Sawdust flies through beams of light in Hugh Lofting's timber-framing workshop just north of Kennett Square as he cuts a mortise into a wooden beam. Lofting uses a specialized chain saw to slice a perfect 1 1/2-inch-wide slot into the Douglas fir. The power saw is clearly an invention that came from the hard, calculated hand labor dating back to early tool-using man.

“First, man built lean-tos, but then moved into joinery,” said Lofting, owner and operator of Hugh Lofting Timber Framing Inc., on Unionville Road. Hugh Lofting smooths the surface of a timber with a chisel known as a slick. He learned the craft in the early 1970s. In an era of fast, tract home construction that uses aluminum framing, processed wood products, and plastic-based synthetic building materials, Lofting's craft is a throwback.

Instead of nailing boards together, timber-framing techniques join structural beams with interlocking precision cuts and hold them together with wooden pegs and gravity. It is the construction style Chester County pioneers brought from Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries and the type of barn construction Lofting grew up with on the family farm in West Marlborough Township.

“They used to build the barn first,” Lofting said of those early settlers. “Once they moved the animals inside, they built the houses.” Lofting, 59, said he learned timber framing from craftsmen in New England in the early 1970s. When he started his business in 1974, he said, there were only a few timber framers in Pennsylvania. But now, he said, there are about two dozen working in the area. He said he has trained a third of them.

The Timber Frame Business Council, an industry trade group, has seven member companies in Pennsylvania, including Methods & Materials Building Co. of Gilbertsville, Lancaster County Timber Frames Inc. of Lititz, and Atlantic Timberframes Inc. of Mercer. The association does not list any members in New Jersey.