DIY Log Cabin Building -
Owners in the Trenches
A log cabin building project can be overwhelming if you have never done anything like that before. Here are folks who have done it and lived to blog...
Fred Beal's Montana Log Cabins - Fred has built his own tiny log cabin, which he lives in and another shown here at the Tiny House Blog
He also sells plans for a dovetailing jig. His log cabin photo gallery includes numerous pictures of the log cabin building process including some great log cabin interior shots. Fred uses a different method than I do for chinking his cabins and shows this on his page.
Here is Fred's Instructable page with a few more photos of how to build a log cabin with dovetail notches using his jig.
Victoria and her father found an old log cabin about to be reclaimed by nature, bought it for 150.00 and set out to save it. This Mother Earth News article details the log restoration process from start to finish. For awhile the cabin served as a retreat and guest house for the family, but in 2008 she and her son moved in and she tells more about log cabin living in this update.
The Slave Dwelling Project held a log cabin workshop at Montpelier, home of President James Madison and his wife, Dolly. Participants built a replica of a slave dwelling discovered in a 2010 excavation.
Leoneda was one of the participants who came knowing little about building and left a log cabin builder! She shares her insightful journal/blog of the log cabin project here.
Montpelier Log Cabin ProjectMartin Liewer built his pine cabin near the Niobrara River in Nebraska and retired there. This PDF is a little booklet of his story: A Nebraska Log Cabin - nfs.unl.edu/documents/ruralforestry/alogcabin.pdf (Copy and paste the link to your browser.)
A whole family worked together on this Kentucky log cabin made from poplar.
Paul Cutting had little building experience, but when he heard of an old cabin about to be destroyed, he bought it for $600 on the spot. Nearly 10 years and many cabins later, he has become something of an expert on Midwest traditional cabin building methods. The video above documents his first project and his blog has tons of log cabin photos from Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin.
Do you know someone who has built a hand hewn log cabin project?
Tell about the project!