How To Build a Zero-Gap Log Cabin

What was old is now new again and everybody wants to live in a cabin. A dovetail cabin or a zero chink cabin that they're building from their own property. Now there's a lot of things that need to happen before you can even stack the first log if you want to build something like this is you need to get all your logs prepared and today we're going to show our brand new Norwood log planer and we're going to show you that and you're never going to find this anywhere there's no video there's nothing about how to set this up run it and get yourself started so we're going to show you today How to get the planer blades lined up. How to get your logs in fact and can we actually cut two at a time so that we can uh speed up the process of building that cabin. So me and my friend Jeff today gonna show you exactly what's up. We're gonna show you how this thing works. And we're going to get into it right now. This is going to be fun. What do you say, Jeff? Yes, sir. It's going to be a blast. You're going to get the job lost. Now I don't... That's only... Look at this. So let's talk about log preparation and actually why you need to do it and why this machine is going to make everything you do more efficiently. The goal when you're doing a log cabin like this is to get all of the logs at a consistent depth, a consistent width, and a consistent mold on top so everything fits together. This is a zero chink gap, my friends. What does that mean, Jason? It means we don't have to put chinking. What did I call the house when we were at Bunyan? You know what it is, buddy. It's zero tolerance. And that's going to be the name of this cabin. Zero tolerance. To get your joints all perfectly equal and for everything to be right, these logs need to be dry. You just can't cut a tree down and expect that these zero chink gaps in two years when that log is drying is going to be like that. So that's one of the key, key things to building a zero chink gap cabin. So it's preparing your logs, preparing your dry logs. Now there's a million ways I'm going to show you how to make cabins, how to make cabin corners, roofs, trusses with the help of my friends. So this is going to be a process today of just how to get the log started and we're going to show you the multitude of ways that this can actually work for you. But as you can see, I've got two logs up on here and I'm not exactly sure if we're going to get the two to go. But when you're drying these pine logs, I don't know if you can see that Jay, but we do is we're having bowed beams. You're going to have slightly twisted beams and that's where this planer is going to come into effect because we're going to be able to actually cut this perfectly flat, perfectly smooth, just like you're on a planer in a shop. And then when we flip over both of the units, we're going to have a perfectly flat bottom and finish the plane and the grooving all in one shot. But that's the key to this. I know a lot of guys try to put this up on their sawmill and cut this. And don't get me wrong, I've done it. So it is doable. It's a tedious process. It is not going to be as accurate as this. And this is only one function of a super multifunctional machine. When you're building a log cabin, a timber frame, slab work, it's particularly, it's endless. So what we're going to do is show you how the planer blades line up, how to get your gaps together right, and then really how we're going to line this up, and then we're going to run some for you. So this is the first look of our Norwood planer, and we're not going to just walk around and talk about it for you. We're going to actually show you in action. I had this thing in less than a week, and my friend Billy from Pirates Forestry Solutions met me up at Bunyan and him and I spent hours and hours actually perfecting, trying to get the two planed log jigs. So, in a lot of cases, when you buy this machine, it comes with one single head here. And if you do not get the second one, what you're going to have to do is put all of your planer blades on, make one pass, remove them, make a giant stack of wood, come back, change your other planer blade, and run everything. For me, I like to move things along a little bit. I like to make this a production run. Yeah, that's a good one. This was the first time that I met Billy, and we got pretty close to the edge of, can we actually get this done? And it took us about six hours to get this system perfected. Well, I don't want to say perfected, but it ran fine enough for the show, and we did bust out a bunch of stuff, and the crowds out there completely loved it. Yeah, they did. They did. So what we had to do, the first thing that you have to do is get your blades in order here. And getting everything straight. The good thing about the Norwood blades is it's hard. I don't know if you can see that They're all grooved up. So you're not really gonna need an indexing tool. I did use one It was hard because of the profiles. So Setting this up and getting them where you want. Not really a problem The biggest thing to making sure that when you were gonna do double logs at a time is that you index These two blades correctly, and that's so that the two are going to meet at the right time all the time, and everything is going to be equally cut. So for here, for this to work, you actually have the top joints here, you have the bottom joints here. This particular piece here needs to be indexed with this right here. So hopefully that you can see that. If you get these two in perfect alignment, that's the first step of being able to get two of these together. We did try, I'm going to tell you this, and I'm going to do it just so that you can save time. In the beginning, we slammed these two together. We had our blades together. We were trying to get perfection on perfection on perfection on curved logs, and that really wasn't going to happen. The two planer blades, we were trying to run perfectly down the middle. It gave us some issues on consistency. So what we did is we spread. Exactly here. I have an inch and three quarters between where my two molder logs are and where I'm actually going to set up here in this log. We'll show you in a couple of minutes as I have an inch and three-quarter spacer. Keeps the two logs separate from one another and keeps them as straight as a curved log can be as you're building your log cabin. So that is the first step of getting this straight. That's the only way that you're going to get a double to do a double because I know we've messed with that the longest. So the next thing you need to do is on this planer setup or is these this is actually how the logs are you're basically able to it's your dog it's keeping everything straight so you can just keep dropping your logs on this is in utmost importance that these are are perfectly square running with your blade these are six inch wide blades and naturally i'm using six inch wide beams which leave me yeah no room for error so we're back to zero tolerance even in the planer it might be a hair easier i'm just going to say this if you had beams that were seven and a half seven and three quarters it might be easier for you to get the full cut of the beam but we didn't we had no beams like this at the show The ones at the show were a little bit straighter. We didn't have too many twists. Look at this ridiculously ugly beam. But this is going to be a real-world scenario for you, especially if you're using pine, actually if you're using pine or oak. It's uh... It's very easy to have your cants get some sort of bow and twist in it. Normally, when we were at the show, we didn't need this little clamp. Here at the end, both of these were spreading out. And with our zero tolerance, I needed to just hook this piece up. But once you gauge you can look where your planar blades are. You're able to look down in this window on both of the outsides. If you set your blades up this way your outsides are always going to be cutting your 45 kerf. It's going to be the outside of your beams on both sides of this thing. So now it is simpler for you to track. See right now you can see that our blades are right there. I mean, we are almost perfectly flush, if not a hair, maybe a hair in. They are perfectly flush. And that's what you're looking for. And then this planer blade is going to finish it up. So you can see when I'm talking zero tolerance, I got a sixteenth of an inch extra. So I might have to, and at the show, we might have to plane off a little bit. But because this beam is so bowed, and this is what's going to happen, I believe, at your house or in the field, what we're going to do is we're going to ease our way in and start taking the bow out of this beam. You just don't want to dig down to your size. I find that when you run this machine, it's easier to make multiple passes as opposed to digging in a half inch and making a worse cut. So that's what we're going to do. We're set up. So if you're looking at this right here, the blades in the front are perfect to the outside. You want to bring your trolley down your logs, making sure that you're, I'm going to call them log dogs. I'm not exactly sure what they're called or your log sets. I'm still running even down my beam all the way to the end. Me, I check the far end, this end, and get that straight, and usually the middle falls right into place. Now that those are set. I'm never going to change them I know that it runs parallel with the outside dog of my trolley I might just have to move it's very simple for you to take if needed to move this just a little bit there's four bolts this entire head slides back and forth so you actually have I want to say 32 in let's measure it I don't know I didn't get that far yet Jay. I don't know. You got over three feet of travel to put this so if you're able to get let's I didn't even think about it, Jay, about getting three on there. I'm sorry. You can only run two blades. So two is the most that we're going to even attempt to do. Yeah, that's good. So that's where we're at. I think our trolley's in good shape. We're going to close up the hatch door here. We're going to make a few runs, see how it is about getting this bow out of here, getting your log set. We'll flip them to the other sides and see how they work out. To the outside, okay. Flips to the outside, so we know that that groove over there is cutting to the outside. This one we're going to roll. Push this into me. All right, good. Let's roll this guy so that his cut is on the outside. The same configuration how our blades are. Put your spacer back in. Now once you get going, that's probably going to go a little smoother. That's pretty smooth. Was it pretty smooth? That wasn't bad at all. You guys look like you've done this before. It's not with these logs. Before I run it, I'm going to just double check. This looks like it could be. Looks like way up. No, way up. That's just, that's twisted. It's that. So I'm going to do the same thing. So I have a little bit of board twist. You can actually see it right here in my bunk. You want that to lay flat on the bunk, just like this one is. Now I know there's going to be some people saying, you know, you could do this one beam at a time and make it a little quicker Quicker on yourself, but. This also eventually becomes very efficient. To be honest, I can see people saying that, but it's not. So I make my one beam. I'm going to pick it up and move it. I'm going to make my one beam. I'm going to pick it up. You're moving more than we're moving because we're cutting both sides at once. And me, I guarantee that the setup is going to be faster because of the two. And we're showing you a pretty, let's say, crapola board. Hey, at the show, we had some pretty good boards. I know. So we're sitting pretty good right there. So we were at eight and three-eighths. We need to be back. Now, I don't think the bow is going to be that bad this time. You cut most of it out, right? I mean, we've got a little rise. We're running pretty good. Just a little bit right there. This one here's got a belly in it. Does it? This here? Yeah. That's the one that was bowed so bad on the other side. Oh, right. Yeah, but we're still cutting through. We're cutting through on both sides. So our channel is still working, and I'm still just looking at the outside of my blade. And that's only because this is the second one. Once you start going with 30, 40, 50, you'll keep moving along. You can see this is the one with the belly up because now it's belly down. So we're going to have to keep going down until we get a flat cut across both of those beams. Hey, one more. Coming. There we go. I took, what, was that four or five passes? Like 12. 12. No, I'm just kidding. I have on both sides. You saw how ugly those were. Just about. I know. Normally you probably could take one more eighth of an inch pass. I'm for this demonstration. Let's see where we ended up at the end. We ended up with a seven inch tall face on this one. Now, if I were to cut those to nine, we would have had the eight that we needed. So you're going to lose about an inch. And this had a pretty bad bow in it. That was nasty. The bow was nasty. The bow was nasty. So we're using crappy old wood. Let's see how these two line up. God, I hope they're straight enough to fit together, Jay. There's not much to trim. Oh, right here. That's what I mean. That's how close we were. Got a chisel. We got a little bit right here. You have the same, right? Just a tad. That's all you need to do. Yeah, I mean, you can run a chisel or a knife. Piece of sandpaper. We had a chisel at the show. And we also had an old style hand planer. Well, my buddy did anyway. You ready? Okay, we're just going to flip this right up on top. There she goes. See if they meet together. There you go. You've got to love that. And my friend, we just took two old logs. This is where we just need to clean it up. You see how perfectly that fits together? How perfectly flat that that fits together? That is going to be the only way to make a zero-chain cabin. What do you want to do? That end, that way of top log. There you go. That's a pretty nice. That's pretty smooth for an inside. You could even do another over route. There's a lot of things how you want to finish your inside. You can actually even get different blades. You can get custom blades made for this thing. If you wanted a reveal on the inside as well, you could run it with your router. I mean, it would be easier if you had the planer blade and got exactly what you wanted, but I believe that if you had a double outside. Reveal, you wouldn't be able to use different sized logs. And that's why this comes with the Norwood planer. So I could use stuff that's five inches wide and still make these planer blades work. If we had that reveal on the inside, it wouldn't work because you'd be stuck with that size blade. This is the only thing that would change. Yeah. The wide gap. That's pretty impressive. It's extremely impressive. And you can see the old log and see how nice it is on the inside. And get yourself ready for chips. Because you are going to have yourself enough chips to do what you want. Now I know, this is not a cheap machine. This is a whole other kind of sawmill that you're trying to get. I guarantee, this is only one aspect of what this machine can do. Especially when you're building a cabin. And this is the most important part. These are the logs we need to make the cabin fit together tight. Who wants to chink when you don't have to chink? So what are you going to spend on chinking? You're probably going to spend on a machine. But also, guys, if you're not even looking to build a log cabin, you want to supply log cabin stuff to people, this is a business in itself. Sounds like a good idea. There's a niche to this market that's not tapped out. Me, I'm tapped out. So I'm only going to build my stuff and we're going to build our cabins that way. You could do retaining walls. Raised garden beds. Should I just keep going? I mean, I'm just stacking this up. Could anybody put this together? It's not going to fall over. Retaining wall is a great idea. It's a great idea. I hate to say it. I got that giant retaining wall going down the hill, Jay. Cedar or black locust? We ain't got that. We're going to have to use this stuff here. Unless we're going to your house. You got enough black locust for me? I ain't got no black locust. I think we got six miles of retaining wall that needs done with cedar. So, I mean, I could go on and on. Me, I'm trying to build a cabin, but I love this thing. So that's the first look of our new Norwood log planer and the things that we have planned for this and this is just one of the things that it can do and I really wanted to thank my friend Billy from Pirates Forestry Solutions on helping me set this up as a double run. Now I know he has one of these planers and I know he didn't do that but I guarantee when he gets home He's going to see the efficiency of running these things, and I know he does because he had a ball at Bunyan. Thank you for helping us out. Make sure you continue to watch us because we're going to show you how many different style cabins can be built like this. We're going to show you the other features on this, what is good for timber framing, and just for guys in the shop. And since Jay and I do all that, it's a multifunctional machine for us. I like it. I love it. Love, love, love it. Thanks, Jeff. You're welcome. Thanks, Jeff. All right, Jeff.