A Roof Cutter's Secrets: To Framing the Custom Home 1989
Will began his career in construction as a job-site laborer with a shovel in his hands.  Blessed with the knack to drive nails he found a good fit in rough carpentry.  While working in the Los Angeles housing tracts in the mid-70s Will had the opportunity to learn production roof cutting and stacking.  Ever since those early days, roofs have been his forte.  Lacking the technical side of his profession he made time to attend the Construction program at Orange Coast College graduating with an AA degree.  When roof trusses gained prominence in the late-70s he left SCal and moved north into the custom home market along the California central coast. There with his crew he spent the next 14 yrs specializing in framing custom homes with complicated roofs.   During that time he wrote his first book entitled A Roof Cutter’s Secrets to Framing the Custom Home (1989) and earned a BA thru night school. In 1992 after 20yrs in the industry, Will began working as a freelance framing consultant and “traveling roof cutter”.  He did this primarily so he could divide his time between his other interests of bush flying (he is a commercial pilot and aircraft mechanic), whitewater river guiding and humanitarian aid projects.  In his new capacity he participated in the building of many interesting projects on both coasts.  From 1992–2002 he had the unique experience to be able to teach roof framing seminars/workshops at “JLC Live” conferences.  The video of his 1997 roof framing presentation at the JLC Live East conference was edited into a commercial video and is available from various vendors. In 1996 Will developed “The Headcutter” (patent 6038775).  He invented this devise to replace the venerable sidewinder blade that he had used for many decades when cutting roofs.  “The Headcutter” (Big Foot Tools) is an adjustable saw foot that clamps to the bar of a chainsaw converting it into a vertical milling machine.  It is terrific to gang-cut the head-cuts/tail-cuts on common rafters packages, square-cut TJI packages and trim insulated roof panels.  Will used this tool along with other custom saws to help set up a production roof cutting division at National Lumber (Boston) in 2001. In 2002 after four years in the works, Hanley Wood republished an updated version of Will’s original 1989 book A Roof Cutter’s Secrets in a modern day format.  In 2009, Will produced his most recent work entitled The Complicated Roof – A cut and stack workbook, as a companion guide to his mainstay.