Our story
We built the timber frame shop we’d want to work with.
It’s why we’ve grown slowly, and why we stay closely involved in every project we take on.
1996
Greg Sickler spent ten years framing for another timber frame company before starting his own in 1996: one or two frames a year, cut by hand in a small shop in rural Pennsylvania. Connie ran the books. It stayed a small, hand-cut shop for a long time.
Kayle joined in 2012, wanting to see what the same craft could do with more capacity behind it. He also started posting the work on Instagram, and far more people wanted to see it than any of us expected.
In 2022, we made the biggest investment in the company’s history: an Italian 5-axis CNC. We brought our most complex cutting into our own shop. Four years in, it’s changed what we can take on, but not how we want to work. We’re still a small team, and still closely involved in every frame.
What we believe
What we’ve learned along the way.
We listen first, share what we’ve learned about timber, and work out the best frame together.
Every frame passes through a lot of hands, so we hold on to partners who do good work, show up when they say they will, and tell us when something’s wrong.
We’re a family business, and we keep room for craft, creativity, and the people we work alongside. It shows in the frames.
Every frame teaches us something. Quite often Bruce and Kayle are up on a ridge, setting the last few pieces, when they look at each other and say, “That may have been the best frame we’ve ever built.” We want Settlement Post & Beam framers saying the same thing fifty years from now.
The family
The people who build your frame.
We’re a small team, and everyone here is involved in your project.
Greg Sickler
Runs the shop. Operates the CNC, manages fabrication, and has been cutting timber frames for forty years, the first ten for another company before he started this one in 1996.
He keeps a pair of binoculars on the CNC console. Every so often you’ll hear the machine power down and see him head out the big door to glass a few deer across Route 6, then meander back in and start cutting timber again.
Connie Sickler
Timber prep, finish, and packaging. Connie is an artist first. She taught art in the Troy School District for ten years, and she still runs a gallery out of our model home. What started as a way to sell her own work has grown into a space featuring her original watercolors alongside pieces from local Pennsylvania artisans.
She treats every piece of timber like a canvas, filling, gluing, feathering, and sanding until it’s right.
Kayle Sickler
General manager. Kayle is the one who gets excited about anything new: a technique, a joint, a partnership, a better way to run the shop. He’s also the one thinking furthest ahead, usually about where the company should be a generation from now.
Most days he’s working through a frame with architects, engineers, general contractors, and owners, and he’s still at most raisings once the ridge beams start to fly.
Gabrielle Fish
Timber prep, finish, and packaging alongside Connie. Gabe looks over the joinery, sands, fixes imperfections, and finishes, usually with a Harry Potter audiobook playing on repeat.
Outside the shop she’s running kids to baseball and football practice, heading up the dugout club, and probably on the PTO too. She’s basically the unofficial mayor of Troy. Everybody knows her, everybody loves her, and she’s always the one who steps in wherever she’s needed.
Bruce Kelley
Timber framer and our Swiss Army knife. Bruce spent thirty years as a mechanic on Audis and BMWs before he made the switch to timber framing. Since 2014 he’s been installing frames, working around the shop, and keeping the equipment running.
He’s best known, though, for jumping into the lake off every boathouse we’ve ever built. It’s made him a little famous on social media, and at this point we pretty much expect it.
Kayle’s wife, Delanie, doesn’t appear on the org chart. She probably should.
The company we keep
A few of our closest partners.
We work with a lot of good people. These are a few we bring onto our projects most often.
Mike Beganyi
Mike has spent decades in timber framing, including years at another timber frame company before starting his own practice. He works with us on retainer on select projects, designing frames and guiding early design conversations so clients understand what’s possible before a single drawing exists.
Dan Kiser
Dan is a timber frame designer and Cadwork specialist. He details our frames in the 3D model and prepares the drawings that go to the engineer, catching problems on screen before they ever reach the shop floor.
Fire Tower Engineered Timber
Fire Tower is led by Ben Brungraber, whose PhD from Stanford is in mortise and tenon joinery; around the industry he’s known as Dr. Joint. They’re our closest engineering partner on complex projects.
Jeff Tice, Jeff Tice Studios
Jeff handles the custom metalwork that shows up in our most detail-oriented projects: hardware, connectors, architectural elements. He built the iron tension system on the Glasshouse at Cedar Lakes.
See our most recent work
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