Chimney & Fireplace Before Snowfall? - Townsends Homestead Part 3

[Music] [Music] [Music] as you can see here we've got the walls up the roof is on at least to get started with the door front door has been cut out and the jams are in place we're gonna stop with the door there I think that's good enough for now because we've got to keep moving it's time to take a look at what we're gonna do with the fireplace [Music] [Music] [Music] we've already cut the opening here we've cut down halfway on this this bottom log this sill log I didn't want to cut it all the way I wanted to have a little bit more structure so the very bottom is still connected and this is wide enough for the clay interior let me read to you from George Washington's directions about building soldier huts at Valley Forge 1777 and let's the the fireplace directions the fireplace is made with wood and secured with clay on the inside 18 inches thick this fireplace is to be in the rear of the hut we're gonna be building the walls of the fireplace or the outer structure almost exactly the same way that we've made the walls of the cabin but inside of that is a clay lining or at least he calls it a clay lining this is probably more like a cob lining that has clay and sand mixed together so it doesn't shrink down this is gonna take a lot of work to get this done it's not going to be just terribly complicated but it's gonna take some time the problem is the weather is not cooperating it's getting colder and colder it's gonna be winter very soon and we've got to have this made this clay can't freeze we've got to get it dry while it's still warm enough so we've got to hurry while they're working on the log portion of the chimney and fireplace I'm gonna be working on the clay section or in this case we're making cob not strictly clay because we want it to work better than clay all by itself which will dry and then shrink crack and fall down so we've got the components for cob here I've got a pit that I'm gonna be making it in the pits full of water we've got clay the local soil here is very dense clay it's perfect for cob I've also got some sand that'll help keep it from shrinking and the binders in there that keep the long form structure complete we've got some cut grasses here or straw and then I've got some horse manure for short fiber work now I've just got to stomp this all into place [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] as you can see the chimneys coming along pretty well this chimney is basically a mini log cabin as we build this up who are filling the interior of the this little mini log cabin with our cob or our clay interior this has to be really nice and thick to protect the logs from catching on fire so originally George Washington called for something like 18 inch thick I'm not sure what he really intended there 18 inches is way too thick I set this up for walls as thick as say a foot thick that's even still too thick so our fireplace is gonna be a little bigger than I expected I'm okay with that so as we go up the walls this this clay wants to sag down inside so we have to slowly put little fires in it to get it to harden up so it can support the wall above it this is tricky it's very difficult to do and it takes time and we don't have time we are running out of time as we go on this project winter is fast approaching it is already it gets down to freezing almost every night now so we got to speed this process up so while I'm working on the chimney we're also going ahead and more chinking and daubing the outside of the cabin that we can get to so we got multiple teams working here some people working on the chimney some people working on the exterior and even the interior a little bit on this cabin so it's really starting to come together pretty quickly and it turns out that the doggin goes a lot faster than I thought it was going to so that's good it's offsetting the slow chimney work with the fast dobbing work maybe we'll get it done in time it's a press we've got a really press [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Townsends

Views: 3,474,157

Rating: 4.9042177 out of 5

Keywords: townsends, jas townsend and son, reenacting, history, 18th century, 19th century, jon townsend, 18th century cooking, cabin, log cabin, chimney, fireplace, frontier, mud fireplace, cob, cob fireplace, chinking, daubing

Id: Cq02zqJlibw

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 18 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Fungalover]

I love Townsends. Good share friend.

[u/zoinks]

What's the point of the couple of skinny logs he puts on the roof of the house near the end? Is he going to build a portico? Just for hanging stuff?

[u/KelcyHammer]

Really enjoyed it. I somehow think that guys weight might not be history accurate.