This revised edition of A Timber Framer s Workshop has over 150 new photos and includes updated engineering specifications for pegged joinery, along with expanded in-depth technical information on the joinery, design and construction of Traditional Timber Frames. Illustrated with over 500 photos and CAD drawings. The major portion of A Timber Framer's Workshop was first written back in 1983. Over a period of a number of years several revisions and additions took place, as it was used as the handout workshop manual for Fox Maple Timber Framing Workshops. At last, it was published for general distribution in 1998. When this book was first published in 1998, scientific testing results for pegged mortise and tenon joinery simply did not exist. The corollaries that could be made at that time were drawn from testing results for bolted connections. This is common in engineering as the essential physical laws concerning force and motion, primarily Newtonian physics, are symmetrical. However, nothing ever beats a direct test for a specific condition as the results end with an emphatic exclamation point. In the past five or six years testing has at last been carried out for a number of the most common pegged joinery conditions and the results have been published. The impetus for this revision was in large part to update and to include these new testing results so that the readers would be privy to the latest engineering results available for timber frame joinery. Along the way, over 150 new photos and drawings were added and editorial additions were made to clarify specific conditions, or to more fully explain a critical aspect of timber framing. While the essential book is the same, virtually every element is expanded in some way to paint a more vibrant picture of the technical aspects of how to build a traditional timber frame. In addition, there is an expanded element of color and nuance to help the reader more fully understand the magic of timber framing... and that timber framing really is the Jazz of building.
Steve Chappell is a builder at heart and a teacher by nature. His journey in timber framing began while traveling on the northern coast of California in the summer of 1970, when by chance he joined a group of individuals in the construction of a joined timber frame. The group was led by a New Englander who grew up playing in his uncle's barn. Inspired by the experience, he moved to Maine in 1973 to study the buildings first hand. One of the earliest pioneers of the revival of timber framing, in 1975 Chappell started what may have been the first timber framing company devoted to designing and building new timber frames since its demise in the early 1900s. Building, teaching, and writing about the craft has been his passion ever since.
As the founder and director of Fox Maple School of Traditional Building in 1983, Chappell has instructed many hundreds of individuals over the past 30 years through hands-on workshops from Maine to California, Argentina to Alaska, Spain to New Mexico and across Canada. As the Editor & Publisher of Joiners' Quarterly, The Journal of Timber Framing & Traditional Building, a magazine he founded in 1983, Chappell has written extensively about timber framing and traditional building. It is through his call to unite in JQ that the first organizing committee, and subsequently, the Timber Framers Guild, was born.
