Hi everyone:

This is my last post tonight and shows The Ross Barn being raised at UCV with the help of about 35 men and pikes. The lad at the base of the post with the white shirt on looking away was my head timberframer a great fellow by the name of Gerry St. Pierre. Unfortunately he just passed away, we worked together for many of these historic reconstructions.

Preparations for this event took 3 summers, from start to finish, all the timbers were hewn from scratch, some of them from 45 foot hemlocks and white pine, that squared 12" at that point.

You will notice the network of timbers just for the foundation, the hewing just for that layer took one season's hard work for 2 hewers, as well as the work of mortising and tenoning by 2 other full time workers. At the same timewe had to put in place the large stone abutments for the framework to bear on, this all took place without the intervention of any modern equipment, just horses and manpower using taditional hand tools.

NH