Yeah, every house around here has these same beams, lintels, etc... and
every one has little cracks around it. Especially indoors. It's
unfortunately a fact of life for us here as that is the standard
construction. I put my bricks around the beams with space and kept morter
out as best I could. I'll come back with caulking after the stucco and
we'll see what happens. And yes, you're right about the wetness of the
beams. They pretty much cut them right there and hand them to you with no
drying whatsoever.
Cheers,
cc

ps. Not everyone has an adobe arch, but a lot do. Many have exactly what
I'm doing

"C & S" wrote in message
...
My house is almost 150 years old. The construction is brick with massive
oak
lintles. There are cracks above every single one. This leads me to the
concusion that wood lintles supporting masonry is just a bad idea.
Timbers
tend to be pretty wet, not like the nice kiln dried hardwoods that you
know
and love in the shop. The will shrink. That wil leave the adobe
unsupported.

If the lintel is decorative and there is something else holding up the
stones above, the there will just be a little seam above the lintle to
fill.
That could work.

Cheers,

Steve - who thinks there is a reason why everybody else has an adobe arch.