Illustration of carpentry (charpente) in the French Encyclopédie showing hewing, mortising, pit sawing on trestles. Tools include dividers, axes, chisel and mallet, beam cart, pit saw, trestles, and bisaigue . The men talking may be holding a story pole and rule (or walking cane). Shear legs are hoisting a timber. Below, the sticks on the log are winding sticks used to align the ends of a timber.
Tools used in traditional timber framing date back thousands of years. Similar tools are used in many cultures, but the shapes vary and some are pulled rather than pushed.
Race knife capable of making circles.(ritsmes en ritspasser met uitgeklapt). Image:Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands
Hand boring machine (Carpentry and Joinery magazine, 1925)
A type of mortising chisel called in German a Stossaxt (Stoßaxt) or stichaxt. No wooden handle is inserted in the head, the metal head itself is the tools grip.
A chain mortiser.
Draw-bore pins (hook pins) are the metal pins sticking out of the plank above the plank being added to the USS Constitution during restoration.
A hook pin or draw-bore pin
Preparing timbers
Conversion of logs into timbers was often done by someone other than the timber framer including a lumberjack, sawyer, farmer, or laborer using a variety of tools including:
Steel square is also known as a framing square. Historically a square with measurement markings on it was known as a "square rule" which is also a layout method.
A Plumb-bob on a string is sometimes used with a plumb-rule or plumb-square to measure vertical or horizontal and to transfer marks between timbers while scribing.
Framing Chisels are heavy duty. In Western carpentry common sizes are 1 1/2 and 2 inches wide. They are designed to be struck with a mallet
A slick is a very large chisel designed to be pushed by hand, not struck.
drills for boring holes in timber framing were typically T-auger. The cutting edge of the bit can be of many shapes, the spiral auger being the standard shape since the 19th century.
Timber framers boring machines were invented by 1830 and hold an auger bit. They made mortising easier and faster.
Sometimes, particularly in wooden bridge building the pegs were shaped by being driven through a hole in a heavy piece metal.
Historically timbers meant to be seen in houses were smoothed with a hand plane (Japanese plane including what is called a spear plane, yariganna or yari-kanna) and decorated with a chamfer or bead.
Twybil The name literally "two blades", historically rare in the U.S.
Bisaigue A French tool with similarities to a long handled twybill
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