A pocket notebook, and a standard that never moved
Long before spreadsheets and pricing calculators, the trade was carried in notebooks like this one — carpentry and joinery worked out by hand, in pencil and ink, page after page of rafter tables, stair geometry, and roof framing calculated to the sixteenth of an inch.
This one belonged to Gerald Warren, a Toronto movie-set builder, carpenter and joiner. Every angle in it was cut by hand and checked twice. Every term was written out because it mattered that the next tradesman — his son, and eventually me — understood it exactly, not approximately.
Four generations later, that's still the standard this business is built on. The tools have changed. The line his notebook draws to mine hasn't.
This archive preserves Gerald’s working notes and family history. It is not current construction, structural or code instruction. Approved drawings, current Ontario requirements, qualified design and exact product documentation govern real work.
