Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER EIGHT
here is where
your hewn-log house really
becomes what it is. The design, foundation, roof, and
additions can be similar to those in other houses, but
those massive tiers of logs put your house in its own
natural light.
Most American cabin logs were hewn, and there are
lots of good reasons for this. No matter how straight
logs are, natural taper will make fitting corners and
window and door facings a pain. Hewing to a common
thickness makes notching and facing easier, cuts
down the work of stripping bark, and gives a flat sur-
face inside for wood trim and hanging things like
paintings and outside for rain to sheet off. It also cuts
weight, quite a factor if just one or two of you are han-
dling those logs.
Traditionally, a hewn-log house was also a status
symbol because transient hunters and the poorest of
settlers threw together huts of round logs and mud.
Barns were built this way, and what self-respecting
frontier woman wanted to live in a barn? Besides,
hewn logs were the style both back East and up North.
Heavy timbers were used in the New England
clapboard houses and the English half-timbered
structures, as well as in Scandinavia and central
Europe. Our forebears came, and they brought their
traditions.
Even if you restore a house on-site or move a house
to your site, you will still need to know woods and the
skills necessary to replace bad logs. Oak has been the
favorite for hewn logs in the mid-South and Midwest,
with pine most common in the East and Southeast,
and rare examples in walnut and cedar. I delight in
working with cedar, but it's hard to acquire. Our Mis-
souri house was about half oak, with cedar having
been added at some pre-1890 rebuild date, and more
cedar when we restored and added to it. Chestnut and
yellow pine were favored farther to the east. Whatever
wood was used, the best builders (not all of them)
almost always stayed with the same kind throughout.
For some reason, mixed woods generally go with
looser craftsmanship.
Chestnut was among the favorite woods of the pio-
neers east of the Mississippi. It was light, rot resist-
ant, grew fast, and, with its distinctive grain, was often
substituted for and mixed with oak. The chestnut
blight destroyed this wonderful wood, but foresters
are hybridizing Asian blight-resistant trees with the
Using a crosscut saw to trim a log.
