"The first settler in the woods is generally
a man who's outlived his credit or fortune in the civilized parts of the state. His 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 through a small window made of greased paper. A coarser building
adjoining this cabin affords shelter to a cow and 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 one of building the Townsends
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. That's right right on it okay outside is 14.
Okay so that 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
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 wouldn't want to make a whole
cabin out of these we are learning a lot already just you know we've had a lot of uh starts
and stops just getting these logs into position because they're so heavy. Two three go nope
oh Kyle almost had it up on top okay. One two three up Almost 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. Oh yeah All right One and two and three We've learned a lot about just how to get
started with that we tried some notches even sawing that v in um but it's it's I think
really going to be one of those just sort of you got to feel your way to get that notch
and those first few that you do aren't very good but 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 um especially when they
were this big you definitely can't do it with just one or two persons you really need to
have a 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'd definitely stick
to smaller sized 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 uh 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. Where we want that log to sit. So we're here at the this is the back side
of the cabin where the fireplace is going to be and we're going to have to cut out the
opening for the fireplace and so we've measured 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 lintel log or the
mantle 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 going to do this uh 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. It's just That's pretty, that's real pretty Ready? okay one two three Look at that, that's pretty Sheesh, did it get any better?
I don't think so. It closes lost our gap quite a bit over here.
I think we're looking pretty good. To go deeper on that.
Where's is it still touching this outside edge?
Yeah. So if we if we take your side down at least
an inch right. Yeah, and then we got to rock it this way
some. So yeah the notch that's on the outside and then that will that you're thinking that
will help fix your side a little bit too. There we go looks about right, good. Looking good.
Great, great Kyle. Okay You're good, it's stable, just hold it. What I want to do now, how far along are you
guys with your notch, okay. It's uh it's been, I don't know we've been
working on this guy about uh 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 going to start working on the roof 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 worked
a lot harder on getting the notches um sort of tighter. The bottom structure we were
really just learning about how the notching was going and 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 um 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 uh
several structures before I get anywhere close to being able to make a notch as good as those
period notches. But it's been even though it's you know taken a lot longer maybe 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 have 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 uh I'm
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 you can start to see it building
and it's really it gets more and more exciting as we go I can't wait to get to this roof
section uh that is going to be very challenging. I'm really not quite sure how it's going to
go together yet but i'm so excited to you know really see this thing start to take shape. So in our last episode we were working on
the walls. And the walls, getting done with that is a great feeling, uh the walls took
a lot of work a lot of sort of strength and energy to get them done a lot of logs to work
with and a real learning process but in reality it's probably the easiest part of the structure.
Now comes this tricky part, we're going to start working on the roof structure. Now the
roof structure really isn't that much more complicated because what we're going to be
doing here is basically an extension of how the walls worked. We're not going to be
doing rafters per se but log purlins which really this it's very very similar to how
the walls went up except we're gonna have to play around with the angles and how we
cut the notches it gets a lot more precise. Some of the cabins that we see in the 18th
and 19th century were made in this fashion where it's an extension of the walls
except they taper very rapidly as we go up. This notch kind of looks exactly like what
we've been doing the problem here is that we have to sink this notch down into this
purlin log a little bit or else the log that goes over the top of it since the roof surface
is right here it would be very very little of this upper log to uh hold that in place
and to hold this purlin log in place it kind of lock it in so we have
to shrink there or sink this notch down a little bit into this log to leave more structural
material of this log that sets down so it has enough strength to hold this pulin into
position. So we have to make this notch even more complicated than it originally looks
like. Well, I'm real happy with our first couple
of gable end logs. We've got those up into position they're looking good uh I put in
a actual little uh impromptu plum bob here on our peak uh logs so that as we put our
strings down we can get a really good gauge about where these purlin logs are going in
and we've got our first purlin uh set in position and it's heavy. I was concerned about uh the
logs bending a little bit as they dried so I used oak up here way too heavy this thing
is so heavy you have to use tripods to put it up into position. this is the fall So it's time to work on this door we're not
uh as far along as I really wanted to be before we started to uh cut the door opening out
but jumping up and down to get inside of the cabin is getting very tiring so we're going
to go ahead and start prepping at least to cut an opening so that we can start to get
in and out make a little bit easier. We still have to climb up to work on that roof but
getting inside is getting to be a real pain. The weather is starting to change here it's starting
to get cold and thank goodness we just put up the last purlin this peak purlin. So satisfying
and as the walls were great to get finished but as soon as we started
bringing that roof in made all the difference it's really starting to come together it totally
looks like a cabin I'm so excited by how it's starting to look and now we got to get some
cover on these purlins we'll start putting the roofing material on. Then it's going to
feel like a cabin. I'm really excited too about the way these gable ends came together everything
is extremely stable up here so I'm really happy with the way these gable ends turned
out. It's almost time to start working on putting the roofing material on we're just doing a
little bit of last prep work on the purlins to kind of flatten them out a little bit in
Nolan's memoirs about growing up in the midwest and early 19th century he talks about
living in a bark covered house. And here is a piece of tulip bark and this bark is off
of some of these trees some of these trees were cut down and more than a year ago a year
and a half ago and I took the bark off. And if you if you cut these trees down in the
spring you can remove the bark all in one big giant sheet and so we've got a bunch of
this bark that we harvested almost 18 months ago. Nolan complained his he talked about
his mother complaining about this bark instead of nailing it down which maybe they didn't
have nails but they they just weighed it down with weight logs so they would take logs and
and put it on top of the roof uh in a kind of a ladder structure to help hold all the
roofing material down. We might do a little bit of that we also have a couple of other
things to try out. These are black locust thorns and you would think a thorn off of a tree
and some of these thorns can get three or four inches long these thorns are extremely
hard and extremely sharp and if we're going into a green tulip log you can pound these
in just like a nail. And we also have some some nails we don't want to use a lot of these
nails nails back then we're very expensive so we'll be we'll be very judicious with our
nail use probably put some weight logs on too to help hold this bark down this is going
to be it's going to be quite an experiment. The roof is on it's amazing. The roofing material
we use for this the the tulip bark I harvested that over probably a two-month period more
than a year ago. Took a tremendous quantity of time. Yesterday we had all the purlins
done and we said let's put let's start putting the bark on the purlins probably took us you
know three days to get to get ready. The bark it went up like that all that work that we'd
done previously just went right together uh and and the the roof is on. It just needs
some tiny little bit of touch-up work. So we've gotten over the two of the biggest hurdles
got the the walls up and those were heavy and big and took a lot of time and we got
this whole roof structure which is a little more complex and boy that's really made a
ton of difference to this we could start living in if we had to right now. So I'm excited
as about what we've done and how much work has been but what's coming up next is the the
chimney and that's going to have some real challenges in it and some engineering um I'm
not exactly sure how it's going to go together but I'm just so excited to get started
on that. 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
jambs are in place. We're going to 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 going to
do with the fireplace. We've already cut the opening here we've cut
down halfway on this uh 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 "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 going to 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 going to take a lot of work to get this done it's not going to be
just terribly complicated but it's going to take some time. The problem is the weather
is not cooperating it's getting colder and colder it's going to 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 going to 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 pit's 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 that keep the long
form um 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. As you can see the chimney is coming along
uh pretty well this chimney is basically a mini log cabin. As we build this up we're
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 going to be a little bigger than I expected
I'm okay with that so as we go up the walls this uh 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 gets down to freezing almost every night now. So we've got to speed this process
up so while I'm working on the chimney we're also going ahead and we're chinking and dabbing
the outside of the cabin that we can get to so we've 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 daubing 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 dabbing work. Maybe we'll get it
done in time it's a press we gotta really press. ouch I don't want this Ready? Okay.
