The barn raising

Thirty feet wide, forty long, raised in a single afternoon by twelve framers and a borrowed gin pole. The frame went up cut-to-fit — no shims, no gaps.

The frame

size       30 × 40 ft, 8 bents
species    eastern hemlock, air-dried two years
joints     through tenons, pegged
raise      gin pole + hand lines, 6 hours

What we learned

The twelfth bent went up in half the time of the first. By the end of the day the crew was a machine — that's what a raising teaches you.