Carpenters Without Borders broadens Montague resident’s horizons

If it wasn’t for their cell phones, the 60 carpenters hacking away at logs with hewing axes would appear like they were from the same century as the French castle that was their worksite for two weeks. But that’s the point.

Charpentiers Sans Frontières, or Carpenters Without Borders, brings volunteer carpenters from various countries together to do historical projects, using traditional methods and tools.

Hank Silver of Montague was part of the most recent project: building a bridge at the Château d’Harcourt, a fortified castle in the Eure department of northern Normandy in September of 2018.

Silver learned about the organization from a coworker who volunteered two years ago.

“That’s how I got the contact information from the organizer, François Calame, a self-described civil-servant in the French Ministry of Culture,” Silver said. “It’s really a word-of-mouth group.”

He sent Calame an email and was accepted into the program shortly after. The program funded meals and bed and breakfasts for volunteers, but it wasn’t responsible for their airplane tickets and tools.

All of the volunteers have experience as carpenters. Silver has his own timber framing business and practices the American tradition of timber framing.

“I was interested in getting exposure to the more traditional French style, which is different in a lot of ways,” said Silver, who spoke conversational French after living in Montreal.

Carpenters Without Borders has been around for about 15 years, and its mission is to preserve the cultural heritage of buildings, methods and techniques.

“The point is to repair or restore traditional structures using tools and methods used at the time, as much as is practical,” Silver said. “Instead of using a power saw, we want to keep the method alive, which is keeping the cultural heritage alive. It’s an intangible cultural heritage.”

With 60 people from 11 countries, both men and women, there was certainly an exchange of different practices and methods at the Château d’Harcourt project.

“We may have been from all different places, but we all had a shared understanding of carpentry,” Silver said. “At dinner, we’d have paper placemats, and we’d use our carpenter pencils to draw and explain our methodology to each other.”

Working together, sharing expertise

The 2018 project for Carpenters Without Borders was replacing the château’s 77-foot wooden bridge.

The Château d’Harcourt was originally constructed in the early 11th century by the descendants of Bernard the Dane, likely a companion of the Viking chief Rollo, who took control of the area in 911 and is known as the founder of Normandy, according to Silver.

Over the many generations of the family — who became known as the Harcourts — renovations were made to the château, like building a three-story stone keep and stone walls to protect the outer courtyard, and filling in part of the inner dry moat. However, the building still closely resembles the 12th-century layout.

The château’s previous bridge completely rotted and was poorly designed, Silver said, so having wood genetically more likely to last decades was ideal. Prior to the group’s arrival, the bridge was removed, and upstaging and scaffolding was erected.

When they arrived, French oak trees were in the courtyard in front of the castle.

“It’s a naturally rot resistant tree,” Silver said. “A group harvested them in February on the day previous to a new moon, when the sap is at its lowest. The moon affects the sap and when there is less moisture, the wood is more dimensionally stable.”

The bulk of Carpenters Without Borders’ work involved skinning the bark off the trees, and hand hewing them. Hewing is the practice of taking a circular log and squaring it using the human eye, axes and hand tools. The method of hewing depends on personal preference and sometimes national origin, Silver said.

“With one carpenter at each end of the log, each would position a ruler at the end and position them to create one face of the square. Then a third person would adjust a chalk line along the length of the log until it was straight,” Silver said. “Then they would snap it, leaving the line to hew along.”

Each person would then make “kerfs” or a cut into the log that was the width of the ax blade, and cut out a wedge shape. Then, the next step depended on the method the carpenter used, Silver said.

The French method, for example, involves the carpenter standing on the log and cutting the wood below his feet from one wedge to the next with an ax. Others would cut from the side using axes with varying patterns, based on the county of origin.

The French method was the most difficult for Silver, who has lower back problems.

“It’s hard to stand on a log and chop below your feet, it’s challenging,” Silver said. “There were two or three people who had to go to hospital. They had minor injuries, but bad enough to get stitches. I wasn’t one of them.”

Silver said cutting the logs into long rectangles was the bulk of the work throughout the project.

“They were long days, beginning at 8 a.m. going until about (noon), then having a four-course French lunch,” Silver said. “Then we would go back to work, and hewing in the sun on a full stomach is hard. We’d go until dinner and have another four-course meal.”

Supporting social justice and group learning

In the evenings, the group would enjoy a program, such as touring previous Carpenters Without Borders sites or listening to lectures.

One night, an architectural archeologist spoke about “the link between frame and forest, analyzing several historic timber frames and the medieval silviculture practices that supplied the timber,” Silver said. They also visited a 14th-century barn that was restored by Carpenters Without Borders in 2016.

“Every evening there was a program,” Silver said. “There was one by a Carpenters Without Borders member and he had a side hobby as a fletcher. He makes arrows like the ones from the same period of the castle we were working on. It was pretty cool and he was really funny.”

Another aspect of Carpenters Without Borders’ mission is social justice — which it takes seriously, focusing on undocumented immigrants. Silver explained there was an immigration crisis beginning in 2015, when large numbers of migrants from Africa and the Middle East were attempting to get into the European Union.

“In France, the crisis manifested most notoriously in the so-called ‘jungle’ refugee camp in Calais,” Silver said. “Volunteers (from Carpenters Without Borders) built a timber-framed legal-advice center in the Calais Jungle in 2016. After serving the refugee community for about 15 months, the structure was ultimately destroyed by arson.”

In fact, one of the volunteers on the Château d’Harcourt trip, who was housed by Calame, was an undocumented immigrant from Guinea.

Silver said Carpenters Without Borders alternates between an annual project in France and an international project the following year. Next year, there will be a group of volunteers going to Guyana and Silver hopes to be among them.

He also hopes to keep in touch with the friends he made in France.

“It was really interesting to see all of the differences between us,” Silver said. “I found a whole family there. It was a real sense of camaraderie.”