East County Oak is a timber framing shop based in Athens, Georgia. We specialize in designing and hand crafting traditional timber frames. We also provide fine carpentry services and custom woodworking and furniture.

We frame structures with large solid wood timbers. These timbers are connected together with a variety of traditional wooden joints, most notably the mortise and tenon, where a narrower section of a timber is fitted into a mortise hole in its mated timber. The two half joints are then fastened together with no hardware other than a hand made white oak pin (or two or three).

This type of joinery is labor intensive, but the results are striking. It produces an incredibly durable connection that has been used since the beginning of woodworking, and the finished structure visibly showcases the beauty of that labor and time-tested craft. Whether it is as simple as a square housing for a floor joist to sit in or as complicated as a scarf joining two timbers in length, joinery is the signature feature of timber framing.

Each timber frame is designed in house, reviewed by an engineer specializing in wood-joined structures, and hand cut in our shop. Cut from forests in North Georgia, Rough sawn eastern white pine is our most consistent timber choice. Yellow pine, red and white oak, and bald cypress are other fantastic local options. Western red cedar and douglas fir can be shipped in from the west coast. We are also excited to offer mixed-species frames from urban salvaged lumber. Timber can be rough-sawn, planed, hand-hewn, or reclaimed.