Reddit mentions of A Timber Framer's Workshop: Joinery & Design Essentials for Building Traditional Timber Frames

>the reason that you are seeing so much variance in member sizes is likely due to people not actually designing the members. They’re just shooting from the hip and trying to make themselves feel comfortable.

Heh. This book is apparently by someone who started one of the first timber framing companies in North America, and founded and instructs at a vocational school that specifically teaches timber framed construction.

So he's supposed to know what he's doing, but apparently doesn't, by what you're suggesting.

For comparison, this guy keeps writing technical explanations of why structural members are sized the way they are, and his company goes around looking at buildings that collapse and identifying why they collapsed (inadequate fastening of two members intended to act as one, inadequate bracing, bracing to the truss when the truss isn't designed to account for the lateral load from the column, etc.) and adjusting their practice standards to account for all of these lessons learned.

> If you were mimicking the cookie cutter design completely, then depending on where you live and where the design was intended to be used, you may be fine.

Yeah, that's not happening. I'm not sure if I'm actually creating new, unique engineering problems—kind of like how the first sailboat was built by people who knew how to make windmills, knew how oars worked, but had zero experience with what kinds of loads a mast on a ship dragging along the ocean surface was really going to face. In those kinds of situations, you always face increased risk: you have plenty of theory to work it out, but no real-world lessons learned about the particulars of the specific problem, and so odd and unexpected things can happen.

I know I'm building a bit more than your typical tool shed, though.