Just located this thread and after reading evey entry it seems that on has opened up a little mystery.
I have did much investigation in my time --in my area of the world, and I thoroughly agree that no one item will determine age.
Age is very hard to determine when it comes to building styles, In my area (settled about 1784, by UEL's from the New England States) The original buildings were quite crude, and used only vertical sawn lumber to clad buildings, and sparingly!
There was quite an overlapping of the use of vertical sawn lumber and circular sawn lumber used on buildings. What I did was to determine at what time the first circular saw mill was located in an area, from the census records, and went from there.
before I leave sawing remember that both mills worked side by side for quite anumber of years, in the case of the 1846 MUlEY MIll at Upper Canada Village it was still operating into the 1900's when it finally gave away to technology and the circular saw. Another factor was the power source to drive the circular blades up to and keeping them at 7 to 800 revolutions under a load. Steam was required for that in our area the first steam saw mill within a driving distance of a particular building that needs dating was quite a factor.
Now nails were another factor, we have catalogues listing cut nails for sale years before they arrived in upper Canada, and even then if one could not afford them the black smith kept hammering out forged nails. There again nails could not be used to give close dating just rough dates.
If you ran acros a building exhibitng Hewn material along with vertical sawn lumber, hewn braces and hand made nails, you had a good find and probably could date it around here to 1784 and be close
The same type building with all timbers hewn, vertical sawn boarding, and cut nails, a bit later say 1840 or so,
The same type building with hewn plates and sawn short posts and cut nails a bit later yet about 1880.
Circular saws did not arrive here until noted in the first census in 1867, and then just a sprinkling, many (hundreds) of vertical saw mills were still in operation then.
From my research Circular saws were invented in England about 1800--maybe ken you could comment on this
All buildings that I surveyed in this area had the long plates I never witnessed any like the ones that Don seems to have uncovered, what a great find.
I could go on butI need to get going nice thread thanks don for sharing and all for jumping in-dating building is great fun and I thoroughly enjoyed my years in that role at UCV, and I wish that I had the imput from you all when I was piking around.
