Learning To Build
After I graduated from undergrad at the University of Virginia, I decided that I really needed to learn how to build buildings- physically- not just theoretically. I took a job at Big Timberworks in Gallatin Gateway Montana as an intern architect and sometimes builder. Big Twig (as it was affectionately known) is a wonderful company that designs and builds timberframe houses(www.bigtimberworks.com). They had a talented architecture team and an amazing group of craftsmen. They believed that their architects needed to know how to build what they were designing, so we all got to spend time in the shop and field building alongside the timberframers. Not being terribly skilled to begin with, I did a lot of sanding, finishing and rolling big timbers around on sawhorses. As I gained confidence and experience, I learned joinery and was able to be part of several frame raisings. As it turned out, my architectural background made me well suited for the job of laying out joinery on the timbers- a job that had to be done very carefully and with a full understanding of how the whole frame was going to come together. Mistakes were costly, and so the few of us that did layout would double check each other's work before allowing any of the joints to be cut. I would do this part of the job, pass off the joint cutting to the craftsmen, and then help with sanding and finishing- a strange situation that gave me both the most and the least responsibilty on the team. I loved the process and learned a lot about building-especially the need to think many many steps in advance and have a mental grasp on not only the final product, but how each individual step was going to come together to get you there.
As I started to think about graduate school, I wanted to further my education in the design build field, and so set my sights on the Univeristy of Washington, which at the time had a robust design/build program. As I was telling this to an architect friend of mine in Montana, he said, "You know- there is a very good school for wooden boat building near seattle- you should look into that if you really want to learn how to build things". I knew from the stories told to me by the craftsmen at Big Twig that boatbuilders are the best of the best when it comes to woodworking, so I was intrigued. A break from architecture for a year wouldn't kill me and so I enrolled at the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding in 1998(www.nwboatschool.org). It was an amazing experience. My fellow students were an amazing hodgepodge of folks- ranging from older gentlemen who had retired from the navy, to younger guys looking for a career, to a physics professor on sabatical. I was one of three women in the class of 40. We all went through the same program- a year of morning lectures followed by afternoons working in the shop, learning all phases of wooden boat construction. We learned about wood, finishes, sail making, and my favorite- lofting- the practice of drawing the basic lines of a boat at a large scale on the floor. Boat builders are the ultimate builders- and the instructors had an amazing amount of tricks and skills to help construct something that wasn't square or straight in any direction. While I haven't done any boatbuilding since, this mindset has stayed with me ever since- and made me a much better architect and builder.
As part of that course, I took notes during the lectures. I made a committment from the start to make my notebook as intersting and artistic as possible. I used only pen and did my best to keep up with the amazing amount of information. It is something I have been proud of ever since. Now- in the digital age, I finally got a chance to scan that whole notebook- all 245 pages of drawings, notes and sketches and make it available to you. Hopefully it is interesting, informative, or just fun to look at. Enjoy!
*The notebook is broken down into 6 "chapters"- to keep the file sizes manageable. The chapter divisions don't have any particular meaning- its just here the book got randomly divided.