Framing without fasteners video

Hello fellow Permies. It's been a very long time since I've contributed on here.

I came across this video today and thought that it does pretty good job of explaining the pros and cons of building without fasteners.

I think it might make a good video to show someone who's never considered of this kind of building.

This certainly explains why Paul Wheaton has had his people at Wheaton Labs work so hard at learning these techniques.

I do get a little frustrated at the things videos like this mention ten times, when other issues are not mentioned at all...

1. Around the same time as cheap housing was invented, human population started expanding rapidly. My In-laws had a solid wood summer house which wasn't as fancy as the video shows. However, it would be hard to find trees of that size in the area, let alone oak, by the time I met the house in 1990.

2. Not only did humans increase their consumption of wood, they left farms for cities, where they were packed much tighter and one person's carelessness could burn down an entire neighborhood. Japan may have used this construction for their temples, and even their house frames were done through joinery, but the rest of their homes were largely made of bamboo, because it grew fast and was cheap, so again, when large swaths of housing burned to the ground, they could rebuild.

3. I do not think it's fair to blame codes and inspectors for this issue. Styles of houses used to stay the same for a century, but now, people often recognize the age of the house by the colour of the bathtub! If people accepted the basic layouts of a selection of even 20 homes, a timber framed equivalent could be created to guaranteed standards, again, making this concept more viable.

4. Houses that used to hold families of 6-10 people, now hold 1 or 2, maybe 3 or 4. On top of that, from the 70's until recently, the average house size doubled, then tripled. That uses hugely more material, and building time.

Living in earthquake country and having spent months in Japan on exchange, I have a great appreciation for how Japanese house frames were built to "shake and survive". I do agree with what the video said about learning these skills while building small, useful equipment like sawhorses, sheds, and furniture. I am really pleased that there are people out there making sure these skills don't completely disappear.