Why would you consider restoring instead of replacing or adding another wood member alongside the damaged one?  A few reasons: the member may be part of a larger frame, like a truss, that can’t be partially dismantled or that the wood (Elm, Chestnut or specialty wood) can’t be found anymore.  The beam may be large and long like the southern yellow pine beams in the old mills of New England   It may be a hip or valley rafter or ridge beam or an exposed beam of a post-and-beam framed home.

Splitting, cracking or fracturing in any of these situations lends itself to epoxy injection repair methods.  Epoxy materials can take higher tensile and compression forces than wood yet are compatible with and behave similarly to wood.  Both materials are carbon/hydrogen compounds, an ideal match.

Some repairs use steel angles, channels or plates to re-attach split wood.  These are not successful over the long term because the two materials behave so differently with temperature and seasonal moisture changes.  The repairs come apart or the metal traps moisture against the wood and causes rot.

The first time I encountered the need to repair a beam was in 1987 when an 11”x17” x 20’ long timber beam in a Lowell, MA mill complex split as seen in this image. The beam had been over-loaded from stored goods.  It sagged over a foot. Southern yellow beams of this size and length were not available.  Removing it and replacing it with a steel beam would have been costly and engineered lumber had not come onto the market.  Having used epoxy injection since 1969 for concrete repairs I decided to use it here.  The repair was a total success leaving the beam stronger than it was before. Click here to find out how it’s done and the epoxy materials that are available today.

In next month’s newsletter I’ll talk about how you can use epoxy to repair beams that have deteriorated in localized areas, rather than splitting from too heavy loads.