HARDWICK — Sometimes the old ways are new, sometimes the new ways are old, and sometimes the two are interlocking.
Hardwick Post & Beam Inc. embraces the time-honored method of timber-frame construction in the structures it designs and builds, yet is is eager to apply more modern methods to improve its business.
Timber-frame construction uses stout posts and beams, shaped to lock together in a structure without nails or other mechanical fasteners. This building style creates large spans that don't require partitions to support them, allows the frame to be exposed for decorative possibilities, and can offer energy efficiency with an insulated exterior skin that minimizes thermal loss.
While a revival of interest in the form began in the 1970s, the size of the market for timber frame contruction 20 years later isn't known. Tracy Davis O'Connell, a graduate student in Wood Products Marketing at Pennsylvania State University, has identified 240 interactive businesses in the United States and Canada and 2,500 "interested" consumers, plus another 500 people who have already bought the homes.
"Most of the (timber-frame) companies have been formed in the mid-'80s, around when the Timber Framers Guild formed, in 1984," she said.
Hardwick Post & Beam, founded in 1983, belongs to the Guild and its affiliate, Timber Frame Business Council, whose goal of promoting the centuries-old timber-frame method includes supporting high-tech research at the University of Wyoming to test the strength of wooden joints.

CHALLENGED MACHINE

At a Timber Framers Guild conference held in Amherst in June, Professor Dick Schmidt arrived with a machine that subjected the wooden pegs in mortise and tenon joints to stresses that were calibrated to predict failure in different sizes and scenarios.
Before the conference, Hardwick Post & beam President Ridgway F. Shinn III said, "Our crew spent a day or so trying to make a joint to beat the machine. They developed a double-wedged dovetail, which performed quite well against the machine."
Hardwick Post & Beam's Todd Wilson, Dave Post and John Flamand took home the "Stretch the Rules Award" for their effort, since what they had devised could not be called a simple solution under the informal contest's guidelines. Yet, back in the shop on Fleming Road in Hardwick, they discovered that their new approach wasn't so new after all.
As part of the restoration of Hardwick's town hall, Hardwick Post & Beam had volunteered to rebuild the cribbing that supports the bell in the bell tower. They pulled out the old timbers, which date to 1847 – the year inscribed on the bell when it was donated to the town.
"We disassembled the cribbing, and what was there?" Shinn asked. "Double-wedged dovetail. That was pretty neat."

TIMELESS WAYS

Shinn enjoyed discovering that people separated by 150 years were joined in practicing the same craft and devising the same solutions. His love of the tradtional craft was honed at Old Sturbridge Village, a living museum that re-creates a New England village from the 1880s. He used a broad ax to hew timbers to build his own house. "I know how to do it, but it's not something I see as economically viable."
Nine-employees Hardwick Post & Beam concentrates on bringing timber framing to new construction, using new methods where it can be faithful to the old craft.
"In the old days, they did it of course entirely by hand. What we do is, we've gotten modern tools. If we can make exactly the same joints but faster, we do," Shinn said.
Shinn imported a chain mortiser from Japan to drill holes in the beams to start making the mortise, or hole in which the tenon secures the joint. "It's much faster, but it's not accurate enough to cut right to the line. So we still use hand chisels to cut right to the line," he said.
On a sultry day in the shop last week, hand chisesl were pounded while an electric saw whined and the chain mortiser droned. The tools are used to cut the oak or Douglas fir that will become wooden frames for homes and barns as far away as Arizona and Martha's Vineyard, as well as around Hardwick and Worcester.

HOISTED IN PLACE

The Post Office Pub in Grafton and the meditation hall at Insight Meditation in Barre, for example, feature frames that were cut and numbered in the shop, assembled in cross-sections called bents at the site, and then hoisted by cranes into place on the building's foundation. Such work was once done by 50 people and is now fondly remembered as barn-raisings.
By the time it leaves here, it's like a Lincoln Log set," Shinn said, referring to the children's plaything. "Everything's cut. You have to put the right number with the right number, but you can't go too far wrong."
The six people in the shop may be using power tools, but their work hearkens back to what Shinn calls a craft-shop philosophy – as opposed to an assembly line with people at workstations performing only one function.
"We still attempt to be a craft shop where each person does their own work. Each person signs out for the timber they're going to take and put on their bench. Everybody has a set of tools," Shinn said.
The small-shop approach facilitates custom work instead of models, eases communication about any changes in the job, and enhances quality control.
"The same people who are cutting the joints are putting them together on the site so the same people check each other," said Bruce S. Griffin, who manages sales and marketing. "Constant feedback means that we have ways of ensuring we don't make mistakes."

PANELS ADDED

Once the frame is in place, stress-skin panels from Winter Panels in Brattleboro, Vt., are connected to the outside of the frame. The panels are made with urethane foam that fuses finishable wallboard for inside the house and an exterior frameboard to which clapboard or stucco can be attached.
Because the timber frame is entirely within the skin of the house, no thermal breaks occur when a framing member interrupts the exterior frame. As a result, the house is extremely energy efficient with insulation in the roof and walls.
Compared to conventional stick construction, the price of a house is about 10 percent to 15 percent higher, but Shinn suggests that a conventional dwelling providing the same qualities of energy efficiency plus exposed-beam cathedral ceilings would cost more. A three-bedroom, two-story saltbox might cost from $160,000 to $170,000 to be built on land the client owns.
"To build this is a little bit more money, but it's a tremendously better product."

AHEAD OF PACE

The shop can handle one project at a time. So far this year, the crew has designed and built 15 homes – ahead of the 10 to 12 homes per year pace the company needs to remain profitable. But Shinn would like to do more, as long as it does not endanger the craft-shop ethos.
Last fall, Shinn hired Griffin to expand sales. The two men wrote a business plan, which resulted in a greater commitment to promotion and marketing.
Griffin's first project was to review the company's contact base, some of which had "lain fallow," he said. "I bought some software to help maintain the lead base, which we are now staying on top of. We had a couple of people who have called because they have seen the company on the Internet, at the Timber Framers Guild site. We don't have our own Web site, but we're talking about getting one."
Old meets new, as post joins beam.