Hand Hewn: The Traditions, Tools, and Enduring Beauty of Timber Framing by Jack A. Sobon

Hand Hewn is not your ordinary coffee table book. True, it is filled with gorgeous color photos of timber frame houses. You will want to keep it on display in your living room, not hidden away on a shelf. But this book is not about being showy, either of nature or of human habitations. Hand Hewn is about deep connections—to wood, to tools, to history, and to trees and forests.

Hand Hewn is a summation of Jack Sobon’s career. An architect and craftsman, the author was one of the leaders of the timber framing revival that began in the 1970s, and he is still building houses and barns today. Jack’s style is pithy and often funny. When an author begins a book about the virtues of local timber by recalling that time he used a neighbor’s Norway spruce for the beams of his first Thoreauvian cabin, and in the process felled it straight across their swimming pool (crushing two chain link fences), you know you are in good hands. We’ve all been there—some of us more than once!

Like a timber-framed house, Hand Hewn is not linear: There are posts, tie beams, and braces connecting in all directions. There are plates and joists carrying stories of the beginning of Jack’s career in recycling old barns, the history of the construction of these structures in America, the relationship of frame buildings to different tree species and the forest, and the use of good hand tools. There are rafters and purlins about honesty in building and ties to the natural world. Each member is hewn and planed to the minimum size required, revealing rich color and lively figure.

Hand Hewn is an affirmation of why we need ecological forestry, of why to cut trees at all: We love forests, but we also love wood. “You don’t really know exactly where the design is going until you’ve looked at the forest,” Jack says in the video that promotes the book. In Hand Hewn he asks, “What other building supply yard restocks all by itself, provides habitat for songbirds, and is a joy to stroll through besides?”

To learn more or purchase, visit Storey Publishing.

To purchase, visit IndieBound.

Recommended by Brian Donahue