About Brad

I grew up in a renovated barn, with my father’s architecture/construction firm located in the adjacent stable.  From an early age I was sketching houses and visiting construction sites with my father, and learning from the tradespeople that surrounded our family.  At the very end of my undergraduate college years, three friends and I built a fully scribed log cabin lean-to in the woods with only a chainsaw and axes.   In graduate school I found myself yearning to work with my hands again.  While attending the Heartwood School in the Berkshires, I bought a c.1823 Dutch timber frame house.  Before the house even had a roof, I was asked to work on other local projects, and Uncarved Block was formed. 

Brad has extensive training in extremely specialized (and occasionally obscure) fields of study, such as:  superinsulation, natural plastering, traditional Japanese hip roof framing, eyebrow dormer framing, medieval geometric proportioning, tangent hand railing, curved timber roof framing, Japanese woodworking, hewing, cruck framing, and many courses on compound joinery.  Brad is also part of the brand new Department of Labor apprenticeship program of the Timber Framers Guild, and recently became one of the first journeyman timber framers in the country. He is the only certified journeyman timber framer in Western Massachusetts.