Bolton family, Old South Barns use centuries-old technology
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By Tom Seegmueller
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DAWSON – Under a pole barn of their own construction, a family of craftsmen in Terrell County are sawing their own lumber to build modern structures using centuries-old technologies on the verge of being lost.
“Timber framing has always been a big passion of mine,” Jesse Bolton said. “Nothing is better than taking a tree down by hand and taking it to the sawmill over here and cutting the cant. Then taking it to the job site and cut the mortise and tenons to a tight fit and then driving the oak dowels in to hold everything together without using a metal fastener.”
Bolton is the guiding force behind Old South Barns, a family company whose goal is to use timber framing and “post-and-beam” construction to not only restore old barns but build new structures in an old style.
He moved to Tennessee and spent four years working with the Amish outside Nashville learning the barn-building trade.
“Pole barns were a big deal,” Bolton said of the art. “The work harkened back to when I grew up watching Roy Underhill, Norm Abrams, and the ‘Wood Wright Shop.’ Besides having sawdust in your diapers growing up, the love of wood was with us.”
The “us” included Bolton’s father, Dan, and his younger brother Josh.
“When I moved back, dad had retired from his woodworking business and was just working on the farm,” Jesse Bolton said. “So I asked him if I could pull the ole mule out of the barn and put him back to work. And we go building pole barns. That’s how dad came to be known as ‘The Old Mule.’”
“I’ve been following him around ever since”, Dan Bolton says of his son, his comment marked by a smile.
Spend a few minutes with the trio, and it quickly becomes apparent that they not only enjoy what they do, they really enjoy doing it together.
Dan operated Dixie Millworks, where he honed his woodworking skills over the decades, as well as those of a wheelwright and wagon builder.
“I have dealt in woodworking practically my whole life in some form or some fashion and joinery in woodworking has always fascinated the stew out of me,” he said. “The ways you can put wood together and make it hold. Now you talk about that on a small scale, like furniture is one thing. But the similarity in joints are used in a building. They have to stand the test of time, weather, wind, expansion, contraction. The whole gamut. That’s where good joinery comes in; that’s what fuels us.”
The skills that each Bolton brings to the table makes the resulting structures they repair and build unique. Jesse describes a metal jig and the system they use to lay out and square the exterior footprint of a new structure in minutes.
Dan describes Jesse using “algebra and his cellphone” to calculate the necessary mathematics.
“I can’t even spell algebra,” he says laughing. “I’m a 3, 4, 5 man.”
Dan then quickly explained that if you have two strings meeting at the corner, it’s not necessarily square. But if you measure up from where they meet and go to a point 3 feet up one string and four feet down the other string. You then can take your tape measure and adjust the angle of the 2 strings until the distance between those 2 points is 5 feet, creating a square corner.
“Whatever it takes to get the job done,” Dan says. “One isn’t right, the other isn’t wrong … it’s just whoever you are and what works right for you.”
The trio have the skillsets necessary to build a structure in a traditional, old-school manner. They have also created a number of options that can produce an old-school look without the hours of old-school labor, not only saving their backs but saving a client a great deal of money.
When it comes to roofing the structures they build and repair, Josh Bolton is universally recognized by the others as the “pro.”
“He is awesome; there may be four screws a year he will miss,” Jesse said of his brother and the work he did on the pole barn that houses their sawmill. “I think it was a little over 830,000 screws he has put in. He did that side of the roof in two hours after lunch, and it was 855 degrees and 4,000 percent humidity. He did the other side the next morning in 45 minutes ‘cause he didn’t want to get hot.”
Having their own sawmill benefits the Boltons in a number of ways. When they are restoring an existing structure, they can replicate the actual dimensions of the timbers and lumber originally used in the building’s construction. As the wood ages, repairs blend seamlessly with the original work.
It also allows them to build a stronger structure cutting the lumber they use to “true” dimensions. As anyone who does any carpentry knows, a modern 2×4 is no longer actually 2 inches by 4 inches. In the end it’s all in the details. Not only is the lumber they cut and air-dry straight and true, it often has unique characteristics relating to its grain and color.
Jesse said that his wife encouraged him to begin posting their projects on Facebook and things have really taken off. Relying on word-of-mouth marketing, they have a steady and growing list of projects.
“Jesse is right; it’s saving and preserving the past,” Dan said. “There’s so much here to save. That’s what keeps us going.”
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