CARPENTER
Explore the streets of the Historic Area and you can find 88 examples of the carpentry skills practiced in 18th-century Williamsburg. These original structures were hammered together by dozens of carpenters working in the area at the time, many of whose names appear on ledgers within our historic collections.
With broadax and hammer, mallet and plane, saw and drawknife, these skilled and industrious tradesmen raised the walls and roofs on homes, dairies, shops, stables and other outbuildings. Working with native oak, locust, tulip poplar and hard yellow pine, they laid floors, chiseled mortise-and-tenon joints, framed walls and raised rafters. When new buildings weren’t in demand, the industrious colonial carpenter hired out his services for repairs, remodeling and to satisfy the ongoing need for fences.
Carpenters in Colonial Williamsburg practice the trade with the tools and techniques of their colonial ancestors. But even their 21st-century colleagues find that surprisingly little has changed. Building a house in Virginia in the 1700s was similar to building one today. Of course, you won’t find many hand-forged nails used outside the Historic Area today.
For more information:
Book – Tools - Working Wood in the Eighteenth-Century
Video – Forged in Wood
For inquiries or purchases please contact Prentis Store at 757-229-1000, Extension 2117 or prentis@cwf.org.
