Floating shelf is a typical structural form of column base in traditional timber construction, and the timber column is prone to swinging under horizontal load. The rocking behaviour of timber columns shows that the floating column base joints have semi-rigid characteristics, which plays an important role in resisting the lateral load and maintaining the overall stability of timber structures. In this paper, a modelling method of rocking wood column base joints is proposed. A row of axial springs is arranged at the column base to simulate the stress state of the contact interface between the column base and the foundation stone. The corresponding numerical model is established based on the OpenSees platform. The validity of themodelling method is verified by comparing with the refined finite element model and the experimental data in a large number of related literatures. At the same time, some factors affecting themodelling method are analyzed, including the contact stiffness, distribution mode, spring number and constitutive material of the column spring. The results show that the modelling method is relatively insensitive to the contact stiffness. It is suggested that the calculated compression depth of the timber column is the radius of the timber column to determine the contact stiffness of each spring element. The three distribution modes are applicable to the modelling method, and the number of spring units should not be less than 10. For wooden columns with a high axial compression ratio, the ElasticPP material constitutive considering the spring element entering plasticity should be adopted in the modeling process.