Artisans of Australia: Timbercraft

[Music] you can always tell a good Bushman why his toes the better the tolls the better the Bushman now uncle Morris most common sand was a little shave him else asleep had to be pretty sharp to do that save a mouse in sleep mutt just look at that get awful yellow you [Music] what sort of fishing with instruction would annoys a good fisherman today this will be my third time down to work at column one the first time was mostly to study it's talk about it and see if we could restore it Coleman Armstead is one of two left in the snow country and was bill about the 1883 it is blue and built exactly as it was from room to room maybe in a little quicker time and what they would have built it but that's how those places were built girl Moines constructed on a six post in the ground principle it's the drop slab construction with a tin roof no lining mostly the walls was only single and I was always line with paper or tile back paper or even just newspapers southwell houses dates back to 1886 so it had to be built before that time the type of timber used in Kula mine was Alpine - it's a very straight growing very even grain timber in early days it was the most used for slab cut construction it's also the most common timber in the area what would be looking for here is a trailer to straight barrel on him one with a good round even barrel and also a straight grain in the bark that's the one that you'll get the best slabs out of what you can tell after you hit him if he sound and you'll know how much wood you will have to work with when you do forty first operation when you fall in the tree is to have a look of it and study the crown of it and just see which way leaning then will take us people dark or if it makes it a lot easy to taxers don't cut bark as good as I cut wood it's all full of grit you then cut a scarf in your tree or belly which if you like to call it approximately a third of a way in the tree depending on the lien and depending on where you want the tree to go straight cut on the bottom the slope and cut on the top of the axe the belly of the tree is the most important part of it that's what steers a tree and the fact is just to let it really fall on the ground you can steer a tree by leaving in more wood on one corner than the other or by cutting it higher on one corner and let me pinch down on the near side or the side you want to steer it from and that'll actually throw the tree Ren you then sword down from the back with you flush cuts or you sorta within about two inches of original axe cut from if it hasn't gone by then you would have put a wedge in wedge to dance and a good Bushman can put it within a foot of where he wants it to given no limbs are entangled in other trees or such things as that the tree will really talk to you when he died the cracking you'll hear it go tick tick and till within a couple of rubs of the saw a couple of hits of the axe which way it's gonna go that's all that's been lost in later years the changes you can hear them in [Applause] much more skill involved in falling tree with an accent in them days you had to fall the tree we could work had to fall across the hills hey cats or a block or so to droll out and he had a lot of wooden a long stick to roll it out from candle first operation on the tree falls is to have a look above the sea there's no widow-makers of course no want to finish off the underneath the limb you then measure your tree off your length your tree take the bark off sort a lot better with a Bible and then cost cut it in the links section whatever you like to call it a lot of hard work it's also a bit lot of skilling and every tree should be different than the other one so easy challenge to cut that one and you'll roll it out and always stick your log from the head you never spit from the bucket it's bigger and it'll run off for nothing on the small in mostly that cut the slab in the bush you then loaded him onto your transport and took him home to work on he mapped the homestead itself selecting post timber you pick out a tree that's fairly even all the way up it may be 18 inches through the box and 40 feet up it still only maybe a foot don't tape it all that much you strip the bark off it and take the butt end off usually we don't use the first three or four feet especially for post timber you cut that off because the button disclosed to the roots and that's usually where they start to decay first and most important I think is to get a tree that hasn't got a lot of SAP wood on it people as the SAP wood is the first thing that rots in the tree with a board and a plumb bob you me you're across you're eight or ten inches whatever size you need to make the clothes and you've got a square on it in you then go to the other end and do the same thing you just get your axe and just cut two little niches on each end where you're up and down line is then with a string line you just wet your line in water rub it on a bit of charcoal elog or burn a piece of log and rub it on the log itself once you've got your loin blacken you hook the string line in that go to the other end and lift it up drop it down and you've got a complete black line right along it freshly bark log it shows up very plain you then not your log in with the chopper backs about every foot to eighteen inches to that line and top to bottom and then just give it a hit either way to block the wood off so that will come off easy with the broad axe you didn't take the broadax when you cut to the Lord and you just go down on the line right through to the ground put something under see it acts and I'm doing the ground of course a couple of pieces of bark or some when you follow that line along and you'll finish up with a very smooth side and you square that down that's false query the first labs to come off of course a call round next you mostly go around your log and take all your round backs off and then you can work out just where you're going to get a slab from the tools that used for splitting is a throw and a more you must use them all or a wooden mallet because your pile of code has to have no ledger on the back of it to hit up with a steel hammer you'll soon have a Ledge there metal interfere with splitting rival throws approximately 12 to 15 inches long about four inches in in depth mostly made out of a salty spring of axle or tuck spring or something like that and you have a handle from four to six foot long in it mostly you can leave her up on the handle and the piling will fairly jump off the the tree or the slab if it don't do you go along the log one each side with a wedge put a wet little wedge in each side and tap your throw back along a little bit further and prise it that way approximately one and a half to two inches six of wood slab bear in mind it an inch of timbers as equaling wants the four inches of brick or cement whatever first process when you when you've got to slave out is to cut the two edges even make him ten inches wide or eight inches wide whatever the case may be you're laying flat it's trim them off at the broad axe and you square him halfway down from one side and get him on fairly even you turn him up and square the other side down you then tip him on ease edge wedgie mopping in the jiggle voices you might like to call it you hammer a wedge in alongside but what holds him in tight and you do half aside half of him at one time and then you take him out in friend him and do the other side that'll bring him up to square you then put him in the other jig was up high again he's wedged in with a wooden wedge in a plant I would waste toy a little bit higher and we haven't site along him and you sham for an edge on him so that the water will run off you put him in the wall the champagne is done with the draw knife or even could be a jack plane door knife was most common it was the quickest and each boards done out similar whether board that shaped ever shampoo on both sides and that way the water just runs down alignment and don't run back inside your house providing of course you don't put them in back to front slabs go in a groove down the center of your post proximately inch in half two inches apart depending on the thickness you slabs you're taking order and your Borah series are hold in approximately inch and a half the full length of the center your post to break the grain of the timber and then with a chisel and the mallet it says a lot out proximately inch and half deep Benson half wide or two inches wide and that's what you slabs fit in once you've got the post in and the post is definitely plumb-bob and the measurements are exact the same at the top is what it is the bottom and your slabs are put in those grooves they dropped in for now usually our way up the coast and there's always a footer 18 inches of the little cleat cut out of the groove so the slab can go in there on one post then put in that way the slabs tighten over the years by the weight on one uncover the other when you would build an interior wall you would have probably kept the same technique as when you built the other ones would it be no immediate need for the chamfered off but as you did the others it would have all been done in one way very painstaking being time taking but it's soon it's quite quite the same as would have been done in those early days and this follows pretty good now oh yeah the original building as it was it's all but complete see it's a worthwhile project and will take quite a few more visits to get it back in its original state and then if we can get a better that'll be another thing [Music] you you [Music] you

Channel: NFSA Films

Views: 309,528

Rating: 4.9326057 out of 5

Keywords: Craftsmanship, timber, construction, forests, pioneers, bushman, woodwork, huts, building, techniques, Australian, Government, film, making, screen, stock, footage, library

Id: dcoTnER4Efg

Length: 18min 10sec (1090 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 15 2010

Reddit Comments

[u/thepensivepoet]

That guy's really fucking good with an ax.

[u/Scorpion1080]

I didn't think I would like that video but ended up finding it fascinating. What a great video.

[u/myztry]

That seems like too much hard work but then I think about the amount of work required to put aside $200K plus to buy a house and it doesn't seem so bad.

[u/ccoady]

I bet those old dudes are still alive and in better shape than me, haha.

[u/bvillebill]

Really good video, but as a non-Aussie I clearly didn't understand what a "bushman" was...The Australian film council that did this has hundreds of documentaries they did since the early 1900's, lots of fun to browse. Just watched a 1933 tourism film for Tasmania, makes me wish for a time machine.

[u/brorkanin]

lol the fart sounds at 5:46 the bark made when he cut it caught me off guard.

[u/iandcorey]

Cruising YouTube for timber framing videos for five years and all it ever gives me is that damned Wranglerstar. Where has this been, YouTube?!

[u/tachyonflux]

Never would it have even occurred to me to find and watch an Australian Timbercraft video on youtube. Unique to me and absolutely fascinating.

Thanks OP.

[u/lozdogz]

It's not often that I will watch an 18 minute video on reddit, surprised it was this one. Great video, interesting and very satisfying to watch them work at the wood