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Your Log House: The On-Site Manual for the Do-it-Yourselfer

by Vic Janzen

206 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-2015; ISBN 1-4120-1638-X; US$31.00, C$35.50, EUR25.50, £18.00

An on-site manual that's a must for anyone dreaming to build a log house or having one built professionally. Complete with illustrations, photographs and 15 house plans.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpts      catalogue info

About the Book This is not a manual that can be read as book, put on the shelf and the building started. It is an on-site reference work intended to be open on the job. The book is written in a cumulative style. That is, it is necesssary to start at the beginning and gain knowledge as the book and the building project progresses. For anyone with a dream to build a log house or have one built professionally, it is a must. It serves to instruct, inspire and make the reader knowledgeable about log construction at every level. For the professional builder or proprietor who already knows most of what this book teaches, the book would be useful for apprentices and other newcomers to the craft. It would also serve well to pass on to prospective customers to both inspire them further and to bring them up to speed on the language and concepts of log building.

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About the Author Vic Janzen's lifelong love affair with log buildings began in the Yukon, while hunting and trapping as a youth, where he often took shelter in abandoned log cabins. At the age of 12 he built his first primitive log building, which was the beginning of his long career in the handcrafted world, including owning his own log building company and teaching at the Allan Mackie School in Prince George. Your Log House has been in the making for several months, and it's now on the press. An exciting time for Vic Janzen, one of the founding fathers of the ILBA, to see his latest book to come to fruition. For more information about building log houses, visit Vic's website at www.yourloghouse.com.

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Sample Excerpts

Introduction

This book is written for people who are in need of housing. I believe that log housing lends itself, more than other forms of building, to self-help housing projects. It is a form of building that can be undertaken by individuals and families with limited building skills. The necessary techniques can be learned step-by-step as the building progresses. A small financial investment in building timber provides the necessary material for the house. This is a great advantage in areas where conventional building materials must be expensively shipped in from suppliers far from the remote community. In my work and travels throughout rural and northern British Columbia and the Yukon Territory, I have had opportunities to visit remote and not-so-remote communities. In most places, some form of log building has been going on over the years. In studying the construction of the buildings, I was mostly interested in the old log buildings that had stood the test of time and severe seasons. The old log buildings retain a certain beauty despite neglect and abandonment in many instances. Almost all aboriginal villages boasted a preponderance of log houses built by the fathers and grandfathers of the people presently occupying them. In most cases, the houses were swiftly and crudely built, yet they were still very liveable and fairly pleasing to look upon. Likewise, lodges, ranch houses, and barns built by neighbors, in spite of haste, limited building knowledge, and usually limited funds, are still beautiful and habitable. Considering that log building has been practical in the past, it should be even more practical in the present, given the better tools and building information available.

Old, poorly built buildings have lasted. Timber is available and lends itself to hand building of a self-help nature. The need to cut down on imported materials and technology is evident everywhere in the northern, rural, and remote areas of the country. The practical application of log building techniques is a viable alternative in housing.

Excerpt from Chapter 12

12. Setting Wall Logs Among log builders, you may hear statements like these, "I know an old Finnish log builder who uses the Norwegian notch," "I understand that the Swedish saddle is the best notch," or "My great uncle, one of the best log house builders in the country, swears by the Russian round notch." How about the "Lithuanian lateral groove" or the "Polish profile projection"? The "Latvian goatherd's gouge" might be a useful notching tool.

Through my reading, exploration, and experimentation, I have, like King Solomon, come to the conclusion that "nothing is new under the sun" - or at least, very little.

History reveals some interesting facts about the development of log building. First, forms used today actually existed in such places as Japan, Poland, the Ukraine, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and other places hundreds of years ago. Also interesting is that many builders arrive at, what they believe, are authentic innovations. Most of the time, these conclusions are arrived by past and contemporary builders faced with similar building situations.

Once, dropping in on a building site, I found a colleague employing a notch, arrived at totally on his own, that is almost identical to a saddle-type notch used in Sweden some several centuries ago. My friend's notch was different from the old one only to the extent of missing one final top slice with the axe. He had moved from the round notch of his time to early experimentation with what would become the popular "shrink-fit" notch of today. So it goes. And really, all any log builder does is refine traditions. It should be tremendously gratifying to discover that he can, on his own, come to exactly the same conclusions as the experts did before him.

In his book, Notches of all Kinds, B. Allan Mackie avoids all the racial and mysterious overtones by simply identifying notches descriptively. Thus a round notch is simply called a "round notch" and if it has the profile of a sheep's head buried in its cross-section, it can be identified as a "round sheep's head notch." Generally speaking, the racial and national prefixes are misleading and confusing. They also tend to confine log building expertise to particular nationalities.

The dovetail notch pictured on the previous page has a bit of the look of a dove's tail. It existed in Scandinavian countries so that the corners could be cut flush to allow for covering with shingles or siding. The United Empire Loyalists carpenters, having no national tradition of log building, adapted what they knew of cabinetry corners. They were forced to hew homes out of the Canadian wilderness after 1783 and after their expulsion from Revolutionary America.

Having described foundations and general layout in the previous chapter, I can now describe the placement of the first logs.

The very first course (or round) of logs consists of half logs and somewhat flattened, full diameter logs. In order to arrive at the correct chalk lines, use the step-by-step layout procedures described in Chapter 9 (Timber Layout). Both types of logs illustrated in Figure 40 can then be sawn into shape.

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Catalogue Information

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