Weatherproofing and Insulating Your Log Cabin

[Music] we've been working on our log cabin project for weeks and weeks now and we've been doing some of the simplest things you know locking the body of the cabin together was simple notching we've done the roofing and and the purlins work but now we're starting to move into a territory where we're we're not experienced in doing these this this type of project we need to do the chinking part we need to fill in the gaps of our log we are here at Wilderness Road State Park I've got David Cadle and we are out on the back side of one of their buildings here here's a building that has that is half chinked right so half of this structure has gaps in it half has this this chinking or dobbing material here and they've been doing this for a long time David tell us about what you do here at this site well here it's a site 90% of the time I'm in the blacksmith shop but the other percent of the time we're doing just as they was in the 18th century so we're we're building the buildings were up keeping them trying to keep the the Dobbin in place as you see don't last very long and we're keeping the gardens up in the animals just everyday life here so our constant battle is to try to keep these buildings drive with the shingles on them in the Dobbin in place so that we can keep the weather out and the critters out of our cabins so sounds like a lot of other keep yeah he's got a you got to keep this this material in place probably replace the occasional long yes sometimes the whole cabin so the original fort built in 1775 only lasted till 76 before it was abandoned so only one year this being the 20th year since this was our story instructor so you know there's things that we're having to do now that they would never have to do with these temporary buildings as they consider them so you can teach us all about the chinking the dobbing all that great stuff let's go - you got a cabin that needs some work right yes let's head that way her so David before we get started about the actual process we need to get these definitions down tell me about the words that we're gonna be using okay so with these logs being saddle notch together you end up leaving a cheek pink is the definition of the space in between the log all right so Chinkin is the hole that the cheek is the hole and so the cheek has to be cheap so you have to fill that with some material which could be many different things from wood chips to stones or anything corn cobs that anything you can take to fill the space to insulate it so this would be king king yes whatever this is filling this gap yes and then and so and then you da bit so dobbing is the material that actually does the sealing of it in this case we're going to be using clay and we've got some cedar bark and some grasses whatever is most convenient in the area to use and the chinking job is is to keep the weather out and the vermin from getting in there too huh and the problem with the with the da bin itself in these first-generation cabins is when the water hits these logs they run into this sobbing and that's the reason you have to replace it and constantly read of it so that's what we're gonna be doing so tell me about the difference between the situation where we've got a fresh construction and redoing it later on so so when you originally build one of these cabins you've got a lot of materials that is right here air that can be picked up and used so as we're cutting our notches we end up with a lot of these pieces of wood chips yeah and so you could take these chips and you could lay them in here and as you lay them in trying to get them at somewhat of an angle because you're trying to get them the wedge in tightly so that they won't come out in time so you start wedging them in and just keep filling all the way across like this so you can use this in new construction and then another way you could also do it and just as Captain Martin has requested we done here he was worried about being bulletproof right so when we're hewn logs you end up big old chunks fig splits that's off the top of this because you would chop in and then chop off your your gut and so you could split these in half and then you can lay these in has bigger Giants yes so like this and that would give you a more bulletproof way but this does not hold the Dobbin as well there's not as much for the Dobbin to grab onto it doesn't even sell keys to Tim Lock exactly that's when you're first building but if you're having to come back as we are now right several years down the road we don't have a lot of this material laying around and maybe your other stuff is rotted out and it's time you can see how this is just getting loose and falling out you could pick up stones and do the same way with the stones lay those in there which works really well and then if you got split rail fence such as we have around here it's constantly getting broken by the horses and things you could use that to to stuff in there too so yeah you even see some situations where they put bricks in there are all sorts of anyway to fill the gap so and just like this if you're going to put in these big chunks like this that is gonna keep the air out somewhat so you just fill in the crack with the mode you're not so much worried about covering the whole piece of wood and then you go to the inside and Dobb the inside too because you have to do both sides of this and that would give your seal off for the actual weather in the air blowing through and so not so much as the look they don't all have to look this way as long as it's sealed up and keeping the water out that's the final goal mm-hmm so we've got our chinking in place we've got to make the mud right this wrong what do we what do we what are our ingredients so we've got some just red clay that we've dug up here most places have clay in your area some places it may be a little different consistency but here we got some really good sticky clay yeah but the clay alone will just dry and break out right so we need to add some binder to it so today we've got some cedar bark we'll grind up and put in it you also have some long grasses and we also have some horse manure okay the horse manure dried horse manure is very fibrous because a horse don't chew its cud in the way of cow does so it's still a lot of fibrous material in there which will really hold that together so what we're gonna use a little bit of all of it in here okay and in order to do this a really good job is there a magic mix to this or you just leave to where you feel like it's about right yeah more or less just filled to where it's about right okay we don't want it too wet so that when we pack it in there and we don't want to add too much moisture to it so that it ain't we want it to dry but we don't want to dry too fast okay so you would do this type of work in the fall of the year preferably so that it has time to dry because there's slower it dries the less that's going to shrink and you won't have much of a chance of it falling out okay put a little clay in the bucket and you can do also do this in a pit if you're gonna be doing this whole cabin you would definitely want to do it in the pit but for what we're doing today this little bit repair work this book it'll be fine so we're gonna get just a little bit of clay in here we'll have to add just a little bit of water because yeah so that the fibrous materials will hold good inside of there mix good in it so you see how it's starting to clump together but it's still wet because we want it to push in around all of that squeeze another chinking the more squeezes around it and binds together the longer it's gonna hold in there so this is just cedar work that we've stripped off the tree you could use poplar bark the inner inner bark of a poplar tree is really strangest material that will come off in big long fibers like this does and so this this works really well yeah you probably use the old rope or whatever you could know so we're just busting this up - it's so you busted up - its kind of small so that it can give with the mud and get inside those cracks - don't want too big of a thing and so we'll just try to get it mixed up a little bit throughout it and in a mud pit you would just be doing all this with your feet right kind of just walking through and then so next thing we're going to add little grasses in here - you could use just one or the other but the longer grasses does a really good job I would like it better if this was dry but this is what we have out here today so yeah give the green material might rot well yep and then it's gonna do as it dries and it's gonna shrink so you want to keep that shrinking to a minimal that looks like a mess oh but we haven't really gotten to the full thing yet nope so our last ingredient is the horse manure okay so they would be saving all their horse manure and putting it into a heap and letting it dry out you would break that up somewhat fine and drop it into the bucket and then just mix that in also so that is a really good where the grass it was a long fiber for some of the bigger cracks to hold it in place this is some good small fibers to keep the cracks from being the small ones that in time would just let moisture seep in so it's really good for keeping those small cracks down right if we find the more we put into it the longer it's going to last well we've got some here in one of the block houses that's been there almost 10 years right so that's quite a bit longer than what just clay and straw I'll show you so and you know people might be squeamish about the idea of you know working with this it does not smell it's just we're using dry not fresh and it's literally just grass and all it is so by letting it dry if you leave it laying there and let dry it'll turn to powder for you I just pick that up and throw it in yeah so how do we how are you going from the bucket to the wall alright so so what we want to do once you get it to the right consistency you would start rolling it up getting the strands into a long long block and so you see how that's gonna be all tied together so when we lay this in here oh this is gonna be tied together well you want to make sure you got enough mud in that strand that's not just all your grasses that you can push it into all these great locks and all those guys right so what we'll do leave this up on here and just start pushing it in so it's nice when you got a hand on the backside of the wall you can hold your up that material and maybe you'd even have a partner on the inside because you're working both sides of the wall right and then that's one reason you want to make sure that that chinking is really tight in place so that it will hold in place as these love shrimp - it would even get even tighter sure so you want to push it in and you don't want to just to protrude out too far right that way when the water gets down here maybe it can drip off before it gets back into the oven sure so but you want to get a good good seal down to there one more little handful here get down on this end really pushing it into those cracks because that's what's going to hold it in place is that is that chinking behind it and once you get to that owner this is not too bad we had some pretty good mud on so we don't have how many fiber showings right but if you did you could also just take some of the mud that is left in the bottom of the bucket that has a lot of those smaller fibers in it than that horse manure and then spread that over the top of it and that would seal off all of those because over time is the rain washes on it and it rolls all that clay off those fibers are sticking out and that's acting as a wick it's sucking the water back in so you want to seal those off the best you can and that's about all there is to it just making sure that it's all packed into every little crack and crevice and then hopefully it can dry slow and the slower it dries the more intact it's going to stay so you would think I mean here's here's this how long how old do you think that he's a champion I'd say maybe four or five years old right so surely for four or five years and in the weather it doesn't not look that weather no there's in the crack between the chinking and the walls is not very big it's not because when the water hits this log and it rose around and goes inside of that Dobby this Dobbin is just dirt so it will let that water escape through it and wick itself out so it can dry out and then that way it gets rid of its own moisture so even though this is turn loose of that log right there it's not that bad of a thing now modern-day people will know limes and mortars and different things well to try to keep the moisture out well if it'll keep the moisture out it will also keep the moisture in so water the wood is moving if you use a mortar substance it does not move so the water gets behind it get out so that water will go down into the cracks and things in the Lo and Jamie I want rod it out so you're almost better off if you've got a bad if you got badging and knock it out not it yes knock it out completely and it's probably usually the this lower sections that need redone most because the weather comes in this is this is protected by the roof yeah doesn't need to be redone very often that's right the overhang of the roof that's a reason they had such big overhangs is to protect the water the drip edge from following up on the outside law only shorter cabins it's not that bad but on some of the bigger cabins in the form of the block house is the two story buildings oh yeah man that's really constantly getting wind you also get splash up exactly that washes it out they saw perfect David thank you for you know giving us this great information about some something that seems so simple but is you know you you have to know it and unless you've done it you know it's hard to understand we are at this wonderful site tell us about this site so we're at Martin station we're here in Lee County Virginia just about six miles from the Cumberland Gap so really close to the gap that's what originally opened up the gateway into the West so here at the Fort what we're doing everything from the blacksmithing to gunsmithing farming from growing our crops to raising our stock they're cooking in the common house as you would call a tavern today so we've got ladies in there cooking in the Bake Ovens doing every aspect of 18th century life where we're trying to show everything the little things and the big things so people can get a good understanding of what life was like and what sacrifices people had to make so that we can have what we have today you got a big event coming up right we do so this come in May May of twenty twenty second weekend of May we're going to have our raid that's what really has been our signature event over the years it's our kickoff that starts our season we're going to have two big battles in the day probably 60 to 70 vendors eighteenth-century campers a lot going on a lot of demos going on so from soap-making to candle dipping and everything in between so everything that you can imagine we're going to try to be doing it thank you David make sure to check out the link in the description that'll send you right to this site and thank you so much for watching

Channel: Townsends

Views: 343,354

Rating: 4.9671874 out of 5

Keywords: townsends, jas townsend and son, reenacting, history, 18th century, 19th century, jon townsend, 18th century cooking, chinking, log cabin, daubing, cob, making cob, martin's station

Id: 8oYpQ4qCSj8

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 04 2019