Aesthetics is the primary reason for choosing wood timber framing over its more conventional counterpart: the post and beam, but certainly not the only one. Structurally, timber wood framing is very sound, because it uses mortise and tenon, a solid joinery system of pegs and slots that dates back to the Fourth Dynasty in Egypt.

“It’s all pegged together,” Makens says. “Before nails and steel plates, they had to use wood. It’s constructed to support a tremendous amount of weight and designed to withstand the area’s wind factors.”

Aside from its strength, the visual appeal of the hand-carved timberwood trusses is a staple of the European style house, very popular on the east coast. Makens hopes to bring the style more ubiquity in the Southwest as he is one of the only woodcarvers in New Mexico familiar with the crafting process.

“This is something fairly new to modern home construction in New Mexico,” Makens says. “Many people want a Tuscan style home nowadays, incorporating anything out of the ordinary. We want to fill that void.”

Makens’ usual workload consists of woodcarving mantels and entryway columns or posts. While most of his work is decorative carving, he has been working on timber wood trusses for a little over a year.

Makens said carving a timber wood truss takes two to three days, depending on the design, and then a crane is needed to put the truss into place. Most of the time, the trusses are made of Douglas fir, the strongest of the pine group. Makens has even crafted ceilings from river willow.

His interest in woodcarving began early in life. Makens’ curiosity about the process got the better of him when he was merely six years old in Colorado. In his family’s basement, he got his start as a master woodcraftsman, and the rest, as they say, is history. After two semesters at New Mexico State University with a major in Range Science, Makens went to work for C&D Lumber out of Las Cruces.

“I’ve always been interested in this kind of work,” Makens recalls. “I wanted to be farmer, but a summer working in South Dakota cured me of that.”
Makens says while Trails End was a bit of a surprise at first, he was able to successfully own his own business while simultaneously running the lumberyard.

When he isn’t working on his latest creation for a client, Makens enjoys helping the local Boy Scout Council thin the overgrown forests near Kingston. He and his workers are the only certified loggers in the area.

“As much as we take from the forest, it’s nice to give back to make it stronger and healthier.”

As for now, Makens will continue to work on trusses and the decorative woodcarvings he so likes to create. However, future plans call for more company development.

“I’d like to get it to the point where I can get more employees in here, where I don’t have to do the heavy lifting,” Makens says. “I’d like to help the people more with design, because I like to build on what we have done in the past.”

Makens says his proudest moments come when he sees the customers happy. “Everything we do is one of a kind. There are no duplicates.”

Makens simplest designs start at around $160 and can range to very intricate work at around $700.