Cutting the Frame

For this year's timber framing project, our class was contracted to build an addition to a modest 1850's Cape style home in Canton, MA. The Cape, which is owned by the State of Massachusetts, will likely serve as a headquarters, and caretakers cottage, for the 7,000 acre Blue Hills Reservation State Park.

Our work began with a hulking delivery of freshly cut "greenwood" timbers. In this case, locally sourced Eastern White Pine.

After stacking and organizing the timbers, we set upon laying out the joinery for the 18'x24' structure, starting with the sills and working our way up to the rafters. It took a little while to wrap our heads around the locations of the mortise and tenon joinery, but once we did, it became a fun task boring, chopping, and sawing our hundreds of frame components, largely by hand. 

With 13 students working in sync, we had the majority of the frame cut, fitted, and stacked in piles in three short weeks. Successfully fitting the rafters was a symbolic milestone of our progress and a moment of great pride for the men and women on our team.