2007 Western Conference

Conference Schedule Day By Day
Saturday, April 14

Japanese master carpenter Makoto Imai will join us for a series of day-long demonstrations that are open to all conference attendees. Trained as an apprentice and then temple carpenter in Japan in the 1960s, he has been building in the U.S. for more than 30 years. More than anyone else he has been an inspiration and teacher for many of those practicing Japanese carpentry on the West Coast today. See his astonishing work and read his biography at www.makotoimai.com.

SATURDAY FEATURED SPEAKER

John Perlin: A Forest Journey

John Evelyn, a leading citizen of 17th century England, summed up the significance of wood to past societies with the observation that “all arts and artisans must fail and cease if there were no timber and wood available.” So necessary was wood for past societies that Evelyn did not exaggerate that the world would be better off “without gold than without timber.”

“A Forest Journey,” based on John Perlin’s classic book of the same name, will elaborate on Evelyn’s theme that wood, indeed, was our ancestor’s chief resource. It will show how civilizations, before the advent of fossil fuels, relied on wood as their primary source of energy. With heat from wood fires:

• Humanity could settle just about any place, making even very cold regions habitable.
• Grains became edible, enabling the greatest change humanity has experienced: the agricultural revolution.
• Charcoal-fueled kilns where temperatures rose above 900 degrees centigrade, allowed potters to transform earth into durable ceramics to store and ship goods.
• Charcoal fires also brought humanity into the metal ages by making metallurgy — the extraction of metal from ore — possible, revolutionizing tools and weaponry to such a degree that we categorize the various ages of civilization according to the dominant metal in use at the time.

From the Bronze Age until two ironclads clashed at Hampton Roads, Virginia in 1862, most every ship, whether used for commerce or war, was built with timber. Carts and chariots were also composed primarily of wood. Early steamboats and locomotives in the United States ran on wood fuel. Wooden ships tied up to wooden piers and wharves. Wooden wagons crossed wooden bridges and, in the United States during the nineteenth century, traveled on wooden roads. Railroad ties, of course, were wooden, and in America all trestles in the 19th century were made of wood.

Transportation, and by extension, trade, wealth, warfare, and exploration would have been unthinkable without wood.

With wood as the principal fuel and building material of almost every society from the Bronze Age through the 19th century, "A Forest Journey" will show that the abundance or scarcity of the resource shaped, in large part, the culture, demographics, economy, internal and external politics, and technology of societies that existed during this time span. Substitute oil for wood in today’s world and the story presented in “A Forest Journey” becomes Page-One news.

John Perlin has written A Golden Thread: 2500 Years of Solar Architecture and Technology (with Ken Butti); A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization; and From Space to Earth: The Story of Solar Electricity. Harvard University Press has chosen A Forest Journey as one of its “One-Hundred Great Books” of all time. He has also collaborated with Nobel Laureates Drs. Alan Heeger and Water Kohn in producing the recent film “The Power of the Sun.” John lives in Santa Barbara.

Other Saturday Presenters & Events

John Perlin: The Power of the Sun
"Do you know that the solar energy that strikes the Earth’s surface for one hour is enough to feed the world’s current electricity needs for one year?" asks John Cleese of Monty Python fame in a new hour-long documentary “The Power of the Sun.” “So why haven’t we gone solar already?” he continues. “I mean, it’s pollution free; there’s no global warming; there’s no dependence on foreign oil powers; it’s decentralized, so it’s virtually terrorist-proof; and effectively there’s an infinite supply.”

The film tours the history of solar power, from the controversy over the wave and particle theories of light to the first solar-powered batteries made at Bell Labs in 1954 to current developments on solar panels. Interviews with researchers guide the audience through the science and show some of the ways solar power is used today, such as on satellites and other spacecraft, in lighting at remote airports, and for cooling the vaccines carried by camels through the desert. Solar energy is a $7 billion industry, and it’s growing 30%-35% a year, according to the film. “The Power of the Sun” was the brainchild of solar energy historian John Perlin and Walter Kohn, a Nobel laureate in chemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara, some of whose work is related to solar materials.

Bonnie Pickartz: Customer Service: Building Better Client Relationships
In this seminar you will learn to
• Understand the importance of customer service in sales.
• Understand how customer service progresses as a project moves forward to completion.
• Develop a style of customer service based on their own personality and product.
Building amazing energy-efficient timber frame homes that will last through the ages is what we are all committed to doing. It would be so easy if the client ordered and then went away and walked back in the door when we completed our work. It probably wouldn't be as rewarding ... or as frustrating. Sales are often made or lost in that first meeting when the client determines if you can meet their needs and on how comfortable they are with the customer service you provide. We will work on helping to identify the needs of individual customers and being able to provide excellent customer service.

Bonnie Pickartz, along with her husband David, own and operate Goshen Timber Frames in Franklin, North Carolina. Bonnie’s background in customer service has served Goshen well for the past ten years. As a lifetime member of the Timber Framers Guild and a member of the Board of Directors of the Timber Frame Business Council, she is committed to building awareness of the timber frame community and to timber framing as a craft. Timber framers are passionate and enthusiastic about their craft and Bonnie works hard to make sure that this becomes part of the client’s timber frame experience. Her efforts show in the number of return clients and referrals.

Jack Witherington: Starting a Small Timber Framing Shop
Hey Mom, I’m starting a timber frame shop. That’s nice dear, I’m sure you will do real well. So now what? It won't take long for the overwhelming feeling to slowly creep into your mind as you discover there is so much more to owning, operating and growing a successful timber frame shop than just being a good timber framer. Oh, yeah, you should be one of those, too.

This presentation is about formulating a successful game plan to enter the business community and the steps, both mentally and physically needed to begin and continue a small timber frame shop.

As you might imagine, “business” is a very broad term so we are going to equate what your company would like in comparison to a hockey team. A hockey team?

First let’s consider what a business is. In my view it’s an entity that survives on its own, consuming, producing and functioning in a market place, providing something to its customers. Foremost, it’s a group of people doing together what they could not do as individuals. For you one-guy shops, while you have all the same elements, you probably have a glorified job, rather than a business. After all, if you stop, the business stops.

Stepping back to the wide view for a moment, we will think about a few of the general principles on a philosophical level. Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School, one of America’s great business thinkers, puts forth many ideas that we too can use at the small business level. Two ideas we will discuss are Porter’s 5 Forces and consideration of what is “strategy.”

The 5 forces influencing business competition are as follows:
1. Bargaining power of suppliers
2. Bargaining power of customers
3. Threat of new entrants
4. Threat of substitutes
5. Competitive rivalry between existing players
We will discuss these and how they might apply to you as you wade into the waters of the timber framing business world.

Jack Witherington, like so many of us, came to the construction industry and timber framing as a second career. Before the switch, he was involved in manufacturing, servicing Fortune 500 companies as an industrial rep. He began the journey at the Heartwood School in Massachusetts as an apprentice during the summer of 2000 when he studied and learned the basics. After brief periods at several shops around New England, he returned to Pennsylvania to start Methods & Materials Building Co., a small craft-based shop where excellence in each project is the focus.

Marisha Farnsworth & Kevin Rowell: Kleiwerks International & Awesome Earthen Buildings
Using beautiful images from Southeast Asia, Latin America and the United States, we will show you the grassroots community movements and projects that are making a lot of sense in a world where not much does. These hybrid natural buildings use indigenous materials including earth, straw, bamboo and wood.

Kevin Rowell is co-director of Kleiwerks International, which promotes social transformation and ecological regeneration by leading hands-on training in natural building and whole-systems solutions that result in community-based sustainable living centers. Marisha Farnsworth teaches classes on natural building with an emphasis on community-based projects.

Natural Building Forum: Chris Dancey, Moderator.
Join all the experts from this track for a Natural Building Forum moderated by Chris Dancey. Chris is passionate about hemp as a building material. She and her husband, Wil, have built as their home the first in Ontario to be constructed with HempChips™ and lime; the building has been officially approved. She is also a certified organic farmer on land that has been in her family since 1830.

Fritz Hinrichs: Infill for Timber Frames in Earthquake Country
From the outside, many timber frames do not appear substantially different from conventional construction. If you were inspired towards timber framing by seeing Tudor-style architecture and desire to build consistent with that style, using infill between your timbers rather than covering the structure in SIPS will allow you to see the beauty of your timbers from the outside as well as the inside. This method does open up new challenges to timber framing, but careful construction techniques can address many of them.

Fritz Hinrichs started Escondido Tutorial Service (www.gbt.org) in 1993 and has been teaching homeschoolers literature and mathematics ever since. He has lectured frequently to homeschool conferences on a number of educational issues over the past ten years. His interest in timber framing came through extensive traveling in Europe and a love of its architecture. He has taken three timber framing workshops from Palomar College and taught over ten of his own literature students the skills of timber framing. His first timber frame structure was finished in 2000 (a 1,000 sq ft schoolroom and dance hall) and his home, the subject of this talk, passed final inspection on August 29, 2006. Fritz has been married to Christy since 2000 and they enjoy Benjamin (3), Christian (2) and Dante (11 months) as well as a good night’s sleep if they are ever lucky enough to get one.

The Year in Review: TFG Projects 2006-2007.

Guild Membership Meeting: Meet with the Board of Directors and learn more about what the Guild is doing now and in the future. Come with your ideas and suggestions. Everyone is welcome.

Timber Frame Engineering Council Membership Meeting

Timber Frame Business Council Membership Meeting (5-6 PM)

Auction: Saturday will feature our Benefit Auction in the evening. Please bring items for the Silent or Live Auction, which is our primary fundraiser for the year. Susan Norlander (susan@tfguild.org) coordinates the auction; ex-rodeo cowboy "Sleepy" Avant is our auctioneer. Sponsored by Goshen Timber Frames.

Children’s Discovery Workshop continues.