Most woodworking shops are enclosed spaces. Joel’s primary work space is a covered outdoor pavilion – a 20×30-foot timber frame structure he built himself over two summers, with a metal roof, open sides, and a concrete floor. It is, by any normal standard, not a shop. It is, in practice, the place where he does his best work.
Joel builds timber frames – post-and-beam structures for barns, outbuildings, and homes, joined with traditional mortise-and-tenon and pegged joinery. The work is inherently large-scale: timbers up to 8×8 inches, beams up to 30 feet long, joints cut with slick chisels and mallets rather than machines. This work can’t happen in a standard shop – the timbers don’t fit through a machine, and the process of laying out a bent (an assembled frame section) requires floor space measured in hundreds of square feet, not tens.
The pavilion provides overhead protection from weather while leaving the sides open for material movement – a 30-foot timber can be slid in from either end without maneuvering around an obstruction. The concrete floor is the work surface: chalk lines for layout, timbers laid out flat for joint cutting, assembly done at floor level before raising. The roof provides shade in summer (important for quality control – timber framing in direct sunlight means your layout chalk evaporates and your eye fatigues faster) and rain protection for the work.
The enclosed shop at the back of the property handles the small work: hand tool sharpening, hardware fitting, any component that needs a controlled environment. But the pavilion is the heart of the operation – the place where the big wood happens under an open sky. “You can’t smell the wood through glass walls,” Joel says. “The open shop means you’re working with the material, not in a box with the material.” Have you built an open or semi-open shop structure? Tell us about the design and how it works with your practice.