Easiest log building method ever!!. Part 2

Okay, so part two. And by now the principles should be pretty clear. The idea is to break down the building into sections. Sections of walls which are divided by vertical posts using a tongue and groove system. Now at this stage it can get pretty repetitive, so I'm going to fast forward through a large portion of what's going on now. But in the last video I did say I would recap some of the points I don't think I covered properly, so I'm going to try and do that and then we'll start skipping ahead. So I just put the first log on the second wall in. I actually just centred it on the 2x4 and temporarily just fixed it in place so it doesn't move around. Second log cut to a little over length, centred to the end on that groove. So the tongue and groove idea should be pretty clear by now. Once the logs are then lifted into place, then because I'm using reused logs there's already that groove in the bottom of each log, so it's fairly simple to just run a pencil along the bottom of the log and take a little bit of the extra wood off to get it to fit nicely. So we had some rain yesterday, the sun's out now. I don't know if you can see the steam rising off of these logs. The ends of the logs or the tongues are easy to adjust, just put it in place, make a few marks and then take off what you need to take off. I thought it's worth saying at this point I'm using these hewn logs, old once used logs with the flat sides, but this system works perfectly well with round logs, used round logs or fresh round logs. I've done all of them. The only difference of course would be you would cut the tongue into the end of the log, place it in and then as normal with a log scriber draw the lines. I don't know what the English word is for this piece, but anyway you draw the lines as normal and shape those logs as normal. And now that those two wall sections are ready, it's time to make us another post. And because we cut the sections of log longer than they needed to be for the wall section, it's now a simple task to just mark and then cut the length of the wall, remembering to include the length of the tongue for this end of the log. And then we can mark and cut the tongue for this it's time to put the post in place. So that's the second post in place. So now I'm ready to start this next section of wall. What I usually do is at this point I just mark where that goes so that once this is all taken down, taken to the build site, and I'm rebuilding, I can constantly check that everything's going where it's meant to go. I'll show you how this mired up to the post. It's pretty neat, a little bit of a gap there, but not too bad at all. And there'll be insulation in here. So it's the 14th of April, I was hoping to be almost halfway through this project by now, but I woke up to this. So I think I'll take today and edit the video, the first part of the video, put that out. Temperatures plus one degrees, so this is probably not even going to melt away today. Hopefully it's going to be going away tomorrow. If not, I'm just going to have to start sweeping some snow to the side, and getting the snow off of the tarp, and working out here anyway. But it looks like a video editing day. So now we know how to do the wall sections, and decided to put in this window, needs a good clean. But this is a good point to explain more of the benefits of this system. Now if you know anything about normal log building, when you put in a window or a door, you need to leave a gap above it, which you then stuff with insulation, but that allows the log on top of it to drop down onto it as the logs dry out, and they shrink a bit. With this system that's really not necessary at all. That whole wall section will drop, each log will dry and shrink a little bit, and the whole wall section will drop a bit, and the window will drop a bit, and the log on top of it will drop a bit. But that's not a problem. They just drop down, slide down within the grooves. Now you might say that there's going to be a lot of weight on top of the window, but that's not true either. Now I could have cut these, these are like two by twos, which I've just screwed onto the side of the window, so that it basically continues the system on just like with the logs. I could have cut it perfectly to length, and then these would be supporting some of the weight above the window, as well as the window itself. In this case, this window is really sturdy stuff, and the only weight that's going to be on it is this one log, because the whole weight of the is going to be on the posts. So no need to think about that dropping gap. Same with doors. If there's a post on both sides of the door, you don't need to put a gap above it. Just as an afterthought, I realised people might be wondering what happens as the whole wall section drops. Isn't that going to leave a gap at the top? But no, it's not. That's a fairly simple thing to remedy, and you'll see how I do that when we get to the actual build phase on site. So I think I've been kind of watching the level of the logs, trying to keep it fairly even. It doesn't need to be perfectly even in this system, but this log I'm going to use to level things up, because we're getting a little bit low on that edge. The nice thing here is this edge is kept nice and steady here. All I have to do is put the block under this side. I've set the log scriber to this highest level. I've got my compasses set up. So the posts on the other side, they're 20 centimetres wide. I'm starting to use these logs, which are only 15 centimetres wide. This is the post which is going to be going in here. I've cut a groove five centimetres deep. Well, it's actually about six. As I said before, I like to do them a little bit too deep. And if I was to do a groove on the other side, then this log starts to get really quite weak. So what I've done is I've just screwed on a two by two and on this wall I'll be making the five centimetre groove here. Now obviously I'm not going to be grooving the window, which is why you see that there is that gap in between the two by twos. The first two by two comes up to around about here. The groove will carry on all the way up, and that's again so that this wall can drop. If I did it all the way up to here, then the log would be able to drop, but the window would be resting on top of the two by twos. So we leave a little bit of space for the window to drop. Now this two by two system works and is much, much easier, much, much less work than cutting the groove. I don't like it too much because it involves screws, which I kind of think is cheating, but you certainly could do a whole building just cutting a flat surface on a log, screwing on a two by two, and then all the wall sections which have a groove. One point, if you're doing that, is avoid, or if you're using the same kind of system I am, then avoid putting the screws too high up because once this building is all put together on site, I'll be taking a chainsaw and cutting all the way down the roof line. I don't want any screws up there. So I think I'm not now going to cut this groove because the window's in the way, but I'm getting to the point where I'm going to be taking all this down. So I'll cut this groove down to about here and I'll remove this section. I'll finish off that groove when it's not sitting on top of the window. Then I'll be taking the window off and then I'll cut that groove here. So I'm not going to be installing this log here. It'll be installed on site. So at this point I started breaking the building down and transporting all the parts to the actual build site. For the record, I earlier said that the system was fast, so I've been counting hours and at the point that I started breaking the building down, it hit exactly 40 hours. Now if you're building this building at the place where it's going to stand, then it would be a little bit more than that because you'd be putting in the insulation as you go and drilling and pegging as you'll see in the next video because I'm going to have to stop here. We're at 20 minutes. Next video we'll be on site and it's going to be starting there with the excavator because we're actually going to build this cabin half underground. So if you want to see that then I'll try and get the next video out soon. Thanks for watching. Bye bye.