Timber Framing Schools and Workshops

Shelter Institute

In-Person and Online Courses

Online CoursesTimber framing, woodworking and much more at in-person quality, from your own home.

In-Person CoursesJoin us in person on our campus in Maine to learn timber framing, building science or both.

https://www.sheltercourses.com/

Phone: 207-442-7938

Heartwood School

2-day to 2-week courses for novices and professionals in timber framing, design, woodworking, housebuilding and more. Please call or write for a free brochure.

• Alstead, New Hampshire, USA
• 413-623-6677
• Email: request@heartwoodschool.com
• Visit them online at http://www.heartwoodschool.com

Year of the Mud – Timber Frame Workshops

The Year of Mud offers high-quality hands-on natural building workshops, including straw bale construction, cob building, and timber framing. Our Timber Frame Workshops are focused on equipping students with valuable and timeless hand tool experience, and demonstrating the important connections between framing and natural wall systems. The Year of Mud teams up with experienced instructors to offer classes covering everything from square rule layout to roundwood timber framing, and we pride ourselves in crafting a memorable experience that students will greatly cherish.

• Email Ziggy at evacindustry@gmail.com
• South Slope Farm outside of Berea, Kentucky, USA
• Visit them online – The Year of Mud: Timber Frame Workshops

Yestermorrow Design/Build School

Course Description

Timber framing is the craft of building with posts and beams, joists and rafters, all connected by wooden joinery. This carpentry tradition goes back well over a thousand years in Europe, and longer yet in Asia. While in many parts of the world, timber frame carpentry traditions are alive and well, in America it has experienced a resurgence after being neglected for light stick framing. With the revival of interest in the craft in our country has come an openness to experimentation and exploration of world carpentry traditions. Timber framing in America today is an exciting blend of old and new, West and East.  Our class project will be to cut and raise a small timber frame. Students will learn how to draw out joinery on timbers using the traditional Square Rule layout system; cut mortise and tenon joints using hand tools; and assemble and raise the frame. We will divide our course schedule between the daytime hands-on learning of woodworking skills as we cut our frame, and the evening sessions, where we will view slides and discuss a variety of topics relating to timber frame design and construction.SchoolYestermorrow Design/Build School in Waitsfield, Vermont offers over 150 hands-on courses per year in design, construction, woodworking, and architectural craft including a variety of courses concentrating in sustainable design and green building. Operating as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization since 1980, Yestermorrow is one of the only design/build schools in the country, teaching both design and construction skills. Our 1-day to 3-week hands-on courses are taught by top architects, builders, and craftspeople from across the country.

• Luke Cady
• Waitsfield, Vermont, USA
• 802.496.5545
• luke@yestermorrow.org
• Visit them at https://yestermorrow.org/courses/detail/timber-framing

EcoNest School of Natural Building

The EcoNest company…founded in 1996 by Robert Laporte and Paula Baker-Laporte has evolved a unique and proven training system. Graduate professional builders and owner-builders have successfully built EcoNest homes throughout North America.

Our Timber Framing Workshops give you hands-on experience in timber framing – a true craft. http://www.youtube.com/embed/WgGp8hDszzY It offers you a unique opportunity to work with timbers as well as with others of like mind. For some, this experience could be a doorway into the rich world of wooden architecture and perhaps the beginnings of a career in timber framing. Regardless of your intent, the process of transforming a tree into one of the “bones” of a home is magical.

In this five-day workshop, you will review the history of timber framing and contemporary practices used to build modern timber frame homes. Students will learn the basic principles of crafting a timber frame and will develop the following skills:

• Wood selection: Learn how to choose the right timber in the correct orientation to transform a tree into a structural member of a home
• Shop drawings: Make sense of complex shop drawings by learning to understand the details and dimension lines necessary to producing accurate work
• Layout: Learn how to take information from drawings and accurately and efficiently transfer them to the timbers before cutting.
• Joinery: Learn to precisely cut mortise and tenon joinery with hand and power tools.
• Sharpening: Using Japanese water stones, gain proficiency in giving your chisels, slicks and planes a supreme cutting edge.
• Assembly: Learn to mate joints with wooden pegs and assemble timbers into bents and walls.
• Raising: Participate in the experience of erecting a timber frame and see your patient hand-work become a three-dimensional reality.

• Website: http://econest.com/
• Ashland, Oregon, USA
• Phone: tel: 541-488-9508

Adirondack Folk School

What defines Adirondack Folk School (AFS) is its commitment to teaching and promulgating arts, crafts and skilled tradesunique to the Adirondacks. The work of AFS preserves the distinctive cultural heritage of the region, instills self-reliance,and promotes community as well as ecological sustainability. The sense of wonder that hundreds of AFS student-artisansand tradespeople’s experience at the school is palpable, and no less valuable than their extraordinary work, hand-made tolast for generations.The AFS Timber Framing class series ranks among the school’s most popular and enduring offerings. It includesintroductory work in Trestle Ponies and Custom Mailbox construction to more advanced work making the AdirondackWoodshed and Adirondack Cabin, during which students also learn about raising techniques, roofing, siding anddifferent types of foundations.

• Email: info@adirondackfolkschool.org
• Lake Luzerne, New York, USA
• Phone: (518) 696-2400
• Fax: (518) 696-2409
• Website: www.adirondackfolkschool.org

North House Folk School

Timber frame courses at North House Folk School emphasize hands-on experience and offer a range of learning formats, from introductory workshops to build-your-own structures. Timber frame classes have been a featured theme at North House since our beginning in 1997. During each course, students have the opportunity to use professional timber framing power tools, utilize traditional hand-powered tools, learn sharpening skills, read timber frame joinery plans, and much more. Our campus features seven timbered structures, a fantastic resource for learning.Examples of timber framing courses include:- Basic Timber Framing- Build Your Own Large or Small Timber Frame- Grindbygg – Norwegian ‘Trestle Frame’ Timber Framing- Build Timbered Sawhorse TrestlesFind more information and a complete listing of North House’s Timber Frame courses here: http://www.northhouse.org/courses/themes/timberframing/index.htm

School

North House Folk School is a small educational 503(c) non-profit organization on the shore of Lake Superior in Grand Marais, Minnesota. We foster a non-competitive learning environment devoted to teaching traditional northern craft. We offer over 350 courses year round in everything from timber framing to woodworking, blacksmithing to fiber arts. Learn more and see a complete course schedule at www.northhouse.org.

Contact info:

• 888-387-9762
• Grand Marais, Minnesota, USA
• info@northhouse.org
• www.northhouse.org

The American College of the Building Arts

About ACBA: 

The American College of the Building Arts is the only college in the world to offer the four-year Bachelor in Applied Science in Building Arts (B.A.S.) degree. We also offer an Associates degree (A.A.S). Students major in the Building Arts and select one of the six areas of Craft Specialization in which to focus the work in a trade.  Students select a Craft Specialization from the following to provide a focus for their craft education: Stone Carving, Architectural Carpentry, Forged Architectural Iron, Masonry, Plaster, and Timber Framing. The B.A.S. degree is designed to synthesize a traditional liberal arts degree with the Craft Specialization and training in the Building Arts. After completing the degree, students may seek employment within the fields of architecture, design, construction, and preservation, among others.

Students pursue a hybrid curriculum that embraces tradition without ignoring the present – a foot in the past to be able to go forward into the future.  Trade classes are integrated with general education classes to the point where a debate about ironwork can happen in English class and research papers show up in the blacksmith’s shop.  Borrowing from the real-world emphasis of European programs like the Compagnon du Devoir in France, ACBA has developed a world-class internship program that has sent students abroad to work on castles and cathedrals.

Timber Framing Overview:  At ACBA, the carpentry and timber framing programs are combined for the first two years due to the commonality of material, joinery, and most of the tools used in the two trades. The first part of the curriculum covers the basics of hand tools, wood science, and shop safety. Students will learn how to properly use, maintain, and sharpen any tools, from hand tools to portable electric tools as well as all stationary equipment commonly used in carpentry and timber framing shops.

Through a series of small projects, students will be introduced to stick framing as well as mill rule layout, the most basic and modern approach to timber framing. Through these projects, they will learn how to layout and cut the joinery typically used in carpentry and timber framing. Students then learn the principles of laying out, cutting, and assembling straight and winder staircases, and progress into the introduction of sophisticated spiral staircases. Senior students are required to produce a “capstone” project prior to graduation. This project is meant to be representative of at least one aspect of their broad education. This process often requires extensive research, design, and estimating work, as well as the time and labor involved in creating an actual finished product. Projects range from elegant and complex scaled models to smaller full-scale installations for local clients.

Contact info:

• Charleston, South Carolina, USA
• https://acba.edu/
• (843) 266-7835

School of Practical Stereotomy – École Pratique de Stéréotomie

The Professional School of Practical Stereotomy is a small private professional school, unique in the English speaking world, where students are given experience in the application of the historic, time-tested techniques of practical stereotomy – L’Art du Trait. Stereotomy employs working drawings to design and construct structures both simple and complex. It is an empirically based method that has been used for millennia in the design and construction of European cathedrals, fortresses, castles, including historically classified UNESCO world heritage monuments such as the Chartres Cathedral. Students of practical stereotomy become knowledgeable through hands-on experience of a process that makes the most complex designs very manageable. In truth, the experience of this approach not only provides students with new skills and enhances those they already possess, but in fact transforms them in a more profound way. They begin not only to do things differently and think differently, but indeed to see differently. To see now what before they could not see. The result of this experience is that students are now able to undertake with confidence projects they previously found intimidating or too complex to attempt.

Online courses : https://schoolofstereotomy.com/online-courses

Workshop courses: https://schoolofstereotomy.com/workshops

Patrick Moore

Professor, Carpenter, and ConsultantOttawa, Ontario, Canadawebsite – www.historicalcarpentry.com

Facebook – School of Practical Stereotomy – École Pratique de StéréotomieEmail – lamidutrait@gmail.comCell – (819)664-9596

SIPschool

A large percentage of Timber Frames utilize Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) as the preferred method of enclosure. SIPschool provides classroom and hands-on instruction to individuals and businesses that seek SIP industry-recognized training.

Established in 2006 by SIP industry veteran Al Cobb, the school’s instructors have many years and hundreds of timber frames worth of experience. Most importantly, the school is not affiliated with any manufacturer and maintains an impartial and unbiased view on various types of panels and variations in details and techniques.

Consider SIPschool if you’re looking for dedicated SIP training and how it can enhance your timber frame or timber frame business. Learn more about SIPschool at www.sipschool.org.

Spring 2016 – April 21-22, 2016 SIPs 202 Two Day Installation Workshop

Shenandoah Junction, West Virginia, USA

Contact annie@sipschool.org for more information.

Island School of Building Arts

For 24 years, the Island School of Building Arts (ISBA) has been training students from around the world in the art and craft of working with big wood in both timber and log form. Located in the spectacular Gulf Islands off the west coast of British Columbia, Canada, ISBA provides students the opportunity to immerse themselves in their learning while surrounded by nature.

ISBA offers four-week courses in Timber Frame Post and Beam, Timber Frame Hammer Bents and Log Building in both the Spring and Fall session. Curriculum is based on a centerline layout approach, ISBA supplies all tools and final course projects are a full-sized timber frame or log cabin. Each term, we offer two affordable workshops in SketchUp for Timber Framers, allowing students to explore TF design on a personal level or add it to their toolbox and offer design components to employers and clients.

Instructor and author, James Mitchell, shares his passion for the craft, as well as over four decades of working with log and timber construction. Graduates from the ISBA Big Wood courses are highly regarded by industry in Canada, the US and across the globe.

Whether your goal is to build your own home, work in industry or simply to acknowledge your passion for working with log or timber joinery, ISBA will give you the skills and the knowledge to carry you on your journey.

For more information and course schedules, visit www.isba.ca or call the office at 250.247.8922.

• Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada

British Columbia School of Log Building

The BC School of Log Building, in beautiful Golden BC, offers a comprehensive, 6-day hands on timber framing course that provides an excellent opportunity to learn the foundations and techniques of timber frame construction. We will build a 16’x20’ timber frame that together, we will raise on the sixth day. Join us for this engaging course to learn the techniques and knowledge necessary to construct a traditional timber frame. For more information about dates, prices, required tools and photo galleries please visit the BC Log School website: www.bclogschool.com .

Location: Golden BC Canada

Website: www.bclogschool.com

Contact: dave@bclogschool.com / 250.272.6461

This course will cover the following through a hands-on approach while building a 16’x20’ timber frame:

• Tools of the trade orientation
• Safe and efficient timber framing techniques
• Sharpening skills for the timber framer
• What makes a good building timber
• Square rule layoutCutting and fitting mortise and tenon joinery
• Laying out and cutting each member of the frame including:Tie beamsPostsKnee BracesRafter PlatesRaftersSafe raising techniques

Never Stop Building

Japanese Woodworking and Timber frame Workshops

We welcome nearly all ages and all experience levels. Our teaching philosophy is simple: disciplined but fun, hands-on and in-person, practice and mistakes yield growth. Come learn and build!

Location: Mercer, Maine

https://www.neverstopbuilding.com/classes-and-workshops

Jason Fox

(202) 509-5359

Rancho Mastatal

NATURAL BUILDING – TIMBER FRAME CONSTRUCTION

Learn the art of square rule timber framing with the Rancho Mastatal team in this 7-day intensive workshop.

Location: Mastatal, Costa Rica

https://ranchomastatal.com/natural-building-timber-frame-construction

Sam Beauford Woodworking Institute

We are a non-profit woodworking school in southeast Michigan. We offer a large variety of short classes (1-7 days) and also have a 9-month career woodworking program accredited by the ACCSC / Department of Education.

We offer a variety of Timber Framing classes as well.  We currently offer:

– Timber Framing-Timber Frame Engineering-Round Log Timber Framing- Hand Tool Timber Framing- Art & Craft of Axes (making an axe and hewing logs)- Riving, Shingling & Siding (with hand tools)

https://sbwi.edu/learn-woodworking?category=Timber%20Framing

Do you offer a school or workshop and want to be on this list?…great!  Just head to the contact page and drop us a line and we will get you added. – Brice