Knowledge Base
Built from experience.
Practical guides for structural design, material selection, and product comparison. Twenty-five years in lumber, engineered wood, and structural timber. Nineteen at the engineered design desk.
Every article comes from a real project problem. Beam sizing, joist selection, material tradeoffs, the stuff that matters when you're building.
Europe's rules now reward keeping a building. Here is why that is the right instinct, and what it takes to do it well.
Read Article →Beam sizing depends on load, span, and species. This guide walks through the real-world process: tributary area, load paths, and which products actually work at 20 feet.
Read Article →Both are engineered wood, but they solve different problems. Glulam for long spans and exposed applications. LVL for concealed headers and economy. Here's how to choose.
Read Article →Span tables look simple until you need to compare across manufacturers. This guide breaks down how to read them, what the series numbers mean, and where the real differences are.
Read Article →Wood handles most residential spans. But when depth is constrained, loads are extreme, or spans exceed 40 feet, steel starts making sense. Here's the decision framework.
Read Article →A 5-1/4" PSL column carries far more load than the same-size DF timber, but at 2-3x the cost. When does the premium pay off? When does it not?
Read Article →Reading about products is useful. Comparing them side-by-side is better.
Open Free Tools →Tell us about your project. We'll tell you honestly whether we're the right fit.
Twenty-five years in lumber, engineered wood, and structural timber. Nineteen of them at the engineered design desk for one of the Midwest's leading wholesale lumber distributors.
Bardowl, and every tool on this site, came out of that work.