Re: MtMan-List: Re Log Cabin

["Lee Driver" <tdriver@laplaza.org>]

In 1971, it fell to me to make a shelter out of logs for my family
in the Sangre de Christo's near Questa NM. I had just run away from,
or dropped out of what everyone referred to as the real world, and
had never built anything in my life before except a doghouse that I
didn't finish. I didn't study any books. I and three friends, with a
flatbed and a chain saw, got 80 dry logs in one day from an old
beetle kill burn you could drive to. Accessible dry log stashes like
that just don't exist anymore. Half were for me and half for another
guy. The fact that these were standing dead and dry logs made what
ordinarily is a very arduous part of making a log cabin, extremely
easy by comparison. They didn't need much skinning. Later in the
process, I needed some additional logs, which I poached green uphill
from the site and wrangled with great effort and grave danger down to
the work area, skinned them with a draw knife, wrestled them up onto
the structure by myself, one end at a time, marked the notches, cut
them on the walls, first two cuts with a bowsaw, then knocked the
chunks out with a hatchet driven by a hammer, and rolled them into
place. Thunk! By that time, I'd gotten pretty quick at the notching
process, and fall was closing in on winter fast. Skinning the logs
while they're fresh green can almost be done with a shovel, while a
little later on the sap drying makes it increasingly harder.
Asthetics never was dwelled upon, though, it's a hansome little
hexagon, to this day, I must say, slightly rotted on the uphill side
where it was dug in. The reason I mention it on this list at all, is
simply that it was constructed under very similar circunstances as
those by the old mountain men; necessity and winter and materials
ready to hand, drove the project.There was little time spent
wondering if I knew how to do it. Although many of the mountain men
of old must have had some experience with log cabin construction
elsewhere in their lives, given that, in those times, most everyone
had built something or other, my point is only that one doesn't have
to know how log cabins are built, to go ahead and make one. It will 
come to you, necessity being the mother of invention and all that. I 
dug shallow trenches and filled them with rocks for footings, and 
piled the logs on top. I don't think the mountain men bothered with 
footings, because longevity was seldom much a part of their 
considerations; their concerns were usually just for one season. 
Which is why there aren't many ruins, because without foundations and 
good water shed, a log cabin will rot pretty fast, even in the arid 
west. I planted a center pole and ran teepee pole size rafters, or a 
little bigger, in to it and decked them with random width roughcut, 
which I bought in a bundle, forklifted onto my pickup. I made a half 
loft later, where we all slept. Glass I picked up for a song up in 
Colorado in an old time general store sort of place, the likes of 
which don't exist anymore.Also got a great old wood cookstove for $35 
at the same place (a price the likes of which doesn't exist anymore 
either). The floor I made out of roughcut laid on  poles on top of 
dirt, which had to be replaced within 5-6 years due to rot. You can't 
put wood on dirt and have it not rot, even if it stays dry. The roof 
surface was 90 pound, which makes it pretty easy. In the old days, it 
would have been poles laid crosswise over rafters, covered with some 
kind of grass or matting, and then dirt maybe a foot thick. I tacked 
fiberglass up inside between the rafters for insulation. It was 
November before we got to chinking so we had to scrape snow off an 
exposed area, wait till it thawed each day, mixed the dirt with 
chopped straw and heated water, and slap it in between the logs, 
inside and out. It's all still there. Mudding with warm mud is a 
sensual pleasure not to be missed. The whole thing, inside furnishing 
and all, took two months plus a week. A few days I had help, but 
mostly I did it by myself. My wife and I and the kids a little did 
the chinking. Voila! 

Although I had never built anything before this cabin, I have been 
building things out of wood ever since, and currently make my living 
making furniture and stairways, so maybe I had some inborn talent 
along those lines. But I still say, anyone can build a mountain 
shelter, just go ahead and do it. The encroach of winter will see you 
through, unless, of course, you go under.