Stopped by a barn renovation in Vermont and noticed something about the ridge beam
I was up in Stowe last weekend helping a buddy look at an old dairy barn he's turning into a workshop. The ridge beam was a full 40 feet long, hand hewn from a single white pine, and it had zero sag after 150 years. My buddy wants to reuse it, but there's a crack running about 8 feet along the grain near the center. I told him to leave it alone, but he's thinking about sistering a steel plate on it for strength. Has anyone here dealt with reusing old ridge beams like this, or is it better to just leave the crack be?