Notes on Board-Formed Concrete

Every board-formed pour is a negotiation with the formwork carpenter as much as with the concrete. The timber grain, the joint lines, the tie-rod pattern — all of it prints into the finished wall, and none of it is fully controllable from a drawing. We now build a full-height trial panel on every project before the first structural pour, not to check the mix but to check the carpenter's set-out.

On Nordlys, the trial panel told us the tie-rod grid we'd drawn read as too regular against the rock behind it — we shifted the horizontal spacing by 40mm and it settled immediately. No amount of elevation drawing would have told us that as clearly as the panel did in ten minutes of morning light.

We now write the trial panel into every specification as a condition of the pour, not a recommendation.