Before mechanized mills, every plank began with two men and a two-metre saw: the top-man balancing on the log, the pit-man below in a rain of sawdust, ripping timber lengthwise for hours at a stretch. Sawyers worked in paired teams as a distinct trade allied to carpentry until steam sawmills spread through the nineteenth century and erased the pit within two generations.
Pit sawyer no longer exists as a living trade. Here is what erased it, and which profession took on the work.
500 – 1500
Guilds, cathedrals and temple carpenters
Medieval Europe framed its cathedrals under 'forests' of oak roof trusses while guilds — London's Carpenters' Company wrote its ordinances in 1333 — controlled who could practice. In East Asia the dougong bracket tradition raised nail-free pagodas, and Japan's hereditary temple-carpenter lineages, including the Kongō family firm founded in 578, carried techniques across centuries intact.
What else was happening then
1333
London's carpenters write their rules
The Carpenters' Company of London recorded its first book of ordinances in 1333 and received a royal charter in 1477 — one of many European guilds that controlled training, wages and quality through the apprentice–journeyman–master ladder, a structure the trade still loosely follows.
1678
The first English trade manual
London printer Joseph Moxon began issuing Mechanick Exercises in monthly parts — the first English-language manual to describe carpentry and joinery technique in print. Until then the trades passed knowledge only by demonstration, guarded inside guild workshops.
1833
The balloon frame, Chicago
St. Mary's Church in Chicago went up with light, machine-sawn studs and cheap machine-made nails instead of heavy mortised timbers — a method skeptics said would blow away like a balloon. It let two men do what had needed a raising crew, and it built the American West.
Where that work lives now
The builder in wood — a trade older than Homo sapiens, still measuring twice and cutting once from Nara's ancient temples to Norway's timber towers.
🪚 Carpenter →