Timber Frame Consultants, LLC

Verne Williams of Specialty Timbers

by Amanda Patterson

Sawyer Verne Williams has been in the lumber business for 32 years, and now as the owner and sawyer of Specialty Timbers, he focuses on the needs of timber framers. He opened his Montague, Massachusetts sawmill in 1992, and since then has been cutting timbers for homes, barns and special projects. He even milled the deck beams for Tall Ship U.S.S. Friendship, moored in Salem, Mass.

Williams started Specialty Timbers in response to the need for the long timbers used in timber framing, and made sure his shop could handle just about anything.

"I set up my mill to do 40 foot timbers which meant purchasing a Chase handset mill, with a 20 foot carriage." Williams said squinting in the sun on his lot stacked with oak and hemlock logs ready to be cut and neat piles of custom cherry boards.

He laughed as he remembered milling in the early days of the timber frame movement. "We were learning a whole new industry. The first time they called up and ordered FOHC (free of heart center) I had no idea what they wanted. We got it all wrong" he said.

Over time, he not only learned that heartwood doesn't look good on an exposed beam, but that timber framing demands higher quality timbers, and that there is an "aesthetic component to the selection and sawing" of large timbers. Now with his own specialty sawmill, and 25 years of experience working with timber framers, Williams prides himself on supplying high quality lumber for any project.

"The longer timbers come from straighter trees and are generally of higher quality. It's more structurally sound to use a single timber for a floor to ceiling post, and timber frame home owners find that long spans offer them flexibility. The main beams are usually highlighted in people's homes, sometimes spanning the whole width of the house. People don't expect that, and it makes a great conversation piece."

Traditionally, timber frame homes would be built from trees felled at the house site, "they would fell it at the house, hew it, do the joinery and raise it right on site." Williams will soon be engaged in a modern version of the same tradition.

Because he is a skilled logger as well as an accomplished sawyer, Williams is able to accommodate home owners who have timber and want to build with their own trees. This summer he will log at a home site in Gill, haul the logs to the saw mill and return them to the site ready for construction.

Williams said that his main goal is to supply timber framers the products they need, but he has the experience and equipment do custom jobs of any specification.

His work can be seen at the Vermont Welcome Center off of Interstate 91 in Guilford, Vermont and he also supplied the timbers for the seven-building complex at Great Glen Trails, the largest cross country ski resort in the country located at the foot of Mount Washington.