Timber for shingles to cover houses, Montgomery county by Lewis Miller, 1850s.
After felling oak, beech, cherry, poplar, walnut, chestnut, locust, and pine trees in the nearby forest and stripping them of bark, out carpenters brought the timbers to the saw pit on Mulberry Row. The pit was a shallow depression in the ground with a wooden frame placed over it. David Hern and Phill, both enslaved sawyers, used chalk to draw vertical lines on the timbers; these lines served as guides for the saw. They then positioned a piece of timber on the frame over the pit. The “pit man” lay on his back under the timber while the other sawyer stood on the frame over it. They used a two-handled saw to cut the wood vertically into planks.
Sawyer, Book of Trades, 1807.
The planks then went to Abram, an enslaved carpenter. Abram planed the planks, pulling a block-like tool with a thin blade along the wood to make the wood flat and smooth. He worked longer on some planks than others, depending on whether the wood was intended to be used for flooring, joists, or furniture. After “roughing out” the timber, Abram stacked the boards in the shop to let them dry. To allow air to flow between the boards, he placed spacers between them. He probably lit a small fire on the floor of the carpenter’s shop to help dry the planks.