The Journey Of Carpenters

Carpenters are employed throughout the country in almost every community and make up the largest building trades occupation. Carpenters have opportunities to work in residential, commercial, light industrial or heavy construction fields in the areas of new construction, renovations and maintenance.

Carpenters

There are journeyman carpenters, apprentice carpenters, lead certified painters, locksmiths, and carpet layer / tile setters. By 1400 English carpenters routinely applied Gothic arcation and Gothic ornament to the roofs and walls of quite humble buildings such as barns and peasant farmhouses, and to the facades of urban terraces, which Continental counterparts were by comparison 1 quite plain and functional. In the 12th century, several external pressures forced carpenters to modify this system.

During the 12th century English carpenters introduced the soulace, a brace between rafter and collar, to produce a polygonal 8 arch, as at Canon Pyon (Herefs. common-rafter roof in 15 the form of the cruck truss, at first apparently restricted to utilitarian structures, particularly farm buildings.As a result English carpenters developed systems which could be modified not only for houses of different classes, but also for other single- storied buildings, such as churches and barns.

Carpenter

Yet by the middle of the 14th century, and probably in the 1320s, West Midland carpenters had developed a new technique, the arch-braced collar-beam roof, which combined French principal 43 rafter construction with English wind bracing. Masons had of course introduced cusping in the traceried windows of the late 13th century, and some carpenters were quick to follow. On the Continent, Dutch and Flemish carpenters achieved a trefoiled barrel-vault by combining the wagon roof with base-shells, as at the Bijloke in Gent about 54 1300 (slide). However that may be, around the middle of the century carpenters developed king- post roofs, at first with elaborate cusping, like the Porch at 56 Wellington (Herefs. , (slide) as in the south wing of Middle Farm, Harwell, where in the west bay they form an arch over the former staircase entry.

Strong ties with the Nanaimo CHBA and other local contractors, United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners Local 527, City of Nanaimo building officials, and many other sub-trades and suppliers have replied in a close cooperative training partnership with the local building industry. Excellent opportunities exist for graduates of this program to obtain carpentry apprenticeships with professional building contractors or the Carpenters Unions. Graduates of this program have been successful in procuring employment in positions such as apprentice carpenters, concrete formers, wood framers, finishing carpenters' helpers, cabinet installers, and home renovators.

There is now some evidence of similar structures in northern France, and the techniques used in them may have inspired French carpenters to invent the wagon or cradle roof, a modification of the earlier English soulaced roof. In 21 the 14th century English carpenters modified the form, thickening up some of the rafters to form principals, and adding at 22 first one purling below, and later several.