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Saw a 100 year old barn in Vermont with no nails, just joinery, and it got me thinking about how we build now
Stopped at a farm outside Middlebury last month and the owner let me poke around his barn, built in 1923, and the whole frame is mortise and tenon with wooden pegs. Not one metal fastener in the main structure, and it has survived a century of snow loads. Meanwhile I framed a garage last spring with nothing but nails and screws and it feels solid, but will it be standing in 2125? Part of me thinks old timers had no choice so they overbuilt everything. The other part thinks we got lazy because steel is cheap and fast. I get that time is money on a job site and nobody is paying me to cut 200 joints by hand. But is there a middle ground where we bring back some of that joinery for the stuff that matters? Curious what other carpenters think about timber framing versus stick framing for long term durability.
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