Log Cabin Build: Free and Cheap Materials

Description

I collect natural materials to chink the log cabin (fill in the gaps between the logs), explain how and why I bought milled lumber for the floors and roof. Log cabins require maintenance, and I explain why I need big overhangs on the roof of the cabin for it's long term survival.

https://www.youtube.com/user/ZedOutdoors

In this episode, bushcraft comes into play with natural materials collected from nature on the property and carving of a chinking tool for the log cabin.

At the end of this episode, I talk about the influence that Zed from Zed Outdoors and Joe Robinet from Joe Robinet bushcraft had on me.

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My Self reliance, shawn james, Bushcraft, Woodcraft, Survival, Primitive skills, Nature, Preparedness, Homesteading, Homestead, Self Reliance, Self Sufficiency, Living Off The Land, Off The Grid, Survival Kit, Bushcraft Kit, Carving, Primitive Shelters, Campfire, Fjallraven, outdoors

Tags: bushcraft,self-reliance,survival,log,cabin,log cabin,My Self reliance,shawn james,Woodcraft,Primitive skills,Nature,Preparedness,Homesteading,Homestead,Self Reliance,Self Sufficiency,Living Off The Land,Off The Grid,Survival Kit,Bushcraft Kit,Pathfinder School,Carving,Primitive Shelters,Fjallraven,outdoors,joe robinet,zed outdoors,alone in the wilderness

Video Transcription

getting quite a few questions asking what I'm gonna chink the cabin with so this is Spagna moss there's lots of this on the property it's all over the lower areas here so that's going to get stuffed into the into the gaps between the logs I'll use a little less stick wedge and then this nice gray clay beautiful clean really fine clay and I like the color so that's going to go on the outside and the inside of the chinking so moss in the center of the logs basically there and then play inside and outside so you'll see a nice great chink line between the that's my natural material so I have all kinds of this clay in the property as well enough more than enough to do this cabin and a couple other cabins plus some other projects with it and also all kinds of mosques for chinking so like I said I'm gonna dry this stuff though it probably mixes clay with some dried grass lots of that around as well once that guy's back in another month this piece of straitly really feeling that heat already just starting to work in this temperature this current maple is nowhere near as hard as the red maple or especially the sugar maple that's on the property well people call red maple up here a soft maple and sugar maple hard maple I think I'll probably make a sugar maple wedge later because this one might not have the strength on the on the wedge Plusle fashioned this handle so it's a little more comfortable later but it's good enough to get started and show you what I'm doing with this pinking we've got this little frost to River canvas bucket I wouldn't hang this up with water and it will just start dripping through slowly but it's really handy for just grabbing this clay and some of the moss some of that wasit was exposed to the air was able to start drying out actually as we didn't have much rain this week finally so you can see that turning turning and a yellow or white that's drying out so I need to get all this stuff spread out and dried so all I'm gonna do is stick this in the crops and put the clay over top of it I said I'm not gonna use this green like this I'll take this back out because it needs to dry properly before I fill that space up you like playing with mud when you're a kid the clay was the best stuff I'm just gonna make that into a bit of a caulking bead great now I get mosquito fly around my head I'm not gonna smack myself with this just take a little bit a little bit of water get it on my hand I can make it stick in to it with the stick to get that you know without fingerprints in it oh yeah you can just keep adding water little another thin layer if you want so that's it that's what it's gonna look like except it's still wet just clean that up just have to keep the water off of that because it's it's not gonna be flavor hardened so that's actually always going to be able to absorb water if you were to get water on it that's what there's a big overhang on the edge of the roof I just remembered one of the other questions I keep getting is what am I doing about timbers or boards and what I decided I did hew and saw some of my own I'll show you that in another clip but what I decided for this cabin is I just need to get a weather tight before the snow flies and I have plans for these other cabins and I cut all the wood for those including all the trees so it's all seasoning so those cabins will be completely made by hand this one I took some of the logs quite a few of the logs and got the milled so it's green it's unseasoned two by fours two by sixes and one by 10 these big timbers these big square timbers are hemlock that the previous owner of this property cut down and and milled so these are seasoned that's why I can actually handle them if they were wet I wouldn't be able to lift them it's hard enough when they're dry a couple of those twelve footers were were pretty wet still so they were extremely heavy these fourteen footers for the roof aren't too bad so it's hemlock it's from the area it's milled in a sort of a rustic way rustic Manor with an old really old mill actually so that's might compromise his have to get this thing done so the great thing is it only cost me five hundred and forty dollars for all of the wood to build the floor second floor and roof and the roof is three hundred two by fours on its own because that wood is so cheap and it's local in it and it's sustainable I'm using that instead of insulation just going with thicker wood on the roof so that's the plan that's why I'm using the wood that I'm using so you're gonna see me bringing it in and like I said it's so cheap getting it milled yourself like that that and I've got so much of it available that I can't see not doing that it's still kind of within the principle of building this cabin as cheaply as possible my mind said my dream was always to live basically for free if I could build this cabin and have no mortgage on it's completely paid off

this is debt-free I'm diam debt-free and this will continue to let me be debt-free and I could live here forever I could sell off other assets and never have to earn another dime that being said I don't trust the stock market I don't trust a lot of investments I don't trust the real estate bubble the way it is right now so I'm basically living off of the money that I earned doing the things like YouTube and writing and some brand ambassador ships and things like that so I want to get into that in another episode or a few more episodes and how to earn enough money to support the life that you want to live especially if you're satisfied with a simple life and a rewarding life how you can make that happen now and finance it through things that you enjoy doing so look you're really looking forward to to sharing all that story with you as well so that's what that's what you're seeing here that's where this lumber that I'm bringing in is coming from these are the trees that I cut down back and fingers March or April run on my friend Terry and Terry and Ashley's property

I should have deep worked them that should strip the bark off glad I didn't to get around to it because I've been busy but it's full of pine grubs and pine beetle grubs that are skirting the wood under the bark so I need to get this bark off now and maybe even start healing some of them and/or cutting them into boards or at least beams well I'm sitting around doing some menial miscellaneous tasks I thought I should probably give some credit to some people that I've been meaning to for a while give a shout out to some guys that helped me along in social media when I was starting out you know making videos for YouTube and Instagram and Facebook is actually quite time-consuming it's quite a bit of work you have to get out there and course film you know it's building a cabin for example I'm not just building the cabin I'm putting setting two cameras out and trying to get multiple angles of me actually doing every single step of that of the process so that's probably doubled or maybe even triple the time that it takes to build the cabin and to do any test for that matter of course Joe Robinette when he contacted me last July it is now July 2016 to to go fishing with him I had no idea that that was going to be one of the catalysts to me getting more interested in YouTube we were just two guys interested in some where things that want to get together and do some canoeing and fishing together so that was great I really appreciated Joe and one of the other things that Joe did for me was introduce me to some other influencers on YouTube but also some other people that he thought I'd be interested in

getting to know better anyway one of the guys Joe introduced me to was Zedd from Zito doors UK bushcrafter I said he's been doing bushcraft for about three years but he has a very unique approach on YouTube and that is to go out and find an expert in something that he's interested in and get that expert to teach that teach himself what to do how to do that crowd he films that tutorial showing the lessons of showing the successes and the mistakes that he made and in a down-to-earth kind of way so so I'm really like I said I have to respect that

so is that it really appreciate the friendship and appreciate the help you've given me over the last year year and a half so Zed's building a pretty cool shelter right now with some sort of timber framing techniques that's pretty cool for what he has available for resources in this area and hopefully Zed you can get over here next year and come up to the cab and we'll sit around the fire and have a chat so that's it for this short update video guys don't forget to tune in on Friday for the main update episode of the log cabin

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