Hewing logs by hand

I stumbled onto this video by accident, it's made by somebody who also followed the logbuilding course in Gränsfors. This video made me realize that we have to hew our logs this way so that we're able to work more accurately. The technique was taught to us during the course, but the video is a welcome rehearsal.

Lumbermaker

The lumbermaker is a device that you clamp onto the bar of the chainsaw and that can glide over a guide bar, as shown in the picture. It can be used to cut out doors and windows in a logwall, but you can also use it to make hustimmer by sawing two sides from a log.
Unfortunately the saw we're using proved to be too weak to cut through long sections. The short cut above of about 15cm took more than 15min. The saw is a stihl 230 which has a 45cc, 2kw engine .

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

Log dogs

To anchor the logs we use log dogs.
Again these were welded by a technical school, which I provided with the simple design:

Preparing the footings

We set up some temporary foundations to start building on.

making sure everything is level

flattening a simple notch with chainsaw

foundation stump used as ax holder

Tools

Here are some of our tools. Excluding chainsaw and safety gear, sharpening stones for the axes, sledgehamer ...

Log arch

We'll need something to move the logs. in the US you can easily buy a log arch for this. In Belgium we couldn't find anything like it. We contacted some technical schools and one agreed to weld the frame for us. I made a technical drawing for them which they used to construct the apparatus.

technical drawing in sketchup

log arch in use!

How it started

The dream of a log house or log cabin started some time ago. After a couple of years going on holiday in Scandinavia (for me mostly in the winter) a friend and I started discussing the project of a vacation home in Sweden. We decided on a log cabin for various reasons :

-          We like the back-to-basics approach, we won’t have electricity or running water. Nevertheless a log cabin can be very comfortable if you’re open to this kind of lifestyle.

-          We don’t want to spend a lot of money and wood is cheap there.

-          The building materials should be ecologically sound.

-          Use of wood: wood is easy to work with; wooden walls are beneficial for a good indoor climate and it’s a good isolator against the cold in winter and the heat in summer.

In the summer of 2010 Karel and I followed a course in log building at Gränsfors in Sweden. A place well known for its ax factory.

This summer we’re testing different techniques in the Flemish Ardennes ;-) with some 3 m long logs we ordered.