Hi everyone,

Ken, no I can't back up the opening statement with any degree of proof. I thinking more along the lines of what we think of those professions today. I was reading a little bit of a book about the lives of the carpenters during this era in Philadelphia. I probably am a little bias, in that I want to believe they encompassed all of those roles.
The book is:

Moss, Jr., Roger William. Master Builders: A History of the Colonial Philadelphia Building Trades. University of Deleware, Ph.D. 1972

This book (a dissertation) describes the lives of these carpenters and their roles in society instead of the works they built. Pretty interesting.

According to Nelson, "To the best of our knowledge it was one of the largest buildings in the colonies at the time of construction, which commenced about 1732 and continued in the 1740's"

I found the book Reciprocal Framing that you mention when doing research. Neat book.

Looking through the Microfilm at the library Tregold was found. Most of the names you have mentioned are familiar with a little research that a team of us was doing.

Paul, That is different and an odd shape for those straps. None of the literature in the chapter addresses the tooling process of that diagram. Looks like one bore, then I don't know...

Here is a picture of what bmike was talking about.


Anyone got any ideas on how they raised this? From the research there are no chase mortises present.