Re-learning old school construction skills is immensely enlightening – especially in terms of efficiency.
Back in the days when only manual labour was available, people had to spend some time thinking how they will do it and I guess that the need for shelter was certainly high priority which means you made some effort to devise your methods to get it done sooner.
Doing something over was not easy – hence the very high level of craftsmanship that is so evident in history.
In terms of efficiency, we all know that in the days before mass production, people simply did not had so much stuff.
The way they made things - it was for your life and that of your children. Making it twice as thick, made it infinitely stronger. Efficiency. Only twice the material. It will last forever. Half it and you will need another one soon and so will your children. Paradoxically.
Those oaks applied good engineering. The maths was done by hand. No energy wasted on computers chowing up fossil fuelled joules with brute force Finite Element Analysis done over and over because the operator GIGO’ed. You took pride in your labour, wrote it all up neatly on paper such that you left a legacy. The kind of one that when you died it was part of the treasure your children found with the gold coins that you silently accumulated. (Strange to think that was long before Polaroids.)
Joints were designed in a way that the strength of the joint was safe over a wide range of dimensions. Done on the principle that if it works, don’t fix it.
I am now in the process to learn how to make timber joints. Those things were all done with chisel and hammer – in fact this trade still exist and is practised by a few die-hard enthusiasts all over the world.
Dare I mention that I am also a CNC enthusiast and will cheat by making many of my joints with it? Yes, it might be considered sacrilege, but on the other hand those old tools are anything from hard to impossible to get these days – and probably costing as much as my machine.
Respect. To the old school.
