Curved Strut

[missgravergaard]

Hi
I have an old house (1850) and one of the struts in the roof have an odd shape. It has a straight side on one side and is curved on the other(so like a rally slim capital D) this makes it really thin in the top end. It look like it was made like this.The wood look healthy enough. Do anyone have any experience with this or have seen this before?

//www.diynot.com/network/missgravergaard/albums


Thank you

 

[ladylola]

Yes I've seen similiar in old houses. Nowadays we are acustomed to timbers being all neat and regulary shaped but this wasn't always the case, carpenters would use oddly shaped timbers in a roof where they weren't going to be seen. Cutting them all nice and even just meant more work for no reason. Besides if the piece has been doing its job for over 150 years then it's really not worth worrying about , it's just a bit of "character"