Books: The Craft of Log Cabin Building and One Man's Wilderness, Dick Proenneke

Description

In this short video, I review 3 books on log cabin building - One Man’s Wilderness, By Sam Keith from the journals and photographs of Richard Proenneke, More Readings from One Man’s Wilderness, the Journals of Richard L. Proenneke and The Craft of Log Building by Hermann Phleps, Translated and adapted from the original 1942 German by Roger MacGregor, commissioned by Lee Valley.

Even though my log cabin build was very organic and did not require or use blueprints, I gained valuable information and insights from these three books on how to build a log cabin and live in the wilderness alone.

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Tags: Cabin,log cabin,off-grid,self-reliance,self reliance,tiny home,small home,shelter,bushcraft,survival,living off the land,homestead,woodcraft,woodworking,axe,pathfinder school,dick proenneke,cabin living,alone in the wilderness,joe Robinet,hygge,shawn james,tiny house,survival lilly

Video Transcription

welcome back to the cabin Sean James here from my self-reliance so I haven't actually gone in found many books on log cabins because this cabin bill has been so organic as I've mentioned in the past really just collected materials and then fashion the design in my head and he kind of built it and then modified it as it went depending on what materials I ended up finding as I was building and also how it fit on the land so it really wouldn't have been helpful for me to follow a set of plans like blueprints but there was worth referring to some technical manuals and really all the searching I did the best one I could find was this book here it's called the craft of log building by herman flaps it's translated and adapted from the original 1942 German by Roger McGregor so basically what he's done is taken apart and sketched the layout or the design and the technical aspects of these log buildings all around Europe and in particular I think mainly Europe so a very very good book and I highly recommend this book so it's definitely worth looking at like I said I didn't follow it for layout or blueprints or anything but I did refer to it when I was looking at doing window and door details and and wall splices and things like that didn't end up using many of the techniques but I do think they're valuable and I would like to incorporate them into some future projects so I'm definitely holding on to that and I'll be referring to it regularly one man's wilderness dick brenneke story of dick brenneke who went to Alaska in 1969 at the age of 53 I think it was and his plan was just to build a cabin and stay in it for a year and he ended up staying there 30 years on and off I think people don't quite know the story based on the films

but was i capable of that I didn't know yet could I truly enjoy my own company for an entire year and was I equal to everything this wild land could throw at me I had seen its moods in late spring summer early fall but what about the waiter do you recommend getting the books and reading his journals to learn to walk more about the man and vote his adventure so essentially the first few years he only spent the summers there and he would spend the winters back home and I think Iowa that's where he was from so one man's wilderness was actually written by Sam Keith so but what he basically did is consolidated Nick prenta keys journals and a lot of this is still in journal form so whatever a richer predicate got up and wrote or wrote at the end of the day made it into these books essentially so there's one man's wilderness and then there's the following follow up book more readings from one man's wilderness the journals of Richard L printer key another misconception is that the the films which have been bared on PBS forever since the 1970s and you can still get them to this day it was actually made the the film was produced by Bob swear he actually produced and narrated it himself Bob square did and inserted some footage from from his son and his own and so you'll see some of the clips are clear of animals for example like most walking through the the Willows and that was actually inserted after I think well after Nick prenta he shot the original footage so Nick prenta he's kind of become the legend as far as doing like a one-man cabin built like this he built most of his cabin on his own and a lot of it was from natural materials so stuff he collected from the local area at Twin Lakes so the spruce trees that he cut down and the moss he put on the roof for example and some of the boards that he cut for the you know for the door and and a roof and so on he did use some modern materials as well

he used nails and metal roofing that two layers of roofing membrane and whatever else he needed you know that he couldn't really provide for or gather from the land he had flown into him including all of his food he didn't heat much off the land other than fire weed and some wild game that he collected from what hunters had left so so hunters shot a caribou or something and left the rib cage on the mountain for example he would go in and collect that and live off of it so anyway that's uh that's basically the books that I'm reading that I have kind of as my reference material there is a fairly good description by Nick prenta key in one man's wilderness about the cabin ville and some decent photographs if you also check out to Lake Lake Clark National Parks website there's some film and and photographs there as well that's worth looking at so pretty interesting it's worth checking those out but I'll keep reading excerpts now and that on my videos just to see what he was up to back 30 40 years ago 40 years ago plus well I think I'm gonna head up and go to bed I planned on reading these actually up up in bed but got a comfortable seat here is just the right temperature down here both plus 15 I would say Celsius in this little corner hotter near the stove and much much hotter up in the wall so I had let it cool down a bit up there or a No [Music]