Article for PTN News
by Christine Wertsch

On a chilly, rainy April day, 11 people met together to work on an 1840 timber frame barn at Blandair Farm in Howard County, MD. The group consisted of a cross section of students, executives, college students, and professional carpenters, attending the 3-day Timber Frame Workshop sponsored by PTN and Howard County Parks and Recreation.

The first day began with a brief history of the site and the barn. Then it was on to chisel sharpening. It takes a long time to sharpen a new chisel! After exploring the structure, we paired up and assignments were handed out. We had the corner post team, the roof purlin team, the knee brace team, and two different top plate teams. We all noticed that a momma buzzard had laid two eggs on the second floor of the barn where we were working. She was watching us. We then took measurements for our pieces, rechecked them, laid out our joints, and rechecked our layouts. Remember ? measure a bunch of times and cut once, especially in large oak timbers, was the rule!

Professor Rhonda Deeg from Harford Community College?s Building Preservation and Restoration program stopped in with a cameraman from the Mass Communications department to film and conduct interviews. Our program is creating a video to promote PTN, the preservation trades and our BPR program at Harford.

The second day it was still raining. We started cutting our mortises, tenons, and scarf joints. There was a lot of sawing and chiseling going on!

On the third day we finished cutting our joints. The weather promised to be better. By midday, we were told not to expect to get the pieces installed and that it would take two hours to get the pieces into place. At 1:00 p.m. we test fit the top plates into the corner post and made adjustments on the ground instead of fifteen feet in the air. We were all excited to see our work conclude. We moved most of the pieces close to where they were to be installed, and then we all had a hand in carrying the corner post to the building and lifting it into place. A little tweaking here, and a little adjusting there, and the corner post was engaged. The first top plate was lifted and settled into place, and then the other top plate was tweaked and finally set into place. We finished an hour past the scheduled quitting time. By the time we installed the pieces, the blue sky showed through!

We congratulated each other for a job well done, cleaned up, and all left with a feeling of accomplishment, vowing to come back next fall. Thanks, especially, to Glenn James for teaching us and Mike Logan for providing the site and tent that kept us dry.