1940's Cabin Rebuild

pwrbildr

This is a little project that my boss has been wanting to do for about 4 years but has just never had the right people or enough people freed up long enough through the winter to actually do anythign with it.

It is a hand hewn log cabin that was originally built in the early 40's (or at least that's what everyone has been able to best determine). My boss bought the land that it was sitting on and took down the original cabin that was mostly rotting and or falling down. He built a new house in it's place but managed to save a 12' x 21' section of the original. The log were numbered 4 years ago and surprisingly the marks were still visible on about 90% of the logs. We ended up adding about 2 courses to bring the wall height to roughly 7'8" AFF.
There were notches and saddles cut in the logs but when we started laying them up, the gaps were 5"+. I was told that that was acceptable but for some reason I just couldn't accept that there woudl be a 5" gap that waould essentially have to be caulked afterward. So we cut the notches deeper with a chainsaw, both for the gaps and to keep the logs fairly level as they were stacked up.
Ok, enough rambling, here are a few pics.

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Glasshousebltr

That 5" caulk is called chinking.

Bob

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Bob

Big Dave

Glasshouse is right. You have to have a bigger gap for the old time chinking to stay in place. If the gaps were small then the chinking would not have enough mass to stay together. Usually they used mud with grass mixed in.

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pwrbildr

yup, and we're going to hire someone that knows what they are doing when that step rolls around. lol.

I believe it is a product called perma chink that is commonly used now. Much better adhesion and much more flexibility.

A+Carpenter

Now that is some nice damn work. Taken back to the old skool on this.

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