Dalaknut

The notch we learned at Gränsfor is the dalaknut or "notch from Dalarna". It's quite complex to make in comparison to the typical American notch (half notch or sometimes called saddle notch). But its advantages are that it's structurally very strong and, if well made, can maintain a very tight fit.

The Dalaknut is traditionally used on logs that are sawed flat on the two standing sides. Such a log is called hustimmer in Swedish (hence the name of the blog).
Since Belgian timber merchants don't sell this kind of timber ready-made, we decided to try this notch on round timber. To accomplish this we used a template to create an even surface on all the ends of the logs.

We fitted the first log already, but the notches don't fit well. I guess this is due to mistakes made by transposing measurements on the irregular logs. We should have used the template to even the logs from the place of the notch to the log end, instead of just where the notch would come.

bad fit