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Building a log cabin with hand tools how to#
Building a log cabin with hand tools manuals#
Building a log cabin with hand tools manual#

Consequently, a possibility arose that the last few hand-tool-wielding log craftsmen might be allowed to go to their graves with their unique knowledge unshared.įortunately, concurrent with the New Frontier visions of the Kennedy era, a number of Americans–most of them young in years, but a few youthful only in spiritheaded back to the land in hopes of finding a lifestyle that would prove to be simpler, as well as more wholesome and meaningful, than anything available in the increasingly impersonal techno-industrial urban culture.Īnd so, in a migration beginning in the early 1960s, a select group of Americans began moving back to the land. Over the next few decades, as New Sweden came under the control of first the Dutch and later the English, the Scandinavians’ construction techniques were tossed into the cultural melting pot that would soon boil over to become the United States of America.Ī variety of more sophisticated forms of abode passed in and out of style as America matured, but the log cabin remained common–especially in the mountainous states–through the early 1930s, after which relatively few new log structures were built. And it was they–Swedes and Finns, to be exact–who introduced this rugged, practical form of building a log cabin to the Americas in 1638, at the first and only purely Scandinavian settlement in the British colonies, appropriately named New Sweden (in what is now Delaware).

It was also the Scandinavians who developed the technique of hewing–the squaring of the sides of logs to provide flat walls. The first people known for building log cabins and erecting permanent log structures were members of prehistoric Baltic and Scandinavian tribal societies whose homelands were blanketed with dense forests of tall, straight conifers.

Building a log cabin with hand tools manual#

This detailed manual gives instructions for laying the foundation and laying of the logs, as well as a history of American log cabins, to get you on your way to building a traditional hewn-log home of your very own. Owner-built log cabins make cozy, inviting homes, and maintain the rustic yet practical lifestyle that modern homesteaders are working to achieve. (See the log building photos and diagrams in the image gallery.)įor homesteaders, building a log cabin is a traditional part of the back-to-the-land movement.

Home Organization News, Blog, & Articlesīuilding a log cabin is part of the back-to-the-land movement, this guide to building the traditional hewn-log home follows master logsmith Peter Gott workshop notes.

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Ben Hunt selected and produced for the original editions. These two classics have been reproduced exactly as they first appeared, with the drawings and photographs that W. There are really two books in one here: Building a Log Cabin, published in 1947, and Rustic Construction, published in 1939. Part Two tells all you need to know to build and finish rustic furniture for an entire home: benches, tables, chairs, beds, cots, shelves, candelabras, gates, arbors, wayside stands, even road signs and birdhouses. If you're not ready to build an entire cabin, you can try your hand at some of the small furnishings such as lamps, fences, and candlesticks. Just follow the clear instructions on every step of construction from choosing the site, clearing the tract, and building the foundation to installing fixtures, heating, and lighting. Part One provides complete directions for building cabins of three sizes: one-room, one-room and lean-to, and three-room. In this day of power saws, lumberyards, and high prices, it's good to know that you can build in the same way. Our ancestors used logs and hand tools to build durable, dry, windproof, and protective dwellings and they fashioned chairs, tables, branches, and bushes.

Building a log cabin with hand tools how to#

Ben Hunt's is the only one to show you how to build and furnish an authentic pioneer cabin-the easy, natural way, using only hand tools and the woods around you.

Building a log cabin with hand tools manuals#

There are other manuals on building cabins, but W. The only step-by-step guide to building log cabins and log furniture-Pioneer style