Marshville Heritage Society's Heritage preservation

In a century when most structures were built from wood, no tradesmen were more useful than the carpenter and joiner. The main business of the carpenter was to cut and join timber and board into sturdy wooden homes and shops. Joinery is one of the specializations of carpentry. As villages grew, the demand for new homes, shops, outbuildings stables, sheds, and their repair, grew at a rapid pace.

The carpenter worked from a building’s foundation to its’ roof ridge. He laid floors, chiseled mortise-and-tenon joints, framed walls, raised rafters, produced moldings and hung doors, and nailed clap-board siding. Carpenters sometimes acquired building materials from less-skilled laborers, frequently using planks cut from logs by a sawyer and shingles were made at a building site. 

A joiner would finish interiors by joining together pieces of wood and might work on door and window frames and staircases and other wood pieces within a house or building. 

Furniture making was also important as was constructing wagon boxes and wagon wheels. 

Common carpentry tools included: saw, broadax, hammer, awl, mallet, plane, scribe, drawknife, gimlet, and froe.