Spek, thanks for the comments, your photos are awesome. I made my first saddle notch as a young teenager and have been making them ever since. I don't have a bunch of spare money so I used lime/portland cement for chinking. Would love to use permachink or logjam but that is lotto winning reality for me. lol




here's my woodshed, I'm going to expand it to double the size this summer

Thought I would add that I've used small poles for chinking before too.

I built a couple similar to Spek's visqueen cabin.

I dropped a few trees and laid a coupe of rounds of logs. Then I started digging. Went down about 4 feet. Throw the dirt outside the logs. Set up a king post with a ridge pole and run rafters (poles) down to the ground. Cover everything above ground with plastic and cover the roof with sod. Extremely warm and easy to heat.

Also makes a quick sauna for a trapping camp the same way

Thanks guy's. Saskamusher, I have built some to fit canvas wall tents, and some I just stretch reinforced visqueen over. The visqueen will condensate bad until you get the ground dried out inside and then it's not so bad. With a pitched roof the condensation just runs down the inside and down the walls. Keep your sleeping bag away from the wall or it'll get wet. About 14x16 is a good size. I always set up a wood stove in them, and it's real nice having a lot of places to hang up gear and get stuff up off the floor.

Looks like a Chinese laundromat at the end of a day of hunting in the rain. But at least you can hang it all up and get it dried out.


Randyt, I have seen the poles used like you mentioned, a lot of the old timers chinked with moss and then would nail small poles along between the logs to keep the squirrels from pulling the moss out. They also would nail tin strips over the moss instead of using poles, like this old cabin. It belongs to a friend of mine up near Coldfoot. Pretty ugly, but I guess it works for him. I'd rip it off there and get some perma-chink.


Ken, sounds like you built a barabara like the Aleuts use to build. I've always wanted try one but never have done it. Seen the remains of some down on the Alaska Peninsula, but they were all fell in by the time I was guiding down that way.

My friend last year has constructed a new trapping cabin

That is very nice, Taegnik. The notches your friend used on the corners are what we call, "trapper notches"

Looks like very little chinking needed.

Thanks to this thread, I noticed those notches too!

Nice log work Taegnik. Some good cabin logs in that area.

One of episodes on trapping of a sable is pic of some cabins there. There is video and a photo after visit of a cabin of a bear
http://pilgrim55.blogspot.ru/2016/02/Taezhnye-bajki-na-omuta-chast-dva.html?m=0

Great video and pictures Taezhnik. Looks like the bear had a good time at the cabin. I see that cabin was done with what we call the Swedish Cope.

Spek, explain the Swedish cope please

awesome pics, hope the bear doesn't cause anymore trouble for you

Scanner, it's used a lot on log homes, and it involves cutting a trough from one end of the log to the other following a scribed line so that the log will lay tight against the log beneath it. You don't see it much on small cabins.

Like this.

Is that something you do Spek, or is it too time consuming, I imagine?

No, that is one of the reasons I don't build log homes. It is time consuming, and with all the chinking materials available now it is not necessary on a small cabin.

Spek, speaking of the Swedish cope, would it be possible to only scribe where the log ends meet? Could you then run a chainsaw in between the length of the log, so as to avoid the tedious job of cutting the "trough" the entire length of the log? Of course it would require chinking afterward. Just looking for a faster way to make notches like the one in your photo because I really the look of that style.

I'm sure it could be done Winterprime, but to me it doesn't seem it would be very practical though. I think if I was going to go to that much trouble I'd just go ahead and do the full scribe.

that's a awesome cabin Taegnik, I noticed many cabins in your country has a open roof. Is there a reason why? Is the space used for storage?


In regards to the full scribe method, I've been told that a chinked style cabin is more energy efficient than the full scribe. Don' know if true or not.


'm curious how long does a saddle notch take to make. Whith a sharp chainsaw I can make one in less than a half hour, don't know if that's fast or slow but it seem reasonable.

the roof is not closed with a side because snow there never gets. And I think for economy of construction materials. Delivery of construction materials to the place of building is very labor-consuming
Yes, the space on a roof is used for storage of different things.