After 4 days of dodging showers, working in light rain, and heinous heat and humidity, I have the 3 rows of posts up, along with their diagonal braces and tie beams.
The last step for this frame will be top plates (5x6x18') and rafters (4x5). If you look at placement of the braces and tie beams,
you'll see that it's an exercise in having enough of them to stabilize the building, while keeping them out of the way of doors and windows
and not taking too much meat out of critical parts of the frame.




 I've gotten some questions about why the joists are tapered at the ends. The reasons are: 1- They need to be reduced in depth
so that where they knotch into the sills and summer beam doesn't remove too much structure from sills and beam, 2- By tapering back gently instead of a stepped cuts,
the joists are less likely to split, 3- The main force that the joists need to counter is deflection, which is most pronounced in the center of spans,
and thus they need to be thickest in the middle.
When I get the frame together, I'll take a picture of each of the joints and explain why I used them. FYI,
the best music to listen to while cutting a timber frame is Gypsy Jazz - Django, Oscar Aleman, Jimmy Rosenberg....