for specific jobs, every wood imaginable was used in barn construction. Oak was the ideal material for barn framework, given its strength. In general, softwoods were desired for planking stock, as they were light in weight and dried quickly after sawing. Clapboards and shingles were generally made of pine or white cedar. But that said, every one of these materials can be found doing any one of these jobs in New England barns. As time went by and forests disappeared, framers became less finicky about the materials they used. If one type of wood was not available locally, another was substituted. If a stand of pine covered the land upon which the barn was to be constructed, more likely than not the barn was made of pine. There was a beautiful barn in New London, Connecticut, that was framed entirely with black locust. Unfortunately, arsonists demolished it early in the twenty-first century. Connecticut barns are framed with pine, hemlock, chestnut, elm, oaks of all types — and I even found one with timbers of walnut. Unlike today, when materials may be gathered and delivered from locations thousands of miles distant, colonial builders shopped locally, and the nearest tree was often the best tree for the job.
The timber-framing tradition that colonists brought with them to Connecticut had been around for centuries, and with few changes it would last nearly two centuries more. There were two primary reasons for this: the cost of sawn lumber and the cost of iron nails. For early builders, lumber in the form of planks or timber represented a significant cost in both time and labor. Even if sawn by a mill, these boards had to be purchased with either cash or tradable goods. In agrarian societies, cash and the time needed to produce goods beyond those required by the family were often in short supply. Any construction method that reduced the number of components that needed to be paid for was usually preferred.
Lathe-turned trunnel. Note tapered end of trunnel is unusual for most barns. This trunnel was turned for a Shaker barn, thus the refinement. As the holes bored for trunnels were not tapered, blunt ends were generally used.
5.5-inch heavy framing nails down to 1-inch finish nails used to fasten trim. Machines cut these nails starting in the 1790s.
Cut nails are sheared from sheets of metal. Despite having come from the same machine, cut nails are less uniform than modern nails.
Cut finishing nails.
Modern wire nails are cut from spools of wire and quite uniform.
Iron nails were the second limiting factor in barn construction. Nails were very dear in the New World and were used sparingly. While iron, copper, and bronze nails had been around for centuries, they were expensive to make. After ores were found and dug from the earth, they had to be put through the smelting process just to produce base metals — and the smelting process itself took a tremendous amount of energy. It is not hard to imagine the prohibitive cost of heating iron ores to temperatures upward of 2,700 degrees using charcoal as fuel. After the first steps, of simply producing base metals, the nails themselves had to be forged by hand. Making nails from raw stock, one at a time, discouraged frivolous use. Nails were used only when nothing else would do.
It wasn’t until the early 1800s that the price of iron began to drop as furnaces reducing these ores became more efficient. Changes in technology allowed for higher and more consistent temperatures, and the switch to high-energy coal in the smelting process began to make a difference. The first nail-making machines to cut nails from iron sheets were invented in the 1790s. They eventually replaced the need for blacksmiths to forge nails one by one. Despite these changes, the cost of nails remained a limiting factor, and timber framing remained the dominant technology throughout most of Connecticut until after the Civil War, when nails became relatively inexpensive.
The first significant innovation in home and barn construction came, as previously mentioned, with balloon frame construction, the forerunner of the building system we use today for most domestic architecture. In balloon framing, relatively light pieces of wood are joined with inexpensive metal fastenings using comparatively unskilled labor. Rather than laboriously cutting mortise and tenon joints, workers simply cut the wood to the appropriate lengths and nail the pieces together. While there were hundreds of individual pieces that went into the frame of the building, each piece was light in weight and came from a mill ready to use. Signs of what was to come with balloon framing began quite early in cities, where the need for housing was great, but it wasn’t until after the Civil War that this framing method became the new standard.
Timber framing.
Balloon framing eventually ran its course as well. Because of several distinct disadvantages to the technique, it was replaced with today’s system of framing: platform construction. In platform framing, an eight-foot wall is erected and the next floor is built on top of it. This allows carpenters to build the second floor’s walls on that deck. In balloon framing, walls run the full height of the structure, often two or three floors, forcing carpenters to work high in the air. Much longer pieces of wood are required in balloon framing, potentially raising costs. Finally, balloon-framed buildings — up until the addition of fire stops — burned quite rapidly when they caught fire, an obvious hazard. While the timber framing tradition was generally wholly replaced by the late 1800s, there were some exceptions. There is a timber-framed barn on a farm just down the street from where I live that was built by the owner’s father in 1917. Except for the fact that the timbers were sawn and not hewn, the barn looks as though it could have been built any time over the previous hundred years.
Balloon framing.
Platform framing.
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