The logs came off my property. A lot of them were not the straightest, so the doorways were decided before the build started to enable me to "straighten" those crooked ones by cutting them at the doorways. The current course, at the gable ends (where the door openings are), are full length logs so I now have the gable walls tied to the corners. I built a cabin back in the 80's for my dad as a camp, but used a rather crude method adopted from an old, but reputable, log builder. This time I wanted to get away from chinking, so attended a 10 day log building course at the Great Lakes School of Log Building, in Isabella MN, a year ago. I'm using the saddle and notch system with full scribe of the laterals. Between that school and the great book by Robert Chambers the process is becoming pretty efficient and rewarding.
I plan to number every log and disassemble the entire structure when it's time to relocate it to the lake front property. I will have to haul the logs on a flat bed trailer, as the short wall logs are 32 1/2' and the long wall logs are 36 1/2'. My perlins and ridge pole will be longer yet, as the roof will extend as a "fly" on each gable too. In all honesty, this is the easy part. The draw knife peeling process last winter was the real work.
Tom
