Good question. The advent and proliferation of automated joinery machines has already and will continue to affect the prospects of carpenters who build timber frames. The bigger shops who use these don't employ as many carpenters -- that's a fact. and the one's who are employed are required to do less carpentry (and more material handling).

I know there are different kinds of CNC companies out there and some of them use it as just another tool and continue to do cool and challenging things and employ skilled and creative people. But...

Some companies aren't that way at all.


So what does this mean for us carpenters?

I think the days of "production" hand cut companies who ship frames all over the states are numbered. If there is no discernible difference between what you're building and what the machine is making, then you are in a bad spot. You can't pay fair wages that someone can raise a family on, provide benefits, and expect to go toe to toe with the machine and win on speed and efficiency.

For our part, we try to do things the machine can't: work with irregular material, work with reclaimed buildings, work on old buildings.

We also believe that something made by a human is more valuable than something made by a machine. The carpenter companies need to get better at talking about this. We will never have the money to throw at customer education that the big CNC companies do, so I see our influence being limited to the local market and who we can talk to face to face. We can and should be talking to -- and therefore building for -- our neighbors.


I'm out of time for now, but I'm looking forward to this discussion because it is something I think about as a company owner and a carpenter in this trade.