Name: Intro to Round-Wood Timber Framing
Start: 2025-08-23T10:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-08-24T17:00:00-04:00
Location: 149 Hurricane Road, Keene, NH, United States, New Hampshire 03431

Through this weekend intensive students will be introduced to the method of Round-Wood Timber Framing. This method of building utilizes local renewable resources and traditional skills to build everything from sheds to houses.
Students will be learning and utilizing scribe framing and be learning a variety of tools and techniques. Tools include working with a bark spud, chisel and mallet, hand saw, chainsaw and chainsaw mill.
Read below for more information. 10-5pm Saturday & Sunday
“Our fast-growing softwoods are often neglected because there is no longer adequate commercial value to justify thinning or felling them. Left to their own devices, they grow close together in light-deprived plantations that pull the long, straight poles skyward. These are perfect for roundwood timber-framing.” – Maddy Harland
Round wood timber framing is an ancient art that has been used by generations of people from different cultures and continents. Unlike milled wood or industrially processed wood, round wood uses the entire tree for framing purposes. Not only does this add an essential aesthetic factor that brings nature into your home, but there are also numerous other benefits to this art form.
Round wood is straight from the tree (with or without bark), without any processing, squaring or planking. Timber framing is creating the structural framework for a building from wood. The frame bears the load, then the walls are filled in with something else, which could be timber cladding, straw bales, wattle & daub, or bricks and mortar.
Round wood cuts out the enormous industrial process of squaring timbers. People can use their own local woodlands to build with – it doesn’t have to go off to a factory to be processed, and you don’t have to get a mobile miller in, which saves a lot on transport, energy and associated emissions.
Round wood is 50% stronger than similar-sized squared timber, hence you need a smaller cross-section of round wood to do the same job, which saves wood.