A sill plate or sole plate in construction and architecture is the bottom horizontal member of a wall or building to which vertical members are attached. The word plate is typically omitted in America and carpenters speak simply of the "sill". Other names are ground plate, ground sill, groundsel, and mud sill. Sill plates are usually composed of lumber but can be any material. The timber at the top of a wall is often called a top plate, pole plate, wall plate or simply "the plate".
Read more about Sill Plate: Timber Sills, Stick Framing, Automobiles, Naval Architecture
Famous quotes containing the words sill and/or plate:
“Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked by the musing traveller; planted and tended once by children’s hands, in front-yard plots,—now standing by wall-sides in retired pastures, and giving place to new-rising forests;Mthe last of that stirp, sole survivor of that family.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Our press is certainly bankrupt in the “thrill of awe”Motherwise reverence: reverence for nickel plate and brummagem. Let us sincerely hope that this fact will remain a fact forever; for to my mind a discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)