LET'S GO CEDARING.
We already knew that covering the house entirely in cedar shakes we made ourselves was a little unrealistic.....but it's a little unrealistic. I personally love the process, the felling of the trees, the wrestling with the shakes, the entire physicality of it––but it is a long process. So this week, we've decided to start cutting down logs to help take some of the pressure off of the shake-making. Eric and Cher are planning to bring a portable sawmill to the farm, and we thought we'd have some lumber of our own milled while we had the chance. So, the house is now going to be partially sided in shakes, partially in rough sawn cedar lumber, and we're actually looking forward to how it's (hopefully) going to turn out.- Jesse.
LONG DISTANCE CABIN BUILDING.
I would like to go ahead and apologize for the amount of times you will no doubt see or hear about me making cedar shakes on the blog over the next few months––it's gonna get ridiculous. Making enough shakes to cover the house is a huge endeavor and is going to occupy a big portion of my time. But one of the beauties of it is it's something we can do while we're in Nashville, right in the back yard with plenty of help!- Jesse.
HOW'S MY FROË.
One of our newest tools/toys is the froë from Garret Wade. I've never used one before so I have nothing to compare it to, but I'm both greatly intimidated and slightly obsessed with this beast. Essentially, it's a splitting maul, but instead of swinging the tool down hard and crashing into the log, you place the froë on top of the log and slam it in with a mallet to make precise shakes (cool video demonstration!) I made my own mallet out of a small cedar log, and then before I left on Sunday, gave it a whirl.And it. was. awesome.It's definitely going to be hard––if we side the entire house with cedar shakes, it will take several months of making them and I will have enormous hands––but it's a blast. When I go to Bugtussle this week I'm going to bring back a bunch of logs to Nashville so I can do some here, a form of long distance cabin construction. We're very excited about the shakes, and this new tool.- Jesse.
OUR NEW FROE.
So the new tool we mentioned yesterday is called a FROE. It is used for splitting wood into shingles. Since we are clearing tons of cedar trees from around the cabin area, we've decided to use the wood as siding - making it into traditional cedar shakes.It is a somewhat daunting project, but one we are excited about. Here is an amazing video of the process - looks fun, right?Whew. I foresee a lot of splitting in our future. Maybe it's time for our first Rough Draft Work Party? Eh? Anybody?- Hannah.