Tedd Benson was once the voice of the timber frame revival. In his book: Building the Timber Frame House: The Revival of a Forgotten Art, Benson stood as a proponent of craftsmanship and the tradesman because he felt stick framing was unfulfilling and the extra skill and craftsmanship required in timber framing was more fulfilling. Today, he pushes factory built homes, which is the complete opposite of his past stance. I respected young Tedd Benson, but today his past credentials as a master carpenter and humanist should be discarded when he is hawking his factory wares. I started my career as a carpenter in a truss factory, and it was soulless work that only produced “cheap” roofs and impoverished workers. His factory might produce quality and pay workers, but most don’t. Would the editors of Fine Homebuilding please stop treating Tedd Benson as a carpentry demigod when he is really now a businessman that advocates the factory over the journeyman carpenter.
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Replies
Agreed. I have his first book. What a total 180 he's done. It's depressing.
"I started my career as a carpenter in a truss factory, and it was soulless work that only produced "cheap" roofs and impoverished workers."
Who exactly did your truss building impoverish? As far as I can tell it gave you a paycheck and the first steps of a career, as it certainly has for thousands of other people. You were doing essentially the same job you would've been otherwise, just indoors. Seriously, think harder man.
producing the same widget over and over again is pretty much one definition of soulless work...
I never mentioned his "soulless work" comment. Although now that you mention it, would building trusses/rafters 15 feet in the air make it more fulfilling? All general carpentry/framing is repeated exercises, theres just a larger scope of exercises. Unless you do scrictly super unique and custom work, then you're still mass producing "widgets". Just maybe five or six different models of widgets, instead of one.
>>Who exactly did your truss building impoverish?
He told us - himself
>>As far as I can tell it gave you a paycheck and the first steps of a career, as it certainly has for thousands of other people.
Right, and my working as a utility machine operator for Pennsylvania House turned me into a furniture maker... And having spent a week stapling mobile homes together turned me into a fine homebuilder....
>>You were doing essentially the same job you would've been otherwise, just indoors. Seriously, think harder man.
Seriously, do you think he might know the elements of his life having actually lived it better than you do based on a paragraph he wrote...?
">>Who exactly did your truss building impoverish?
He told us - himself"
If he was truss building he was certainly making at least $10 an hr. It may not have been a lot, but anyone who is unecessarily dramatic enough to call that "impoverished" is an idiot, and should mostly be ignored. If a guy in the U.S. who makes $10 or $12 an hr is "impoverished" what is a poor person in India? Hyper-impoverished? Mega-super-poor? Impoverished is a loaded word, and should be saved for when it's necessary and accurate.
Yeah. I guess it's me being nitpicky. But really, an American adult should have a wider scope of the world, and be way more thankful for what they have.
QUOTE
If he was truss building he was certainly making at least $10 an hr. It may not have been a lot, but anyone who is unecessarily dramatic enough to call that "impoverished" is an idiot, and should mostly be ignored. If a guy in the U.S. who makes $10 or $12 an hr is "impoverished" what is a poor person in India?
END QUOTE
"At least 10/hr." Yep, you are THE expert, I guess, 'cause otherwise you wouldn't know the stuff you claim to know.
40hrs * 50 weeks *$10 hour = 20,000.
Less SS and tax withholding
Less Rent
Less Food
Less auto insurance
Less gas to get to the job.
Less a phone
Less the electric
Less the heat
Yeah, people at $10/hr are living like freaking kings.
>>Yeah. I guess it's me being nitpicky.
Nope, you're not being nitpicky.
Something else, maybe, but definitely not nitpicky.
"Yeah, people at $10/hr are living like freaking kings."
Who said this? I didn't. You're clearly one of those people who argues for higher minimum wages because "people just can't raise a family on minimum wage", as if anyone supporting a family should be or is expected to be earning minimum wage for any extended period of time. Even in your childish reply you disprove yourself. You claim a person is "impoverished" because they don't have anything left after paying for their car and rent and insurance and phone and heat. Meanwhile you completely ignore the fact they have enough money to even have any of those things in the first place! It's a cold, hard world, and you can do lot worse than "just" having a car and insurance and decent place to live.
It's like in the 80's, when the Soviet Union spread photos of welfare lines in the U.S. to try to show how much of a gigantic failure capitalism was and how much the American people were suffering in poverty. But when the Soviet public saw the photos, the general sentiment was "Poverty? What do you mean they're poor? These people have shoes and coats! Compared to us they look like the aristocracy!"
>>as if anyone supporting a family should be or is expected to be earning minimum wage for any extended period of time.
Yepper, everyone is going to climb the economic ladder.
Are you from Lake woebegone by any chance, where all the children are above average?
>> Even in your childish reply you disprove yourself.
Childish, perhaps, but at least I give my analyses some thought and accept life's realities.
>>Yepper, everyone is going to climb the economic ladder.
Yes, everyone with ambition and half a brain. I suggest read the book Scratch Beginnings by Adam Shephard. It's an actual real world, physical experiment/reply to the Barbara Ehrenreich Nickel and Dimed type "no one can make it in this country" whining. Get it used on Amazon for a few bucks.
>>Are you from Lake woebegone by any chance, where all the children are above average?
I can't tell what exactly you mean by this. That I've had a priveledged life? That I've never struggled? If that is what you mean, you're very wrong. My father raised the five of us on about $25k a year working in a textile mill. He's been there almost 30 years now. But the last thing I would ever call my childhood was "impoverished". It was absolutely great and happy and loving and secure. We were grateful for every dollar we had.
>>Childish, perhaps, but at least I give my analyses some thought and accept life's realities.
I've been called tons of things, but never unthinking.
>>>>Yepper, everyone is going to climb the economic ladder.
>>Yes, everyone with ambition and half a brain.
By definition, especially in a capitalist economy, only some can climb the economic scale.
Just as, by definition, not everyone can be above average....
Personally, I don't advocate
Personally, I don't advocate making apples and oranges comparisons of US wages with e.g. India wages. Can you imagine getting paid $1 and hour ... the horror! The reality is that the 'other' economic base is totally different. 'Those' people often don't have a mortgage, a car payment, cable TV and phone bills, etc. to need more of a wage. Just because someone else makes e.g. $1 and hour doesn't even begin to necessarily mean they are more or less impoverished than we in the US. We in the US are idiots in many respects for demanding higher wages just to waste them on 2 hour commutes, mindless/poorly designed McMansions, and the meriad of pointless spending on crap we neither really want or need.
Hey, have you looked up the income levels in the United States that qualify a person as being impoverished? The Federal Registrar put the poverty line at: $10,830/year single person, $14,570 family of 2, $18,310 family of 3, $22,050 family of 4, $25,790 family of 5, and so on with marginal increases for amount of dependents. These numbers may have been slightly lower in 2000 when I worked at the factory. As a truss assembler, I was making 7$ per hour with no health benefits. This was what every single truss assembler was paid, unless they were an illegal immigrant, in which case they were paid $6.75 per hour. At $7 per hour, I was averaging $13,440 per year, so technically I was slightly above the poverty line. However, this did not take into account the cost of living for the area of the US I was living in. I was single at the time, but the other workers made the same rate and had families, which would have qualified the vast majority of workers as technically "impoverished," at least by the standards of the US Federal government. Nice "vision" for America. I'm not saying this is how Tedd Benson operates his facility, I don't know the guy and have never visited his facility, but this is the overall system he is advocating. I'm not against technological progress when it is responsible, but never try to justify paying a man poverty wages.
Bob, why feed a troll?
>>Bob, why feed a troll?
Good point. Mea culpa
If you're talking about the
If you're talking about the Tedd Benson infomercial, thinly disguised as an article, that was in FHB a while back... it's what took me to the brink subscription cancellation... this new forum move pushed me over the edge LOL
I canceled my subscription a year or so ago. It used to be a really good magazine.
Here's another way of looking
Here’s another way of looking at Tedd Benson’s work. He still builds heirloom-grade timber-frame homes, but he also recognizes that the cost of such homes is out of reach for most of us. Timber-frame houses are also heavy on the use of big, old-growth wood, and they aren’t the easiest structures to insulate. So Benson has taken the capabilities of his company--both the crew and his manufacturing facility--and applied it to making energy-efficient factory-built structures out of sustainable, readily available materials. What’s more, these buildings are designed to be easily reconfigured over their lifespan to accommodate different uses. I fail to see the hypocrisy in that.
Bingo.
I think using the term 'factory built' as a synonym for 'soulless' is as invalid as using the term 'custom stick built' as a synonym for 'quality'.
The means of construction is not a direct correlation to the quality or soulfulness of the final product.
Those of us in the timber framing "industry" who know Tedd call him a lot of things: self-serving (maybe we're jealous..), naive, visionary, among other adjectives. I don't know anyone who would call him a hypocrite. Tedd really believes in the system he purports and supplies. He believes it's good for the customer and good for the workers. He has foregone an easier, more profitable route to advocate for it.
Back in the early 90's he was the first to buy a CNC machine to cut timber. THAT raised eyebrows- many making the same arguments you now make. He argued that the machine freed up his highly skilled joiners to do the fun stuff and leave the routine framing to the machine. Guess what? The majority of the industry followed suit. Like it or not, most timber frames cut today are now cut by machine.
This hand work V. machine work is a fine line, and as a journeyman myself, I must walk it every day, like it or not. welcome to 2010.
"Like it or not, most timber frames cut today are now cut by machine."
Soullessness!!!!! Faster means of production are the work of the devil!
"Like it or not, most timber frames cut today are now cut by machine."
Soullessness!!!!! Faster means of production are the work of the devil!
My biggest complaint about machine cutting is that the machine tends to encourage high grading of timber. I used to work for a company that hand-cuts frames. We could adjust our methods to suit the wood. Wonky, curved timber? No problem: we'll scribe it. A machine can't do that.
However, the demand for that kind of work is limited, and it definitely costs more. Worker's comp claims by timber framers have historically been clustered around "mortise elbow" repetitive strain injuries. Tedd's approach minimizes these kind of injuries by getting the machine to do most of the repetitive work.
Personally, I think there's room for both approaches. I didn't get in to timber framing to clean up after a machine, and I don't. But I like to eat, and so do my kids, and frankly most clients don't care (or know) if a machine cut their frame or a craftsman did.
There a little irony in your post for me . I was lent his book' Building the Timber Frame House" And just got to start to really read the contents and have really understand the draw to and passion that the Timber Frame process.IMHO A great book. On your comments about , i think there a natural progression here, that a craftsman finally recognized with integrity , and impeccable credentials . After there is more the accolades , he wonders where do i go from here. How can i take my reputation , and credentials and enhance my bottom line,and supposedly with altruistic intentions( nudge,nudge,wink,wink) bring them to the masses.With a again supposed affordable price. He just took the natural path of craftsman to corporation to the niche he probably feels he helped
to reawaken . I think that after time in the trenches as a journey men , that if given the choice i could beckon being a craftsman on some days and being a businessman on the days i'm well.... sick of it.And maybe shmooze and coax and cajole the potential customers . Dont get me wrong i agree with what your saying , but i choose to give him a pass . Again between self awareness, the eco-green movement, and relative new found corporation/financial potential.It time to get to the gettin'
I wouldn't call him a
I wouldn't call him a hypocrite; I'd call him a visionary. He indeed was a major force in the timber frame revival, but he has always been systems- and marketing-oriented. His frames were NOT traditional timber framing.
If anything, he is now walking the talk more than ever. In the early 90's I visited his shop and talked extensively with his engineer/PM, who expressed some level of dismay that the work they were getting involved ancient timbers and multi-multi-million dollar homes in far away places.
With his new "Bensonwood" system, they have re-thought the very essence of housing, separating structure from room layout from the control layers provided at the building's skin. I have studied his books and find nothing in his new business that is out of line with his past, aside from weak dose of nostalgia. Benson has foresight into the future of housing, bringing quality housing systems designed to last yet be easily modified as new technologies develop and as tastes change.
I read his book in the 80's
I read his book in the 80's and built a barn for the fun of it. I have laughed for years at the crazy joints he would use. Shouldered housed dovetailed mortise and tenon. stopped splayed splice. joinery for the sake of joinery.
He really hasn't changed much. I saw some of the TOH, and the over engineering in the wall system was just like the joinery he liked.
I run CNC VMC's all day, no one in my business turns handles anymore. you do not make money that way. To say it is a sinning is like saying I was sinning in 1986 using my 1/2 Milwaukee instead of brace and bit to cut mortises.
What is the average hourly rate? More production is not a bad thing, but getting paid a laughable rate is.
Your view, at least to me, seems like the same as anyone who decries an artist's transformation into a visionary and then businessman.
We could find the same rants about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs if we went to forums that are populated by folks who write code and design systems.
Some do the same things, really really well, their whole lives, and are happy doing so. Others change, transform, grow, and want to expand their horizons and influence. Tedd Benson is one of the latter, and he should not be denigrated for doing so.
But that is just my opinion. You are certainly entitled to yours.