2024 Maine Timber Frame Workshop

Hey folks, I’m back in Japan and back to the blog after another stint away in the US to assist Yamamoto-san of Somakosha in teaching a Japanese timber frame workshop in Maine hosted by Jason Fox (Never Stop Building). The project was a major undertaking. Overall the structure was about 6.25m x 12.5m (~20′ x 40′), so not exactly a small building, featuring massive green white pine timbers. But with the help of 20 students we cut all the joinery and raised the building in 6 days. Cutting and raising the frame in that timeframe was a lot of work but it also was a ton of fun, and overall I think it was a great success.

The following photos show a few highlights from the workshop.

We started things out light by having the students cut rafter pockets in the ridge beam, top plates and purlins.

From there we moved onto trickier tasks such as cutting through mortises. These white pine beams were wide, making the through mortises tricky to cut. I didn’t measure but I’d guess some of the longest through mortises were over 2.5′ long! Mortises on the natural edge beams were drilled out first, then we cleaned things up with long neck Japanese chisels and hon-suki-nomi (本空き鑿).

The posts were smaller in dimension and milled square so we were able to use the hollow chisel mortiser for post mortises…

…followed by a bit of chisel cleanup to cut ramping slopes for the cross bracing (nuki).

All in all there was a good mix of work involving both hand tools and power tools.

The final couple of days prior to the raising were spent largely on scribing. Here one of the students is working on scribing one of the short posts that will be supporting the ridge beam.

On the first raising day, almost half the day involved moving the massive beams down to the site. Thankfully we had a crane to hoist the beams up onto a rolling cart, then as a group we very carefully rolled the beams down to the site.

The raising itself went pretty smooth. Here’s one of the top plates being brought down into place.

Here’s the other end of the same beam. You can more clearly see the housed lap joints (watari-ago) we used for these connections. These joints are super strong and with the pieces scribed to one another they look amazing when assembled.

On day 6, the last day of the workshop, we finished with the ridge beam. Truthfully when I first arrived in Maine and saw the scale of the timbers and the work ahead of us, I was skeptical we would make it this far. But everyone worked really hard, with plenty of late nights, and we were able to raise the majority of the building during the 6 day workshop.

Placing the ridge beam was followed by a ceremony blessing the structure, led by Yama-san.

It was truly an amazing group of people that made this whole project a success. A huge thanks to all the students who participated and worked their butts of to get the building done!

After celebrating (a little too much), we took a day off and then spent two more days the following week finishing the roof by installing the purlins, rafters, and roof decking. Just in time for to make the building useable for the Maine Japanese Woodworking Festival.

Zooming in on the west gable end you can see some of the scribing details between the posts and beams, as well as the scribed watari-ago joints.

The opposite end of the building, looking from the inside out makes for a pretty incredible view.

I really love the combination of the fine scribed joints and hewn beams.

And finally here’s a look at the rafters flowing out to form a nice deep eve.

Again I really want to thank all the student who joined us for this workshop. Also thanks to Jason Fox for hosting and putting the workshop together. And lastly, thanks to Yama-san who worked his ass off for weeks leading up to the workshop hewing, designing and laying out the entire frame.

Now for some news from back here in Japan… we bought a house!

The house is about 115 years old and in really good condition overall, but there are definitely some fun carpentry projects on the horizon. I’ll write up another post in the near future sharing some of the details, so stay tuned.