and high ceilings will enclose an estimated one million cubic-feet.
Complete with a tower, the building will be Chateau Morrisette's new wine production space and provide a home for a gift shop and a wine-tasting area.
Built with recycled timber taken from rivers and old buildings, it may be the largest reclaimed timber structure ever built.
Still just a skeleton, the building already boasts an incomprehensible array of beams, rafters, braces, crosspieces and arches.
Each one of these pieces has been cut by Christiansburg's Blue Ridge Timberwrights. Not just cut to the right length but made to interlock perfectly so that wooden pegs can hold the beams together. (However, on a project this size, the timberwrights sometimes break with tradition and use steel to add extra strength.)
The building, designed by Bruce G. Sanders and Associates of Greensboro, N.C., will be built by the Blue Ridge Timberwrights and a general contractor, Clark Brothers of Stuart. The wine production area is being built now, and the rest of the building will be completed in the spring. Winery officials hope to begin using the building to produce wine by August.
"We're real excited about it," said President David Morrisette, whose father, William Morrisette, founded the winery in 1978. "They [Blue Ridge Timberwrights] have put their heart and soul in it, and I've mortgaged myself for the next 40 years for it." Morrisette declined to give the cost of the building but said it was a "significant investment in Floyd County."
The winery had its first commercial season in 1982, producing 2,000 gallons. Now it produces 70,000 gallons a season. "Business is good," said Morrisette. "Virginia wines are booming."
Morrisette hopes to expand to 150,000 gallons a year, but the winery, which includes a restaurant, does not even have room for what it is producing now. The wine must be shipped elsewhere for storage.
Recognizing the need for a new building, the family and the winery employees knew they wanted more than just a big building - they wanted a showcase.
"Because of the large number of visitors, it has to be aesthetically pleasing," he said. They company wanted a natural look that would fit in with the parkway. "We decided that we wanted it to be timber frame. Wine-making is steeped in tradition, and we want the building to reflect our commitment to that tradition."
Morrisette said Blue Ridge Timberwrights' "obvious expertise" was a major factor when the winery decided who should build their showcase. "The quality of their work is pretty outstanding."
In the Blue Ridge Timberwrights' workshop, only a field or two away from the Christiansburg Wal-Mart, row after row of timbers seem to float on a sea of sawdust and sawhorses. Woodworkers move among the sawhorses, readying the timbers to take their place in the winery.
Currently, they are cutting the slots and tabs, called mortises and tenons, that will lock the timbers together at joints. Sometimes a woodworker will pull out a little wood plane and make a few adjustments to a piece, much like other woodwrights have done throughout history.
"This is certainly not a medium for mass production," said Sandy Bennett, owner of Blue Ridge Timberwrights. He said it requires a real appreciation of craftsmanship to do the job but it rewards the worker with personal satisfaction.
He seems to be getting a lot of personal satisfaction out of the winery project."I've been in this business for about 19 years now, and I've never done anything of this magnitude," said Bennett. "It's humbling to be sure."
Knowing that the building will be strong enough to last hundreds of years gives it special meaning to him."It's testimony to what a great team we have here and everybody involved with the project, too."
Bennett moved here from Michigan to buy Blue Ridge Timberwrights in 1994, taking over what was essentially a defunct business. The company has grown substantially since then, doubling its workforce and increasing yearly revenue from $900,000 to $2.5 million. Since Bennett took over, the company has built more than 70 buildings, including a dormitory and several homes in Japan.
Now they are building not only the winery but also a 120-foot covered bridge for a pedestrian walkway in Winston-Salem. But residential projects, mostly throughout the Southeast, remain the core of their business.
"We love the challenge [of the big projects]," said Bennett. "[But] building a nice little Cape Cod frame is challenging as well. Our heart probably is in what we'd like to call the blue-collar timber frames - the affordable."
But, he admits, the big stuff "gives us a bit of an adrenaline rush."
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Age-old techniques and
modern power equipment are piecing together an enormous, new winery
for Chateau Morrisette just off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Floyd
County. It is the biggest project for Christiansburg's Blue Ridge
Timberwrights and may be one of the largest buildings built from
recycled timbers.
The timberframing above will enclose the wine
production facility. It represents less than half the total
building, which will also include a visitors center and wine-tasting
area. In all, the building will contain about 1 million cubic feet
of space.
Cranes, forklifts and bucket trucks aid the
timberwrights as they guide the interlocking timbers into place.
Wooden pegs, with occasional steel reinforcement, will hold the
structure together.
All of the timber used for the new winery has been
recycled. It has been rescued from warehouses, old logging platforms
and other structures that have been demolished. Dark spots and nail
holes are visible reminders of the timber's previous "life." color.
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Boom timbers salvaged from the St. Lawrence Seaway
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A New Life for Old Timber
New River Current - The Roanoke Times, March 1st, 1998
Story by Tom Angleberger
Times have changed in Canada. The big wood pulp companies no longer need the hundreds of miles of floating "sidewalks" that once helped men steer timber down rivers and across lakes. Some of the sidewalks, which were made by bolting together three massive beams, have been floating for decades. Now they are being removed.
Sandy Bennett, of Blue Ridge Timberwrights, calls this the timber's "former life." In its new life, some of this timber is being used to create the new Chateau Morrisette winery.
The entire timber-framing of the 30,000-square-foot structure going up just off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Floyd County will be built without cutting down a tree. Only recycled logs will be used. Some of the winery's logs came from the floating sidewalks, some came from an ocean-front warehouse in Seattle and some came from parts unknown.
At first glance, someone might think the big blackened logs would be worthless - certainly not desirable for a project like the new winery.
But Bennett knows what lies under the timber's crusty exterior; that's why he is willing to pay up to $3,000 for each timber.
"The material that we can get out of these timbers is typically superior to anything we can get today," he said, explaining that the timbers are from old-growth forests and are denser and stronger than the fast-growing trees harvested today.
Another fan of recycling old timbers is Al Anderson, Blue Ridge Timberwrights project coordinator. He likes working with the old wood, which he said is dry, stable and has a patina that only comes from age.
It does take some extra work to get the recycled timber ready for use. "We've got to pull all the nails and bolts and hardware out of them," said Anderson, adding that a metal detector is used to make sure they get it all. Then the wood takes its second trip to the saw - this time to have its rugged, worn exterior cut away to reveal beautiful, clean wood underneath.
Then, the builders can treat it just like a regular piece of wood, he said. But he sees it as something better than a piece of regular wood.
"The idea of recycled timber - of timber with a history - I think appeals to everybody." |
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Photos by Gene Dalton