North Idaho builder does Early American construction revival
Homebuilder Collin Beggs of Sandpoint sharpened his woodworking skills restoring Early American buildings in the historic Northeast before hanging his shingle out in North Idaho.
His repertoire includes rebuilding the Palmira, N.Y., farmstead from which Joseph Smith set out to form the Mormon Church and bringing back an original, mid-19th century barn in the Farmer’s Museum of Cooperstown, N.Y.
Last month, Beggs, a master timber frame builder and Alaska native, joined eight craftsmen to raise the Douglas fir skeleton of a new home for Derek Hanson, his wife, Kim Northrup, and their 5-year-old son, Skyler. It’s tucked between forests and farms in rural Spokane County.
Timber framing is a centuries-old building tradition that joins specially cut timbers with wooden pegs.
Like his predecessors, Beggs and his crew work with such age-old hand tools as axes, mallets, chisels and hand planes. Timbers are shaped and assembled in his shop and trucked to the site where they’re raised and joined.
Beggs nodded at the frames and said if they’re off by so much as an inch, “they’re garbage.”
Vernacular architectural – in homes, barns, abbeys and cathedrals – can last for centuries and is traced to Medieval England, Europe and Asia. It’s been increasingly embraced and updated since a 1970s revival.
Beggs said it’s been a collaborative effort.
“The owners and I created this design based on how they live,” a bearded Beggs, 35, said, nodding at a frame being hoisted by a 30-ton crane. “A lot of clients have a faint idea of what they want, but, typically, it’s been manipulated by the trades (magazines),” he said. “And I ask them how they live,” whether they’re indoor or outdoor people and their property’s climate.
Generally, Beggs said, he’s found his clients share at least one trait.
“They’re reaching out for authenticity. They want someone real to interact with, someone who lives a real life and works and struggles to be a craftsperson,” he explained.
The homeowners – avid river rafters, bicyclists and hikers – are excited by the progress on their two-story, 3,000-square-foot home. Basic construction should wrap up by the end of the year.
Beggs said he strives to build homes in which “… people feel as good as they would after taking a walk in the woods.”
He became a carpenter 15 years ago. For the past 11, he’s concentrated on timber frame construction. His company, Timber Frames by Collin Beggs, has 30 timber frame buildings under its belt.
Hanson said this one will be his family’s “forever” home. And he and his wife hope their preschooler will want to live in it when he’s grown.
Passionate about environmental conservation, the couple started with trees individually selected by the owner of the oldest sustainable wood lot in North America, an 1,800-acre spread in British Columbia.
Inside their home, the trees’ grain patterns, shapes and burls – visible in rough-hewn beams and posts – will evoke their organic characteristics, pay tribute to builders’ labors and tell the home’s unique story.
Deep green and burgundy exterior paint will ensure the house blends with its habitat.
To ensure they’re living lightly on the Earth, they’ve also hired general contractor Mark Hamlin of Sustainable Structures. He’s steered them to a foundation with an R-45 energy efficiency rating, roofing made from recycled aluminum cans, a passive solar hot water heater and structurally-insulated wall panels.
This is the type of project Beggs lives for.
“It takes immense sacrifices … to be a timber framer. You have to take it on as a lifestyle – it’s a full body-mind (profession) 24/7, year after year. It’s not something you ‘kind of’ do. You don’t get into it to make a lot of money,” he said. “We’re fulfilling a sense of romance.”
They Shelter our Soul and Warm our Spirit
From Sandpoint Magazine | Summer 2006
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From a double-wide trailer to a castle complete with portcullis and moat, homes of all shapes, sizes and types are going up in this countryside characterized by a hot real estate market and open land.
Avid buyers who can’t find the home of their dreams already constructed and waiting for them to move into are increasingly buying up bare land and building what they want. That trend is fueling a construction industry that, as little as a dozen years ago, was seasonal with “stagnant” the only way to describe the winter months.
Although conventional housing is the norm, some people want something a little bit out of the ordinary. For them, “stick-built” just doesn’t match their vision of a home for the ages. And for those people, there are contractors who can provide exactly what they want.
Following, we highlight three area builders who provide that “something-out-of-the-ordinary” that a growing number of homeowners are looking forward. Read on to learn how the oldest building form that exists – timber framing – is growing new homes throughout the area that may well still be standing when the date ticks over to 3007.
Visit with a builder who takes modern materials – Styrofoam and concrete – and puts together a “Lego-style house” that can withstand gale-force winds. And finally, visit with an artisan featured many times in these pages who, as part of his philosophy of housing being an integral part of a person’s soul, is helping owner/builders create incredibly durable and comfortable homes out of little more than compacted straw bales and plaster. Enter the world of specialty builders.
The age-old method of timber frame As an early spring sun slants through the open doors of the barn, Collin Beggs makes himself comfortable atop a huge piece of red oak and
begins to hand drill a hole. His movements are precise, methodical and comfortable. He is a man at home with wood, and at home with building techniques that pre-date him by hundreds of years.
“Timber frame construction is the oldest continuing vernacular in construction,” he said. “Any country with good forests used timber framing. It dates back to the 11th century in some areas.”
At its heart, timber frame construction is a celebration of wood and how it is joined together. It is posts and beams and complex joinery, and the combination results in a self-supporting structure, eliminating the need for support from walls. True timber frame construction – as opposed to the broader category of post-and-beam construction – joins solid wood timbers joined by traditional wooden joinery. The joints are mortise and tenon, dovetails, and wooden pegs. The mortise is simply a hole cut in the wood, while the tenon is a tongue designed to fit the hole precisely. This method of construction is the strongest and most durable way to build with wood, according to Beggs.
“Timber frame construction has a proven history,” Beggs said. “There are timber frame homes built in the 1200s that are still in use. If we cut a tree, and put it into a frame, the potential is that the home will be used for hundreds of years.”
A timber frame home “is just really beautiful. These houses are more human,” Beggs said. “I think when someone chooses to build a timber frame, it’s a quality-of-life comment. It’s a house for the longer term, a place your great-grandchildren could live in.”
The timber frame home gives occupants a sense of security, he added. “People subconsciously feel safer when they can see what’s holding the roof up.”
Beggs spent seven years learning his craft, arid he likens the techniques he uses to those of fine furniture builders. He said his work “combines nature, handwork and the craft tradition.” He started in construction by building with full-scribe logs in Alaska, before heading to the East Coast to learn timber framing from the experts there. He worked and trained with three different companies, learning along the way about how to do high-end construction and historical restoration.
“I wanted to come back West,” he said. He opened his business just north of Sandpoint in January 2005. He is now working on his fourth project and his fifth design locally.
The wood he works with is enormous, some pieces weighing up to 1,600 pounds. “I measure a lot,” he said. “I have to be very precise. There are some pieces of wood I may work on for days, and it has to be right. If one of us cuts a joint just a half-inch off, we can’t use that piece of wood. Quality (work) is just a necessity.”
Timber framing, he says, can be employed in any style of construction from a New England saltbox to a Japanese-inspired pagoda. One of the oldest buildings in the Far East, by the way, is the Kondo, or Golden Hall, and was built in the early 7th century as a private temple for Crown Prince Shotoku. It’s a timber frame structure.
“Timber framing results in an incredibly durable building,” said Beggs.
The Art of Timber Framing Lives On
From the Bonner County Daily Bee
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SANDPOINT – Collins Beggs recently brought to the area the revival of “Timber Framing.”
According to Beggs, there are quite a few timber framers in the nation, but only a handful who use only hand tools to fashion these incredible wooden structures that are fastened together with wooden joinery using 19th century tools and methodology.
Beggs takes us back in time. To watch him work in his shop on Baldy Mountain Road is like watching a craftsman work centuries ago.
‘The craft is very old,” he said. “And modern carpentry has no history without timber framing. Many cultures have a tradition in timber framing which is a craft dependent on heavy timbers joined together using wooden pegs. So that method is centuries old.”
The earliest surviving examples from Northern Europe include structures from the 12th century, and the oldest surviving example of a wood-framed house in the States is the 1637 Fairbanks house of Dedham, Massachusetts.
The revival of timber framing began in the 1970s and was supposedly sparked by a curiosity of old buildings along with a desire to build more lasting homes. Beggs got caught up in the revival at an opportune time.
He grew up in the small Alaskan town of North Pole. He’s been fascinated with the use of natural resources during his childhood, and later, as a full scribe log builder his interest led him in the direction of what is called “vernacular” architecture, which in turn introduced him to the craft of timber framing. He was fascinated with it all and wanted to learn all he possibly could.
“The shop was high volume so it was a perfect place to ‘cut my teeth’ in the craft,” he said.
At about the same time, Beggs met a craftsman who used traditional tools and techniques, and he worked with this craftsman on the weekends. When the opportunity arose to further study on a full time basis, he began working on historical restoration projects, new homes and barns using these traditional methodologies. One of these projects was restoring the home of Mormonism’s founding prophet, Joseph Smith, in Palmyra, New York.
“We rebuilt Joseph Smith’s cabin from the diaries and documents that the church provided. We reassembled Brigham Young’s father’s barn on the same site,” he said. “We were helping to recreate Joseph Smith’s family’s homestead.”
Beggs and his wife eventually headed to the New England states where he began studying in a small timber frame shop there. He ended up working in three different shops over a period of five years.”I worked in a more modern shop where we’d put out a frame structure or two in a month’s time, and then at the same time I worked with a 19th century restorationist using tools and methodology from that era.”
Later, he once again moved – this time to Maine where he worked in a small timber frame shop for three more years before setting out on his own. Six years later he returned to the West and settled down in Sandpoint.
Beggs continues to practice the age-old method in his work today. The structures he’s built over the last five years have been using the old technology, and remarkably five of the buildings he built entirely by himself using only hand tools.
Most of his Begg’s construction is of new residential homes.
“Ninety-nine percent of all timber frames going up are residential,” he said. “Some, but few, are commercial.”
Beggs said that timber framing nearly died out in the British Isles once, and in America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“By the 19th century, timber framing was coming to an end pretty much,” he said. “I mean there were still pockets of the craft, but it was really declining.”
France, he said, has maintained a continuous tradition from at least the 13th century, and today continues to offer an ongoing apprenticeship program.
“So with the whole revival of timber framing, a Timber Framers Guild came into existence and is now large enough to be considered an industry.”
Nearly 2,000 members form the timber frame industry.
‘We’re all timber framers, but the methodology is very different,” Beggs said. “There’s really only a handful of hand tool timber framers the true traditional timber framers.”
Beggs, as one in the handful, banished the use of anything but hand tools in his work. He said he was able to compete economically that way.
“Also, I don’t have the dust and pollution. As far as my own health, it’s a lot better for me personally,” he said. “The end result is wonderful and fun. I found that timber framing whether one uses machinery or only hand tools, has really grown in relationship with each other and work very well
together.”
The time that it takes to build a timber frame structure is surprisingly short. In his shop, he drawpins with shaped pegs. He uses a club, froe and shaving horse to rive pegs from billets. He cuts each joint using traditional hand tools and then completes the framing. After delivery to the site, he spends a day or two assembling the structure, and in about six hours the average building is standing.
“Each house is so particularly determined in and of itself. People want to be able to see the beam work,” he said. “Medieval frames utilize the open timber roof system which means we were just out of the caves in Europe, and what we did was burn a fire in the center of the room. The smoke escaped through a
thatched hole. It was like a wooden tee-pee.”
He said that it wasn’t until the 19th century that the fad of covering up the timbers with wood or plaster was used.
“Timber framing is a proven system as far as longevity,” he said. “And it really makes the most sense as far as the utilization of trees in our area making sure that the resources aren’t going to be wasted. Timber-framed structures have a proven history of lasting for three, four and five hundred years.”
The Timber Framers Guild holds two annual conferences each year – one in the eastern United States and the other in the West. Beggs is hoping that in the year 2007 the Timber Framers Guild will hold one of their two annual conferences here in Sandpoint.
For more information about the art of timber framing, contact Collin Beggs at (208) 290-8120 or e-mail him at collin.beggs@verizon.net.