wanted: co-investors

The next step in our project is to find some co-investors.

What follows is the appeal we posted on some fora:

We fell in love with Swedish nature a long time ago. As you probably know Scandinavia is heaven for outdoor sportsmen and a bushcraft country par excellence, not only because of nature but also because of the right of public access. Sweden is even a member of the European Union, which can come in handy when you want to visit a doctor etc.

Our dream is to build a traditional log cabin far away from civilization, a place where all the 21st century luxuries can be forgotten and where you can fully enjoy the nature. We would prefer the Swedish-Norwegian border: either the north of the county of Värmland, or the northwest of the county of Dalarna. This is a mountainous region where the tradition of log cabin building is  a still alive and kicking.

That’s why we decided to follow a log cabin course in Gränsfors in the summer of 2010. The next summer we held a test case in Belgium. We are therefore confident now that we are capable of applying what we have learned. This fall we went to Sweden for a first exploration: we inquired about legislation, spoke to brokers, visited fifteen potential locations and the timber merchant where we want to buy our wood.

We are now looking for additional people who wish to invest in this project. We are hoping to make it more affordable by finding a third or even fourth party. As we see it now we want to buy a piece of land with already a small house on it. On this we would then build a small log cabin and use it as a sauna.

How much does this cost you wonder? If we find another investor, we estimate it at € 4,500 per person ... one investor more would make it € 3,500 per person. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you would like to know more about our plans.

If this is still over your budget but you are still interested ... we are even open to a kind of timeshare.

If you do not like to co-invest, but want to help out this summer ... please let us know!

Sincerely
Karel & Bart

blokhutzweden@gmail.com

Finishing the test case

Our training on this test case has now finished. We’re confident that we master the dalarna notch-making technique. We used most of the logs that we had ordered for this purpose. Unintentionally we’ve made this training very difficult by using round logs. The hustimmer we’ll be using in Sweden are processed in such a way that we’ll be able to work a lot quicker with them. Nonetheless, even with these round logs we’re able to make two notches a day, which is quite fast considering the effort you have to put in shaving and squaring the round log ends.

Later on we’ll probably make some more test-notches before we start with the real deal. To be able to do this we’ll shorten the logs we have used and start anew with them. 

Steady progress

Sunday, after a short hiatus, we had again time to work on our notch making skills. We finished two notches . There're still not perfect, but we're coming close. We've made some mistakes but were able to identify them and rectify them in time.
 



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.