Building Log Cabin Walls - Townsends Homestead Part One

[Music] the first settler in the woods is generally a man who's outlived his credit or fortune in the civilized parts of the state [Music] this time for migrating is in the month of April his first object is to build a small cabin of rough logs for himself and his family the floor of this cabin is of Earth the roof is of split logs the light is received through the door and in some instances to a small window made of greased paper a coarser building adjoining this cabin affords shelter to a cow and a a pair of good horses the labor of erecting these buildings is succeeded by the killing of the trees on a few acres of the ground near the cabin this is done by cutting a circle around the trees two or three feet from the ground this is day 1 of building the Thompsons homestead we're working on this very very primitive cabin this first structure on the site and the very first thing we're going to do is work on the foundation some of these cabins most of these carbons probably had no foundation whatsoever other than the sill log that's sitting right on the ground we're gonna put down some stones because we want this cabin to stay around just a little while you [Music] you [Music] that's right right on okay okay looks good right there we're setting our foundation stones out to our outer diameters on our cabin and we're choosing a size that's the same as Washington's cabins which is actually a very very common size about 14 by 16 probably on the outside edges the inside of this will probably be more like 13 by 15 on the inside we've got our stones set and now it's time for the sill logs these are the base logs here on the front and back of the building and we've picked out a species most of the trees out here are tulip but I wanted to pick something that'd be a little more sturdy for sort of ground to contact here so this side there's a locust log and the problem is is that they're super heavy and they're super hard to chop I can see why you would want to make a whole cabin out of these we are learning a lot already just you know we've had a lot of starts and stops just getting these logs into position because they're still heavy [Music] [Music] [Music] almost about [Music] [Music] we've been working on this a couple days just getting the base down and learning about how to get these notches kind of right and it's been there's been a lot of kind of back and forth about exactly how we should get these notches done we're doing a v-notch which is based on what we saw at the lower Swedish cabin it's a very simple notching system kind of similar to the to the straight saddle notches except you're trimming both sides of the log kind of a v-shape on one side and then the inverted V shape on the other side [Music] [Music] [Music] we've learned a lot about just how to get started with that we've tried some notches even sawing that V in but it's it's I think really gonna be one of those to sort of you got to feel your way to get that notch and and those first few that you do aren't very good but that's that's just how it works so our bottom logs are sill logs in this case and they're pretty big moving these sill logs into position especially when they were this big you definitely can't do it with just one or two persons you really need to have good four five six man crew to get some of these bigger logs in and it's quite likely that if you were just doing one or two people on this you definitely stick to smaller size logs so now that we've done our foundation we can move on to smaller logs and these ones have already been prepped and stripped and really I've done these almost a season beforehand that's something that would have been done as you find your place to to build your house you would come in and start cutting down logs ahead of time that's what we did here and these hopefully dried out they're a little bit smaller should be a lot easier to handle we can move a little faster [Music] [Music] so we're here at the this is the back side of the cabin where the fireplace is going to be and we're gonna have to cut out the opening for the fireplace and so we've measured this this top log and this is the first log that's going to get cut the log over the top will actually be sort of the the lintel log or the mantel log that is at the top of the fireplace opening but since these logs come down and they get really close to each other hopefully almost touching we're gonna have to actually kind of get the opening notch here so that once this log wall has been built up we can get in there with a saw blade and cut down and get through these logs but if we don't cut this ahead of time it can it'll be very difficult to get in there we're gonna do this same same idea when we get to the window opening or at least the first log that's gonna get cut out of the window opening and for the the door here on this side but they're gonna be a little higher up this is day five we've been working on this we've had you know some people in and out but pretty much working all day five days we've learned a lot and we're moving a little bit faster and much more precise as we've been working on this structure it's always kind of like that a learning process [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] did it get any better is it one strike Jeff quite a bit over here is it is it still touching this outside edge yeah so it's on the outside and then that wall that you thinking that will help a little bit [Music] looks about right good [Music] [Music] [Music] good how far along is you guys with your notch okay it's it's been I don't know we've been working on this guy about eight or nine days and obviously we're doing pretty well this is the last round of logs for the main body of the cabin as soon as we get the last couple logs on here we're gonna start working on the on the rift structure and this process has been well obviously we're behind schedule it's been it's taken a lot more time to sort of get up to speed and as we've gone up the the structure here we've we've worked a lot harder on getting the notches sort of tighter the the bottom structure we were really just learning about how the notching was going in when I first started looking at those at the cabins that were existing from the time period I thought oh you know those those notches are pretty sloppy but now looking back on it and and looking at our notches they did an amazing job and if you've seen the ones that are hewn houses they are works of art I can't imagine trying to get a notch that good it will take me several structures before I get anywhere close to being able to make a notch as good as those period notches but it's then even though it's you know taking a lot longer maybe then than we expected I think we're learning so much about how these structures go together how long it would take how much man-hours that a structure like this would take even though it's a simple at least in the time period quick structure still very labor intensive a lot of materials have to be used on this and a lot of time we we have we more tools than they had we've got more time than they have and still it's it's hard for us to do it as fast as they talked about being able to make one of these structures so I am really enjoying this process but I wish it would go faster but nonetheless this has been such a satisfying project every log that goes up you can see you can start to see it building and its really it gets more and more exciting as we go I can't wait to get to this rough section that is going to be very challenging I'm really not quite sure how it's gonna go together yet but I'm so excited to you know really see this thing start to teach [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Townsends

Views: 811,339

Keywords: townsends, jas townsend and son, reenacting, history, 18th century, 19th century, jon townsend, 18th century cooking, cabin, log cabin, cabin build, hand tools, homestead, frontier, american frontier, build, axe, mallet, saw, hand saw, notching

Id: UlVENzhq_Xw

Length: 15min 49sec (949 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 07 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/pootin54]

I have always loved this guys videos. So much so that he is one of two youtubers (the other being the primitive technology guy) that I have donated my own money to specifically. However, this is not an artisan. This is a bunch of guys in recreation outfits trying to figure out an old technique. A true artisan would cringe at the irregarity in those cuts.

If you want to see a true artisan do this type of thing check out the ‘Alone in the Wilderness’ films by Dick Proenneke.