14 x 14 Post & Beam w/ Scribed Log Infill

[dug]

I was once operating a table saw (early AM- not fully awake) and actually brushed my thumb against the moving blade. Just scraped the first layer of skin- no blood. It still gives me the willy's when I think of how close I came to disaster. Now, every time I turn on the saw I think about that morning and keep my hands way away from the blade!

[Beavers]

Thanks for the photo's on making the shiplap siding.  Looks like a very doable project.  I'd like to do some kind of pine planking on my ceiling, and really like the idea a making my own.

Looking forward to seeing how it looks after you get it installed.
It sounds like a lot of work, but it's very cool how you went from raw trees to finished lumber!  Got to be great feeling knowing you did it all yourself! 

[Pine Cone]

I took a few hours off work today to work on the cabin.  Here's what the shiplap panels look like installed on the east gable end.


Discovered a cool free program, FotoSketcher, http://www.fotosketcher.com/ which turns images into paintings or artistic sketches...

Here's what my cabin looks like in the classic commercial art style of the 1960's




While this is what it looks like drawn with colored-pencils...

[devildog]

The interior wood looks awesome!

What is the blue paper in the peak? vapor barrier?
Darrell

[Pine Cone]

What is the blue paper in the peak? vapor barrier?
Darrell

Yup!  It is a left-over piece of the synthetic underlayment that I used on the roof.  I could see light through my roof vent after I finished putting up the insulation so I thought I'd add just a bit more vapor barrier there at the peak.  http://www.sdp-products.com/HTML/palisade_more.html

I didn't want to have all my warm air exiting the vent this winter while I am heating the cabin without a finished ceiling.  For a vent I just cut about an inch of sheathing back from each side of the roof peak before putting on the corrugated roofing panels. 

[Pine Cone]

Got the other gable end done last weekend, and even got some lights up.



On Sunday I got back to processing ceiling boards.  Basic production numbers to make the shiplap boards with a tablesaw and dado blade is about 15 boards per hour.  That still leaves cutting the bevels on with the jointer hand plane, and minor sanding around knots where the grain tears out from the planer.  Figure that adds about another 4-5 minutes per board to make them nice and presentable, so start to finish for 30 boards would be about 4 to 4.5 hours.  Here's what my work area looked like...



The end results are nicer boards than I can easily buy around here.  Here is a look at the partially finished stack.  I figure I need about twice this many to finish the ceiling.  Not to many knots, and most of those are small.  Some bluestain, but that just gives it some character.  I'm pleased with how it is turning out.

[poppy]

Nice work pinecone.

Our younger readers can take a few lessons from you; like stacking finished product on sturdy work stands.  Being an old fart myself, it's smart to avoid bending over too much.

[Don_P]

Looking good Pine Cone.
Are you familiar with the term brown or coffee stain? We were at dinner recently and went upstairs to see the new panelling, the deepest and most brown coffeestain I'd ever seen, beautiful. They are both the result of slow drying. Where blue is a fungi, brown is an enzyme reaction.

[Pine Cone]

Spent last weekend at my Dad's 90th birthday party, but this weekend it was back to the cabin...

Don - Hadn't heard of brown-stain before, seems like it may be more common on eastern white pine, but I do have a few small brownish areas.  I worked in forest pathology research back in the late 70s and early 80s so I am very familiar with blue and black stains.

Here's a picture of some of the shavings made by my plane while making bevels on the shiplap siding.  Much easier to do out at the cabin since I have an 8-foot long workbench with a woodvice on one end.  Put one end in the vice and use a clamp on the other end for a nice, secure board on edge ready to plane.


My wife helped with the sanding and painting.  We find it so much easier to paint stuff before it is in some awkward position...


I think I have all the boards ready to install for the first half of the ceiling, and managed to get about half of those up.  Paint took longer to dry than I had hoped, but worth the wait.  My wife and I are pleased with how it is starting to look.  We had considered trying a white-wash or pickling finish on the boards but in the end went with a clear finish. 

[poppy]

Looking good Pinecone.

Man, you really work your wife hard.  Give her a smallish brush and she works up a sweat that soaks clear through her coat! 

[ScottA]

Very nice. 

[Pine Cone]

Been making slow progress...

Spring has started to arrive.  Getting used to what the deer and other critters like to eat and what they leave behind.  One nice thing about Washington is that we get lots of foxgloves as native volunteers.  Don't look like much now, but they will be 4-6 feet tall in a few months.


Finished installing all the ceiling boards I have made to date, just a bit more that half way.  Need to make about 24 more to finish, but other misc. jobs have gotten in the way.


Decided I needed to brace the foundation more.  Seems like there are a large number of posts here suggesting that people's foundations could use more bracing, so I have added some.  Still have a few more to install, but I have to move a bunch of stuff from under the cabin first.


Last and not least, as we move towards making more paths and defining garden areas, it is time to take some of the larger cedar's I cut down in the last two years and start turning them into split rails.  Here's the first few...


Still have a bunch of other stuff to finish, but I think it's going to happen by early summer.  I'm hoping for a cabin-warming around the 4th of July, which seems do-able from here.  This year's mild winter has let me get more things completed than I anticipated, a first for this project

[Redoverfarm]

Pine Cone here are some Chestnut fence rails that I happened upon.  They were used alot before wire fence came around.  Hard to tell how old these are.  Considering that they are not in bad shape for their age 80-100 years).  Mostly used now ( if you can find them) for landscaping.  Some older farmers are selling them for $20 a piece.  

[Pine Cone]

Redoverfarm - Nice looking rails!  They look darn good for their age.

I've lived in a couple of forestry camps that had lots of rail fences made from incense cedar.  They have held up pretty good for the 25-30 years I've been looking at them.  They just seem like a great fence in a forested area.

Mine are western red cedar, but they should do the trick.  I have at least 100-130 feet of cedar logs I cut down a couple of years ago.  Half of that should give me at least five or six rails/log segment and most of the rest should be good for three or four rails per segment.  That should be enough to fence off the garden & flower bed areas from the grandkids.  Don't think they will slow the deer down, but that's what wire fencing is for...

[Don_P]

We still have old chesnut trees laying in the forest and quite a few large old stumps. The very last of these would have died 60+ years ago, I think the blight was introduced about 95 years ago. I can see it still, hitting the stumps that are still trying to send up sprouts. Every now and then one will make a small crop of nuts. I hope one spits out the magic seed one day. Nearby we have a fairly new very small state park, a local judge left his farm to the state for a park asking that they would use it to help with chesnut research. I had one of the foresters here walking my woods this past week and he said they are prepping a plot for a trial of the 15/16 American/chinese crosses. We were debating a small patch here. It'd sure be nice to put those giants back in the forest.

I had brought home the joists from an old porch I had repaired and was cutting up the roughsawn mixed wood for heat in the shop last weekend. I had whacked up what I thought was an oak joist till I picked it up and saw the fresh end grain...no rays, darn I had whacked a chesnut board  .

[Pine Cone]

Don - I'll see your stump and raise you a cabin and some spring flowers!  That's one large stump   Mine are pretty darn small by comparison.



Great spring weather here, warm, (mid-60s) and only a little rain

Got the remainder of my ceiling boards planed and turned into shiplap siding.  Got some painted today, so with luck the ceiling will be finished in a couple of weeks.  Sunshine this afternoon so I got some better pictures of the cabin today with enough light to show more detail than my Winter pictures.

[Pine Cone]

The ceiling is finished except for some minor trim work, and the fan/light is installed and mostly wired. 

Nice milestone to have finished.  Left to do is a bunch of trim work inside and out, installing the flooring, and building another set of steps so we can actually use the eastern door.



I terms of total material use, the project is very close to being done, but it will probably take another three months of weekend work to get it all accomplished.   Of course I need to plane more rough lumber to make the boards for all of the trim, and I haven't actually designed the stairs yet. 

Lots of other miscellaneous projects seem to pop up as well.  Had a small snowstorm on Friday that knocked the tops out of two 35 foot tall alders, so that has to get cleaned up now.  We were planning on cutting those trees down, but they have moved up on the priority list now. 

Once the cabin is pretty much finished we can move on to the summer projects, putting in an underground water tank, building a small wood-fired earthen oven, working on getting a covered, outdoor kitchen built, etc.

I don't think I will run out of projects any time soon.

[Pine Cone]

Did a bunch of miscellaneous tasks this weekend.

I worked on hooking up electrical under the cabin.  No very fun and I ended up doing lots of electrician crunches, raising my head and neck and maybe shoulders to look at this or that or work on some task or other while attaching conduit to run wires between outlets and switches under the cabin.  By yesterday evening I was tired and had a sore neck.

Electrical in a log cabin is a bit of a challenge.  I have one double outlet (4 plugs) in the middle of the second full log in the center of each wall, and a two light switches in the center of the posts next to the two doors.  When building the walls I tried to drill holes in the three log segments that the wire needs to go through, and tried to make it so I could pull wire though later.  Sometimes it worked pretty well, sometimes not so well.  For the light switches in the 8x8 posts next to the doors I cut a spline in the post to run wires from below the cabin up into the gable ends.  For both the switch boxes and outlet boxes, I routed an area out of the logs/posts and then drilled holes to run wires into the routed out areas.

I tried without success on Thursday to get wires to run from the outlet in the west wall down through the wall.  After almost two hours I gave up.  Saturday wasn't much better.  I could get a single wire to go all the way, but each time I tried to pull romex through it would not work.  I was trying to pull the romex through because that was what I had to work with.  Eventually I realized I didn't need all three wires in romex, I just needed a hot, a neutral, and a ground.

Major strategy change!  Within 20 minutes the three individual wires were through.  Lesson learned, once again.  It it isn't working, maybe there is a different way to get the result you want with a variant using the materials at hand.

Also planed a bunch of boards that will become the trim at the top of each wall and others will turn into furniture of some sort.

My wife helped with painting and then with starting to caulk the walls with Sachco Log Builder.  Then she did what she really wanted to do an  planted two hanging flower baskets, planted some lilies, and did other garden stuff. 

Today I painted some boards, finished the portion of electrical work I wanted, and then put up half of the outside top-of-wall trim.  Building with logs means being ready for some shrinkage.  The 6x timbers in the walls are held in with splines which connect them with the 8x8 posts.  The splines allow the logs to shrink.  That means at the top of each wall module you need to cap the walls with trim boards which are only attached to the posts, allowing the logs to potentially shrink.  While my wall timbers have been drying for 4 years now, they could still shrink some.  Here is the end result.

[Pine Cone]

The cabin got its first family weekend workout this weekend.  Saturday was a mix of rain, showers, and sun, and the combination of covered deck and heated dry interior worked great.  Total of 6 adults, 3 teenagers, 3 kids, and a 2-week old baby granddaughter.

The next generation of builders was there, developing there hammering skills.


At one point we  had 10 people eating dinner in the 14x14 cabin and it was cozy but not crowded.  The grandkids had a great time pounding nails and sometimes screws into various cabin scraps and pieces of firewood.  They will need a bit more practice, but they are very willing.  Kyle wanted to start hammering at about 8 am this morning, but we delayed him until after breakfast.  He really wanted to build some walls, even if they were only 6" tall...

Still working on wall, window and door trim.  Then on to the floor!

[Pine Cone]

Working on trim and misc. electrical now.  Realized I needed to finish painting door frame trim gloss white (I know, boring...) before adding the remaining cabin-colored trim, so that is what I did today, paint trim.  Also did some log wall caulking, and got my outside Christmas-tree lights outlet and motion-sensor light on the NW corner so I am done with the electrical on the south and west walls.

Here is what the walls are looking like.  Nice to finally get the trim up at the top of the walls.  To add sense of scale, the darker board at the top of the walls is a commercially made 4x8, the only store-bought wood visible above the floor.  Posts are 8x8s (actually about 7 3/4") while the wall timbers range from about 10 to 20 inches tall and 6" thick.



Walls are close to done.  Still need to finish caulking all the joints with Log Caulk, but I ran out today and need to order more.  Here is a modified view of what it looks like looking out the western doorway onto the covered deck.  Needed to make the walls lighter to be more visible and this was the result.  The trees really aren't purple, but it does give you a feel for how visible the deck framework is from inside the cabin.



Probably have another weekend or two of trim works since each board has to be custom cut, lots of them only semi-square, and the bottoms of all window trim needs to match the shape and curves of the log timber below it.  With luck I might have the floor in by the end of May, although I am about to start on some cabin furniture building soon which may slow other parts of the project down.

[Beavers]

The cabin is looking very nice!   

What kind of furniture are you starting on?  Looking forward to seeing the pic's.

[Pine Cone]

The cabin is looking very nice!  

What kind of furniture are you starting on?  Looking forward to seeing the pic's.

Thanks!

I've built some of it already and posted it here...  The sapele table will go to the cabin and I have bought more sapele which I will use to make 6" deep window sills.  I got the wood for those last weekend.  
http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=1355.msg105371#msg105371

My current thoughts are to try and mimic the look of the cabin post-and-beam construction in some of the furniture.  I've got lots of pine boards left...  I need a blanket chest to store bedding away from the mice, a dry sink as a general cabinet that will fit underneath one of the windows, a portable closet, and maybe a corner cabinet.  Eventually there will be a fold-down wall bed of some sort, but for now we're using an inflatable bed.

Here are some preliminary design thoughts.




This one might still need some design revision.



Might also build some sort of bookcase, either one that hangs from Shaker pegs off the cap beam or a moveable floor version with 3 shelves.

I want flexibility, so for now nothing will be built-in or permanently attached to walls.  Kinda fun to start with a clean slate.  It's my cabin and I can furnish it any way I want.

I've got a bunch of wood in my living room (keeping dry) right now, and my wife will be out of town until this Sunday.  It would be a real good thing if I had less wood inside the house and more furniture made (or at least started) before she comes back.  I hope to start the blanket chest and rip the wood for the window sills if I get a rain-free evening or two this week.  Forecast isn't looking good until late this week, but the weekend looks dry.

[Pine Cone]

Got some window and door trim up and the pine panels are glued up for the blanket chest, but a new project has emerged

After two years of searching Craigslist and the internet, I found a great deal on a water tank.  Exactly the one I wanted, just need to add a riser.  Had to drive a couple of hours to pick it up, but I got it today and it is now out at the cabin.  I have a neighbor with a mini-excavator who will probably dig the hole for it. 

The tank is brand new, the guy is building a house and after he got the tank the county told him he needed at least a 500 gallon tank, and he had bought a 325 gallon one.  He was glad to sell it and I was very please to buy it.  Even with the gas cost for picking it up it is about half of what the same tank would have cost through PlasticMart.


If you look close you can see a motorcycle hanging from some sort of machinery in the background.  Redneck kinetic sculpture I guess...

[MountainDon]

Nice tank. We have the exact same tank.   Nice trailer too.

[MushCreek]

Re: Hanging motorcycle: Maybe that's how they keep the other rednecks from stealing it?