Part 7

Locust, chestnut, and cedar will last longer than other varieties of wood when exposed to contact with damp earth, but common wood, which rots easily, may be protected by preservatives, one of which is boiled linseed-oil with pulverized charcoal stirred into it until a black paint is produced. Some people say that a coat of charcoal paint will preserve even a basswood fence post for a lifetime, and if that is true a hogan protected by a coating upon the outside of paint made by stirring fine charcoal into boiled linseed-oil until it is as thick as paint will last longer than any of my readers will have occasion to use the hogan for a playhouse. Erect the frame (Fig. 156) by having some boys hold the uprights in place until they can be secured with temporary braces like those shown running diagonally across from _B_ to _E_ and _A_ to _F_. You may then proceed to board up the sides from the outside of the frame by slipping the planks between the frame and the bank and then nailing from the inside wherever you lack room upon the outside to swing your hammer. The door-jambs _I_, _J_ and _K_, _L_ will help support the roof.

The Roof

The roof may be made of lumber, as shown by Fig. 160, or it may be made of poles like those shown on the Wyoming Olebo (Fig. 236), or it may be made of planks and covered with tar paper (Figs. 296, 297, 298, and 299), or it may be shingled, using barrel staves for shingles, or covered with bits of old tin roofing tacked over the planking--or anything, in fact, which will keep out the water. As for looks, that will not count because the roof is to be afterward covered with sod.

Cliff-House Roof

If you wish to make the roof as the cliff-dwellers made theirs, put your biggest logs crosswise from _A_, _M_, _E_ to _C_, _O_, _G_ of your house for rafters, and across the larger logs lay a lot of small poles as close together as may be, running from the back to the front of the house. Fill in the cracks between with moss or calk them with dry grass; on them place a layer of brush, browse, or small sticks and over this a thick coating of clay, hard-pan, or ordinary mud and pack it down hard by tramping it with your feet until it becomes a smooth and tightly packed crust; over this you can put your sod and weeds to conceal your secret.

Passageway

To make the frame for the underground hall or passageway (Fig. 156), first nail _Q_, _S_ across the door-jambs to form the top to the doorway, after which put in the supports _Q_, _R_ and _S_, _T_. Next build the frame _U_, _V_, _X_, _W_ and join it to _Q_, _S_ by the two pieces _Q_, _U_ and _S_, _V_ and put in the middle frame support marked _ZZZZ_.

The passageway should be about six feet long and the front doorway (_U_, _V_, _X_, _W_, Figs. 156 and 157) of sufficient size to enable you to creep through with comfort. The bottom piece _W_, _X_ can be nailed to a couple of sticks driven in the ground for that purpose. The next thing in order is the floor, and to make this firm you must lay a number of two-by-fours parallel to _B_, _D_ and _F_, _H_ and see that they are level. You will need a number of shorter pieces of the same material to run parallel to _F_, _H_ and _W_, _X_ for the hall floor, as may be seen in Fig. 157. Across these nail your floor securely as shown in Fig. 155.

There are no windows shown in the diagram, but if the builders wish one it can be placed immediately over the entrance or hallway in the frame marked _I_, _K_, _Q_, _S_ (Fig. 156), in which case the top covering of dirt must be shovelled away from it to admit the light in the same manner that it is in the dugout shown in Fig. 142 and also in the small sketch (Fig. 154). The ventilator shown in Fig. 155 may be replaced, if thought desirable, by a chimney for an open fire. On account of the need of ventilation a stove would not be the proper thing for an underground house, but an open fire would help the ventilation. In the diagram the ventilator is set over a square hole in the roof; it may be made of a barrel or barrels, with the heads knocked out, placed over the hole in the roof, or kegs, according to the size of the roof. When your house is complete fill in the dirt around the edges, pack it down good and hard by the use of a piece of scantling two by four or four by four as a rammer, then cover the roof with small sticks and fine brush and sod it with growing weeds or grass.

The Door

You should have a good, stout front door (Fig. 157) and a padlock with which to secure it from trespassers.

Aures Hinge

A rustic hinge may be made by splitting a forked branch (Fig. 157 _C_) and using the two pieces nailed to the sides of the door-jambs (Fig. 157 _A_) to hold the round ends of the rod (Fig. 157 _B_) run through them. The middle of the _B_ stick is flattened to fit on the surface of the door to which it is nailed. This hinge was invented by Scout Victor Aures of stockade 41144 of Boy Pioneers of America and a description with neat diagrams sent by the inventor to his chief. When all is completed you can conceal the ventilator with dry brush or by planting weeds or shrubs around it, which will not interfere with the ventilation but will conceal the suspicious-looking pipe protruding from the ground. The top of the ventilator should be protected by slats, as in Fig. 161, or by wire netting with about one-quarter-inch mesh in order to keep small animals from jumping or hopping down into your club-house. Of course, a few toads and frogs, field-mice and chipmunks, or even some lizards and harmless snakes would not frighten any real boy, but at the same time they do not want any such creatures living in the same house with them.

Trap-Door

In place of a ventilator or chimney a trap-door may be placed in the roof and used as a secret entrance, access to inside being had by a ladder. A description of an appropriate ladder follows (Figs. 169 and 170).

Fig. 159 shows a rude way to make a chandelier, and as long as your candles burn brightly you may know that the air in your little hogan is pure and fresh. When such a chandelier is used pieces of tin should be nailed above the candles to prevent the heat from burning holes through the roof.

XXV

HOW TO CUT AND NOTCH LOGS

BOYS you have now passed through the _grammar school_ of shack making, you are older than you were when you began, you have acquired more skill and more muscle, and it is time to begin to handle the woodsman's axe, to handle it skilfully and to use it as a tool with which to fashion anything from a table to a two-story house. None of you is too young to learn to use the axe. General Grant, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Billy Sunday--all of them could wield an axe by the time they were eight or nine years old and do it without chopping off their toes or splitting any one else's head open. Remember that every time you hurt yourself with an axe I have a yellow ribbon for you to wear as a "chump mark"; but, joking aside, we must now get down to serious work of preparing the logs in order to build us a little cabin of our own, a log club-house for our gang, or a log camp for our troop of scouts.

Notching Logs

To make the logs hold together at the corners of our cabins it is necessary to lock them in some manner, and the usual way is to notch them. You may cut flat notches like those shown in Fig. 162 and this will hold the logs together, as shown by 162 _E_ or you may only flatten the ends, making the General Putnam joint shown in Fig. 163. This is called after General Putnam because the log cabins at his old camp near my farm at Redding, Conn., are made in this manner. Or you may use the Pike notch which has a wedge-shaped cut on the lower log, as shown by Fig. 164 _J_, made to fit into a triangular notch shown by 164 _H_. When fitted together these logs look like the sketch marked 164 _F_ which was drawn from a cabin built in this manner.

But the simplest notch is the rounded one shown by _A_, _B_, and _C_ (Fig. 165). When these are locked together they will fit like those shown at Fig. 165 _D_.

Away up North the people dovetail the ends of the logs (Fig. 166) so that their ends fit snugly together and are also securely locked by their dovetail shape. To build a log house, place the two sill logs on the ground or on the foundation made for them, then two other logs across them, as shown in Fig. 168.

Handling the Logs

That the logs may be more easily handled they should be piled up on a skidway which is made by resting the top ends of a number of poles upon a big log or some other sort of elevation and their lower ends upon the ground. With this arrangement the logs may be rolled off without much trouble as they are used.

Chinking

A log cabin built with hardwood logs or with pitch-pine logs can seldom be made as tight as one built with the straight spruce logs of the virgin forests. The latter will lie as close as the ones shown in Fig. 162 _E_, while the former, on account of their unevenness, will have large cracks between them like those shown in Fig. 165 _D_. These cracks may be stopped up by quartering small pieces of timber (_Y_ and _W_, Fig. 168½) and fitting these quartered pieces into the cracks between the logs where they are held by spikes. This is called "chinking the cabin."

Fig. 162. Fig. 162E Fig. 163. Fig. 164. Fig. 164F. Fig. 165.

Fig. 165C. Fig. 165D. Fig. 166. Fig. 167. Fig. 168. Fig. 168½.

[Illustration: Showing how the logs are notched.]

To keep the cold and wind out, the cracks may be "mudded" up on the inside with clay or ordinary lime mortar.

Models

Study these diagrams carefully, then sit down on the ground with a pile of little sticks alongside of you and a sharp jack-knife in your hand and proceed to experiment by building miniature log cabins. Really, this is the best way to plan a large cabin if you intend to erect one. From your model you can see at a glance just how to divide your cabin up into rooms, where you want to place the fireplace, windows, and doors; and I would advise you always to make a small model before building. Make the model about one foot three inches long by ten inches wide, using sticks for logs a little less than one inch in diameter--that is, one inch through or one inch thick. I have taken these dimensions or measurements from a little model that I have before me here in my studio, but, of course, you can vary them according to the plans of your cabin.

XXVI

NOTCHED LOG LADDERS

EVER since man learned to use edged tools he has made ladders or steps, or whatever you may call them, by notching logs (Figs. 169 and 170).

Fig. 169. Fig. 170.

[Illustration: The pioneer log ladder.]

A few years ago I took a splendid trip among the unnamed lakes and in what is known as "the unexplored country"--that is, the unmapped country of northwestern Quebec. We travelled over trails that had not been changed by man since canoes were invented. The forests were untouched by the axe of the white man. There were no roads, no houses, no fences, no people except a few wandering Indians, no cattle except caribou and moose, no dogs except wolves, and we slept at night on beds of balsam and paddled by day through rivers and lakes or carried our luggage and our canoes over the portages from one body of water to another over centuries-old trails. At one place the trail led up the side of a mountain to the beetling face of a cliff--a cliff that we had to climb with all our canoes and luggage, and we climbed it on a couple of notched logs, as shown in Fig. 169. By the way, boys, the Indian with the big load on his back is my old friend Bow-Arrow, formerly chief of the Montainais, and the load on his back was sketched from the real one he carried up that ladder portage. This old man was then sixty years of age. But all this talk is for the purpose of telling you the use of the notched log. Our pioneer ancestors used them to ascend to the loft over their cabins where they slept (Fig. 170). It is also a good ladder to use for tree-houses and a first-rate one for our underground hogans when we have an entrance through the top instead of one at the side shown by Fig. 156. Since you have learned how to use the axe you may make one of these primitive ladders to reach the hay-loft in your barn, if you have a barn. You may make the ladder of one log if you set the pole or log upright and notch it on both sides so that you can clasp it with your hand and, placing one foot on each side of it, climb up in that manner.

XXVII

A POLE HOUSE. HOW TO USE A CROSS-CUT SAW AND A FROE

Pole House

FIG. 171 shows a pole house--that is, a house, the walls of which are made by setting straight poles up on end with sides against each other and nailing a beam across the top (Fig. 172) and toe-nailing them (Fig. 173); that is, driving the nails slantingly down through the poles to the sill beneath. Fig. 172 shows how to nail them to the top beam or side-plate. To build a pole house, erect the four corner-posts and any intermediate posts which may be necessary, nailing the plates on top of the posts to hold the frame together (Fig. 172), afterward fitting the other posts in place, as shown in the sketch.

We have not yet arrived at the part of the book where we can build as extensive houses as the one shown here. The drawing is only inserted at this place because it naturally comes with the use of the cross-cut saw. You can, however, without much trouble, build a small pole house without the veranda, and after you have learned how to build the big log houses you can turn back to this page and try a pole house like Fig. 171.

Fig. 171. Fig. 172. Fig. 173. Fig. 174. Fig. 175. Fig. 176. Fig. 177. Fig. 178. Fig. 179.

[Illustration: The use of the saw in log work.]

Sawing on an Angle

Fig. 174 shows how to saw off poles on the bias, as a woman would say, or on an angle, as a man would say. Suppose, for instance, you want to cut the poles to fit the dormer over the veranda shown in Fig. 171. Measure off the height of the middle pole, then the distance along the base from the middle pole to the corner at the eaves. Next fit the poles you are going to use closely together to cover that distance; hold them in place by nailing a plank temporarily across the bottom ends; then place another plank at the point marked for the height of the middle pole, run it down to the bottom plank, and nail it temporarily along this line. Now take hold of one end of the saw, as the fellow does in Fig. 174, and let another boy take the other end of the saw; then by working it back and forth along the line you may saw off the protruding ends of the poles. Proceed in the same manner along the base-board. You will then have half the dormer poles all nicely tacked together and cut in the right shape so that they may be evenly fitted in place, and after they are secured there the marking planks may be knocked off. Fig. 175 shows two boys at work "pit-sawing." They are sawing planks from a log, which is rather hard work but not unpleasant. I know, for I have tried it when I was up among the moonshiners in the mountains of Kentucky. Fig. 176 is from a sketch I made up in Michigan, where two men were sawing down a tree as they frequently do nowadays in place of chopping it down with an axe; this tree, however, was first notched with an axe so that it would fall in the right direction. Fig. 178 shows the peculiar teeth of one of these two-handled saws. It is not necessary for you to be expert on the sort of teeth a saw should have; any saw that cuts well for your purpose is the sort of saw you need.

The Froe

Fig. 179 shows two forms of the froe, an implement used for splitting shakes and shingles and clapboards like those on the roof of Fig. 171. The froe is held by the handle with the left hand and hammered on the top with a mallet held in the right hand. Fig. 177 shows two boys sawing a log up into sections, but for our work in cabin building the woodsman's axe is the real tool we need. The saw is all right and may be used if you have it, but it is a little too civilized for real woodcraft work. You cannot throw one of these saws over your shoulder as you would an axe and go marching into the woods with any comfort. The saw is also a more dangerous implement around camp than even a sharp axe.

XXVIII

LOG-ROLLING AND OTHER BUILDING STUNTS

OF course my readers know all about geometry, but if by the rarest of chances one of them should not it will not prevent him from using that science to square the corners of his log cabin. Builders always have a ten-foot measuring rod--that is, a rod or straight stick ten feet long and marked with a line at each foot from end to end. Make your own ten-foot pole of as straight a piece of wood as you can find. With it measure six feet carefully on the log _C_, _G_ (Fig. 180) and mark the point at _O_ (Fig. 180); measure eight feet on the other log _C_, _A_ (Fig. 180) and mark the point at _N_. If these measurements have been carefully made from _C_ to _O_ and from _C_ to _N_ and your corner is "square," then your ten-foot pole will reach between the two points _O_ and _N_ with the tips of the pole exactly touching _O_ and _N_. If it does not exactly fit between _N_ and _O_, either the corner is not square or you have not marked off the distances accurately on the logs. Test the measurements and if they are not found true then push your logs one way or the other until it is exactly ten feet from _O_ to _N_. Then test the corner at _H_ in the same manner.

Fig. 180. Fig. 181. Fig. 182. Fig. 183.

[Illustration: How to square the corners, roll the logs of cabin, and make log steps.]

Log-Rolling

In the olden times log-rolling was always a great frolic and brought the people from far and near to lend a helping hand in building the new house. In handling logs, lumbermen have tools made for that purpose--cant-hooks, peevy irons, lannigans, and numerous other implements with names as peculiar as their looks--but the old backwoodsmen and pioneers who lived in log houses owned no tools but their tomahawks, their axes, and their rifles, and the logs of most of their houses were rolled in place by the men themselves pushing them up the skids laid against the cabin wall for that purpose; later, when the peddlers and traders brought ropes to the settlements, they used these to pull their logs in place. In building my log house in Pennsylvania we used two methods; one was hand power (Fig. 181). Taking two ropes we fastened the ends securely inside the cabin. We then passed the free ends of the ropes around the log, first under it and then over the top of it, then up to a group of men who, by pulling on the free ends, rolled the log (Fig. 181) up to the top of the cabin. But when Lafe Jeems and Nate Tanner and Jimmy Rosencranz were supplied with some oxen they fastened a chain to each end of the log (Fig. 182), then fastened a pulley-block to the other side of the cabin, that is, the side opposite the skids, and ran the line through the pulley-block to the oxen as it is run to the three men in Fig. 182. When the oxen were started the log slid up the skids to the loose rafters _N_, _O_, _P_ and when once up there it was easily shoved and fitted into place.

Log Steps

Sometimes one wants front steps to one's log house and these may be made of flattened logs or puncheons, as shown by Fig. 183.

XXIX

THE ADIRONDACK OPEN LOG CAMP AND A ONE-ROOM CABIN

Adirondack Log Camp

NOT satisfied with the open brush Adirondack camp, the men in those woods often build such camps of logs with a puncheon floor and a roof of real shingles. The sketch (Fig. 184) is made from such a camp. At the rear the logs are notched and placed like those of a log house (Figs. 162, 163, 164, 166), but the front ends of the side logs are toe-nailed (Fig. 173) to the two upright supports. In this particular camp the logs are also flattened on the inside in order to give a smoother finish, as they often are in old Virginia and Kentucky log houses. In Virginia they formerly hewed the logs flat with broad axes after the walls were up, but that required a workman of a different type than the ordinary woodsman. The broadaxe is seldom used now and may be omitted from our kit.

Cabin Plan

A one-room log cabin with double bunks at one end makes a good camp (Fig. 185) with room for two or four sleepers according to the width of the bunk (Fig. 186).

Fig. 184. Fig. 185. Fig. 186.

[Illustration: The lean-to and one-pen cabin plan.]

The Bunks

The bunks are made by setting the ends of two poles into holes in the logs bored for that purpose (Fig. 185) and nailing slats across the poles. Over this a bed of browse is laid and on this blankets are spread and all is then ready for bedtime.

XXX

THE NORTHLAND TILT AND INDIAN LOG TENT

Log Tents