Backcountry Architecture - - The Craft of Log Cabin Corner Joints

Backcountry Notes ^ | July 27, 2009 | Jay Henderson

[bcsco]

I’m familiar with “joints”. And I can claim never having been thrown out of one...

Actually, this is an interesting link. Thanks!

[DieHard the Hunter]

KEWL website for a whole bunch of reasons! Thanks for the article — bookmarked!

(DieHard shall peruse this site at length this evening...)

[jay1949]

My working title was simply “Log Cabin Corner Joints,” but I decided that it might raise false expectations. And thanks for having a look.

[TSgt]

I love log homes! :)

[jay1949]

Thanks, and come back any time.

[jay1949]

If you’re ever in Southwest Virginia, the log structures at Crab Orchard Museum are well worth having a look.

[bethybabes69]

phwooar, this is my lifetime ambition, to build our own log home, gonna read this in depth later, thanks for posting.

[Sistyelder]

Thank you!! I am really intersted in this! Our son is building a log cabin from Tamarac on his own land...and when he was young he built one in the woods on our farm. I passed this on to him too.

[TSgt]

Thanks!

My wife and I plan on building one of these in the near future: http://www.heritagelog.com/Pages/default.aspx

[bcsco]

It’s usually the joint on the corner that’s most popular :)

I enjoyed it. It goes to show how industrious our early settlers were. Not only industrious but clever.

We had a house across the street change ownership this weekend. The new owners closed sometime Friday. They were there until the wee hours Saturday morning, then the whole family, parents, grandparents, aunts & uncles showed up to paint, clear shrubs (actually removed a tree) and do trimming both Saturday and Sunday. The owner didn’t leave until 2:30 am Sunday morning, then was back at 8.

I told the wife It’s rare these days to see families work together like that, rare but nice. It reminded me of how our early settlers worked together to raise buildings and homesteads. Your link was another reminder.

[jay1949]

There are a number of videos posted on YouTube which give demos of modern log-cabin building. There a certain advantages we have that the settlers didn’t, the chainsaw being a major one.

[DuncanWaring]

Ping.

[buck61]

this is my lifetime ambition, to build our own log home

I hope you put a lot of research into building a Log Home.
With energy cost spiking upward every year, I find cooling and heating with log homes’ can be more expensive than a conventional home.

[bethybabes69]

Really? We were looking at some 'kits' from [I'm pretty sure was] a Scandinavian supplier (I'll try and find a link from my old emails), who were claiming they were more thermally efficient (insulating) than brick cavity wall builds we have here in the UK.

Your opinion is appreciated on this, do you have a log home??

I'm intrigued.

[chrisser]

Looks like a really great site. I’ll be checking it out this evening (when not at work).

I’m a regular reader of Backwoodshome.com - but I’m always looking for good, practical, useful info to squirrel away in my head for when we’re ready to leave the big city and head for the middle of nowhere.

[ImaGraftedBranch]

I am sitting on the back porch of my log home, watching deer come out of the woods to eat the deer corn we put out.
It is so peaceful.
I will never have a different style of home. Once you have a log home, there is no going back.

[bethybabes69]

Ahhh, now you just made a very jealous enemy! ha ha ;)

Seriously though, it's my dream home, the organics of log homes when we've viewed them is captivating, it's something I've been wanting to commit to do, for over a decade now.

Your location sounds absolutely stunning too, thanks for the beautiful mental image.

[Ditter]

I love log houses and I always wanted to own one. I only once got to see the log house my ancestors built when they moved to Texas in the early 1800’s. My uncle sold the property soon afterward and since I was only 11 when I was taken there, I could never find it again. It was the traditional southern “dog trot” design. I wish I owned it now.

[DieHard the Hunter]

I'm having a great time exploring your site: it's a gem!

There's this Canadian company called Lee Valley that you might want to check out and perhaps link to.

Aside from selling the world's finest woodworking tools available anywhere, they sell all of the necessary tools (and I believe plans) for building log cabins, and doing "back-woods stuff".

Their catalogs are each a work of art: these are the sorts of tools that they would never allow "Tim the Tool-man Taylor" to own. I could (and do) spend a long, long time browsing their catalogs. You can even get the Popular Mechanics Shop Notes from way, way back (reprints) from Lee Valley.

It's an awesome site: http://www.leevalley.com