BREAKING NEWS!! NOTRE-DAME of PARIS is ON FIRE!

That's an amazing proposal/concept born from this tragedy.

Actually, quite a lot is known about the framing: see this report (in French)

Disney to donate $5M to the rebuilding effort.

Source at CNN Business

New York police officers arrested a man earlier today carrying 4 gallons of gasoline into St. Patricks cathedral. I haven't found any additional information, maybe later sometime Thursday.

I didnt mean to sound crass but, the way they teach stuff like tree ring analyses is to do dendrochrono work on specimens of known ages. That y the students can do all the things needed to learn the craft. Im sure the church will hoes the beams off an, identify their positions in the framing.(This was probably built in an age where plans werent really relied upon-thats one thing we give credit to Leonardo for). But Ill bet the beams were numbered at some age later and plans were drawn of the framing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/nyregion/st-patricks-cathedral-arrest.html

Most churches in that period (and before) were built by try and error. This escalated sometimes when one town wanted to built am higher bell tower than the neighbouring ... (in northern France, there are several examples).

I remember the fascinating, fun story about the dome in Florence—the years the Church was ‘topless’, and the curious story of the Medicis and Brunelleschi.

Im not a huge fan of Leonardo da Vinci because, even though he was a "man of his age" and a true genius, some of his biggest ideas were hogswallop. Ever read the Leicester Codex?? It was mostly garbage of the 16th century, full of silly hypotheses .

However, the one thing engineers and designers of all kinds give Leonardo credit for, is to give us the concept of "Blueprints" (except not ammonia based like blueprints used to be)

I've been to an exhibition of da Vinci's drawings in London years ago. But I'm not so much interest that I'll go to the one next year in the British Library, when the Codex Arundel, the Codex Forster and the Codex Leicester will be features of a special exhibition.

But earlier, Villard de Honnecourt made what is thought to be the first surviving "sketchbook", about 1225-1235.

Wilars dehonecort greets you and asks all those who will work with these constructions found in this book to pray for his soul and remember him. Because in this book one can find great advice about the great skill of masonry and the constructions of carpentry, and you will find the skill of drawing, the basic features as the skill of geometry demands and teaches it.
Online at the website of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF).

His sketches give an indication of the planning techniques used at that time, especially for the cathedral of Reims, which is of utmost importance for the development of the High Gothic form (articulated piers, tracery, sculpture programmes), technology and the planning process in 1211/33, and which he depicts on six sheets with interior and exterior views as well as detailed drawings, in steeper proportions and with details altered compared to the execution.

At that time, however, the building was mostly still conceived in the mind (opus in mente conceptum)

The "Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge" has an excellent online report (with a lot of sources/links) about Building knowledge in the Early and High Middle Ages, in German only.

Ive never seen the Codex Arundel. Im going to have to look for it on the Leonardo site

Why not keep your own partisan ejaculate totally out of your posts .I was responding to something undeniably stupid that Mr Trump said about the fire, and it was totally within the scope of this thread. Sorry but it was news about this topic, not the POV of the one you mentioned.

I dont know, maybe Im wrong but I dont think so.

Ive heard from a colleague that several of the
burnt ends" (This is a barbecue term), of roof beams will be sent to several institutions for tree ring analyses and laser ablation analyses. Im not sure what cleanup tricks will be relied on so that the ablation and analyses arent interfered with from trapped CO2 and CO and tars.
Some of the logs were actually replaced around the early spire when it was built in th 1500's. I wonder if they were actually numbered in later years and memorialized on contruction as-builts (drawings often made well after something is already built and operating)

When you look at photos (like >here<), it doesn't seem they were numbered.

"Abbundzeichen" (assembly marks) have been used previously to time/identify timber in medival churches and buildings here:
Source




Example:

Thats really interesting because in Pa, the German Barns are numbered that way. They use a horizontal line etched into the beam for each "lift" (Some of our bigger "bank barns" have up to three lifts . Then, atop the horizontal lines are roman numerals for each of these sequences (Those I dont know how they are done. In a barn raising I stopped at a few years ago, they had a guy with a DREMEL carver run on a gas generator (Amish do not use "grid based" electricity although they will use electricity if they generate it themselves either by gas/diesel or by solar/wind..

They showed a comprehensive film sequence of the fire as it progressed and really got working.
It turned out that with the combination of the lead roof AND the way that many of the beams (In that cruciform shape that held up the spire), There was no way thy could ven get water in there to do some good UNTIL large parts of the lead roof melted away. Imagine a lead roof. Th roof alone weighed in at about 50 tons they said(Im checking that out it seems rather light for a dense material over such an area and almost 1/2 in thick plating).
Wood beams are still among the most durable material to maintain shape in large spans,(so long as they are kept dry and protected from fire).

They are talking about using Titanium roofing because of its strength, workability with rolled seam technology, and its weight difference.
Theyve already got scaffolding repared and tehyre removing some of the concrete spandrels that had to stay while the repairs were going on.

Some of the new fire extinguishing systems especially made for institutions and historic buildings are some of these more toxic brominated organochlorines and Flouro chlorines. These things monitor where critical temperatures exist and the fire extinguishing chemical is pumped and sprayed right at it and the fire is extinguished rather rapidly.. We used to use "Nitrogen blanketing"for mine fires in coal areas but they have a small window of opportunity to work because after a point the sediments dissociate and the fire becomes almost self sustaining as it produces. its own oxygen.

They had an opportunity to install a water sprinkler and fire detection systems in the spire and attic but typical catholic church "calendars" they apparently decided to wait a few more centuries


BTW the Wed NYT had a large diagram of t Notre Dame Cathedral and gave a time line seris of all the repairs and additions through history. I think it was engineer who said that this place was futzed with since 1200 that its hardly a need to "restore it" to an original state cause there really wasnt one. Even the spire was a later addition and then was restored once before