frame byhand.
Timber framing, laid open — joinery guides, cut sheets, and a community of framers who raise bents by hand.
How a frame goes up
Three steps. No guesswork, no shims.
Choose the frame
Pick a bent style that fits your span and your ceiling — post & beam, king post, or a soaring hammerbeam.
Cut the joints
Follow the cut sheets, knife-line your mortises, and peck the waste. Every joint is drawn, not guessed.
Raise the bent
Peg it together, stand it up with a gin pole and a crew, and plumb it square. Then do it again.
Everything but the knots
A workshop in your pocket, for the shop that isn't.
Joinery, drawn out
Every joint — mortise, dovetail, scarf — as a cut-by-cut guide with specs.
Cut sheets
Generate a real cut list from your frame, dimensioned to the sixteenth.
Peg & drawbore
The lock that holds it all. Learn to drawbore and drive a peg home.
Species guide
Oak, pine, hemlock, fir — what each one carries and what it can't.
The crew
Framers sharing raises, builds, and the joints they're proud of.
Raise planner
Schedule the raising, call the crew, and track the bent count.
The joinery guide
Four joints, pulled apart so you can see how they hold.
Mortise & tenon
A squared tongue in a squared hole, pegged home. The joint everything else is judged against.
Dovetail
A flared tail that only binds tighter the harder you pull.
Half lap
Two members notched to half depth, lapped flush and pegged.
Scarf joint
Two beams spliced along a long diagonal, keyed and pegged.
The timber, up close
Shot where the wood actually comes from.
The slow cut
One shaving, one joint, one frame at a time.
Four bents
Frames we've raised, and what they taught us.
The barn raising
Twelve framers, one gin pole, and a day that ended with a standing frame.
Cabin in the pines
Wind-felled pine, hewn on site, every joint visible from the loft.
Open-air pavilion
Eight hammerbeam bents and no walls — shade without enclosure.
The studio loft
Quartered red oak over a maker's shop and gallery.
Most software hides the joints. Gable exists to show you them.
I cut my first mortise when I was nineteen, in a barn that's still standing. The old framer who taught me said one thing I've never forgotten: a frame is only as honest as the joints you can't see.
So that's what we built — a place where the joints are the product. Where you can pull a dovetail apart on screen, print a cut sheet that's true to the sixteenth, and find a crew to raise the bent with you.
This isn't a CAD program with a woodskin. It's a workshop manual that's alive — the drawings move, the species have opinions, and the people are real framers who answer when you ask.
By the numbers
Live, from our backend.
Loved by framers
People who finally cut it true.
"I've watched a hundred joinery videos. Gable is the first place that let me pull the joint apart and see the offset on the peg."
"The cut sheets are dead on. I printed one for a king post truss, cut it, and the raise went up square the first try."
"I joined for the diagrams, stayed for the crew. Someone always answers before the coffee goes cold."
The roadmap
Where we're going.
Joinery guide + cut sheets, live in beta with the four core frames.
Species library and a 3D bent viewer you can rotate and explode.
Raise planner + crew matchmaking for local framers.
Shop classes: real hands-on weekends taught by the crew.
Questions, answered.
Is gable for beginners?+
What's a bent?+
Do I need a full shop?+
Are the cut sheets real?+
Is it free?+
Can I find a crew?+
The bent is already standing.
frame by hand. Get the cut sheets the day they ship.