The Daily Southerner, Tarboro, NC

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September 24, 2008

Wood houses were built without nails

Timber framing will be on display Saturday

T. J. ROYAL

Tarboro's Kevin Wilson will show how homes were built well before the time of The Civil War during Saturday's History Days.

Wilson's company, TimberFab Inc. at 200 W. Hope Lodge Street, builds timber frame structures by attaching wood without using metal nails.

At History Days, some of Wilson's crew will show a model of an English "cruck" frame, a timber frame formed with crooked or curved wood, which his company has started doing for customers.

Wilson said that cruck framing is an environmentally-conscious way to build wood structures. The wood that's used is not sought after by mainstream wood manufacturers or loggers, who prefer straight timber, Wilson said.

Along with introducing their latest offering, Wilson said he will have some of his employees over at History Days to do some carving, and to show how they assemble their timber frames.

Using timber to frame a house is "a type of work that's very, very old," Wilson said.

"In fact, most of the homes in this area built prior to 1840 are usually a timber frame," he added.

To make the frames, Wilson said his company doesn't use a production line. Their frames, either for whole houses, single rooms or other structures, are made with hand tools, especially when polishing and doing the detail work.

Though the fine details of their framework are done completely by hand, Wilson said his crews use power tools to do the "rough" wood work faster.

"It was a lot of work to make timber frames and small pieces. My crew would have a hard time building houses" just with the tools that were available before the Industrial Revolution, he said.

To combine their timber frames into a whole, the company uses the centuries-old technique of connecting wood with mortise and tenon joints.

To make each joint, one piece of wood is shaped to fit into another, with both pieces attached and secured by wooden pegs.

"We still use mallets and chisels to do the final work on the joints, the final fitting and cleanup" on a frame, Wilson said.

With the mortise and tenon joint, houses are pieced together, and at the same time can be taken down piece by piece. Wilson said it makes the house strong and hard to tear down unless the wood is rotted.

But at the same time, the mortise and tenon joint structures can be taken apart, repaired and reassembled, he said.

The technique produces structures that can withstand the elements better than houses that use metal nails, Wilson said.

Even the timber frames they've built in the Bahamas and Bermuda have withstood hurricane force winds, Wilson said. So far, the company hasn't had one of its structures to collapse from the weather, he added.

Because of its timeless quality, Wilson said people are drawn to wood. And when it's used in a way that's timeless, like with the long-used mortise and tenon joint technique, "it shows strength and prominence.

Wilson said that when it comes to his company's timber frame work, "we're teaching history, and we're living history in what we're doing every day."

Timberfab has been in business 16 years, Wilson said.

Several houses on the Edgecombe Garden Club’s Homes Tour Saturday are probably timberframe: The Blount-Bridgers House, the Pender Museum and the Philips Dependency, and the Clark Cotten house.

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