Traditional Woodworking in the Forest with My Dog, Cali the Golden Retriever

Description

In what may be my most relaxing, calm video in the forest yet, Cali the golden retriever and I watch a dramatic spring breakup as the ice melts and the rivers rage and then we spend a couple of days making tools for traditional woodworking around the log cabin.

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My golden retriever, Cali, follows my every move, always at my side and helping out when she can - pulling bark off the logs, carrying branches to the fire pit area, fetching whatever she can find that she thinks I will like - her retriever toy, bones, feathers, and she chases the squirrels and blue jays that live around the cabin. She's a great dog.

The drone captures amazing video of the ice on the lake breaking into smaller pieces while snow melt fills the river to capacity, raging through narrow rock canyons. Waterfowl - ducks, geese and swans - return to the local creeks and marshes and the forest is filled with the sounds of spring peepers, toads, songbirds, ravens and barred owls. Owls call out all night and at random times throughout the day as they search for mates in the surrounding forest.

In preparation for building the covered outdoor kitchen using traditional woodworking methods, I remove the logs and rocks from the firepit area and set up a new pit and cooking area further away from the log cabin. Just a few patches of snow remain and the puddles that my dog plays and bathes in is just about dry so the new fire pit is high and dry. I move the log bench, the log table and the chopping blocks for splitting firewood into place and begin cleaning up the surrounding forest as I collect branches and logs for the fire.

Once again, the lighting from the setting sun is spectacular, illuminating the temporary outdoor cooking area. I cook baked potato and sweet potato on the outdoor grill, smothering them with cheese and onions, pancetta and jalapeno peppers in the cast iron skillet. We retire to the log cabin at 10 pm as the sun sets and the owls and frogs get louder, and at 2:00 am, I am awakened by wolves howling in the valley behind the cabin. Hoping that I captured the wolves on my trail camera, I check the following morning but find not wolves on camera but a huge fisher that checks out the camera.

Using a chainsaw, I cut down a 10" diameter sugar maple tree to clear a building site for the next log cabin. I cut that tree into a five foot log and then use a chainsaw mill to cut the log in half to be used as a bench for a traditional shave horse, a tool I really need for shaping dowels and cedar shingles for the outdoor pavilion over the kitchen and for the new workshop. With hand tools - axes, draw knife, knives, saws, chisels, augers, brace and drill bits and wooden mallets - I build the shavehorse using green woodworking methods out of hard maple and ironwood. The end result is a shave horse that is 60" long, 19" high and 6" wide. Stay tuned for the end of the video when I explain how the woodworking bench is made and what I would do differently when building the next one.

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Tags: Self Reliance,off grid,log cabin,no talking,primitive technology,diy,axe,alone,wilderness,inspirational,motivational,primitive,bushcraft,forest,wood,cabin,woodworking,maker,My Self Reliance,traditional woodworking,the forest,with my dog,cali girl,cali,golden retriever,tradition,drone,river,calm,relaxing,spring,ice,fire,firewood,girl,golden,retreiver,shavehorse,shavehorse plans,how to use a shavehorse,shave horse

Video Transcription

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it is hard out here playing about the late spring and then hot weather arrives in a complaint about that the trees of course don't have any leaves on them yet because it's not-it's just finishing melting right now but it's warm enough that it feels like summer out here it's at like 30 degrees probably 35 degrees here on the for treat now Celsius and it's a unbearable but but the biting bugs aren't out yet which is a good thing black flies and mosquitoes will probably be hatching this week sometime so by next week you might see me battling insects and if it really stays warm like this we'll be battling insects and hordes I'm filming right now you would barely be able to see me because of me so many black flies attracted to the black camera landing on it that you just can't get a clear image I've tried to photograph at this time here some landscapes and stuff out on the water and almost every shot it's got at least one or two black flies on the on the lens and have to crop those out so what I am looking forward to that was the leaves on the tree so there's some shade so it's not so hot here so I wanted to talk about the sawhorse that I made quickly I only really had one of these once in my life back when I used to make bows and arrows when I was in my early 20s so I had one that I would put the bow in here a stave in and draw shave that down to one even growth ring all the way across the bow or the face of the bow and then arrows I would cut dowling where I'd cut straight ash into Dowling square it off and then finish it off in this so I'm sure I've done some things wrong that some of you would have a better idea how I could correct it or what I should have done differently I have a feeling this is going be a temporary one something that I use on one part of the property and then I might make a more polished one for inside the workshop once I get the workshop done which would be hopefully late this year I'll get that workshop finished so this might be one that I use outside most of the time anyway it's functional it's five feet long so 60 inches long the legs are what is that that's actually the whole thing's made of maple that's hurt wood and this is SAP wouldn't hurt hurt wood here it's 19 inches off the deck off the floor or off the ground that one spindle down there that foot peg I wanted extra strength so I had some hornbeam which we call Ironwood here important beam that I cut down right here because it was obstructing the cabin and it makes excellent tools and tool handles and stuff because it's so strong so that's the foot pedal so I'll be putting some weight on that so I don't want to break that so in the past that's what I used it for in fact I might make another boat maybe next year but next winter what I'm looking for projects to do but for now what I'm using this for is to curve dowling for the joinery on the screened-in porch or another screened-in porch the kitchen here screened-in porch maybe I don't know if I'll get it to it this year but that's on the back of the cabin

I'm putting the kitchen right here and I'm gonna use some timber framing techniques so hopefully no nails be using all dowels so I need to be able to fashion a number of dowels now I'm gonna make a metal plate with a hole in it that I could hammer Devils through but I've never done that either so I'm not sure how well that's gonna work so I'll be using this for dowling as well as shingles I have all the cedar cut-offs from the ends of these logs here that I need to split with my fro splitting fro and then shave them down to a uniform thickness so there'll have to be six inches wide because this bench is six inches wide that'll shave those down to a taper so what else probably the odd tenon that I'll put on other pieces of furniture like the other chair that chair

my wife thinks is too big even though it's nice and comfortable to get up on she thinks it's too big it for in the cabin I tend to agree so I think we'll move that back out to the back porch and replace that with a couple of smaller chairs so I need to make all the joinery in this as well and do all the joinery the mortises and Tenon's or the Tenon's just a bunch of little stuff like that and shaving horse always comes in handy so the way it works if you're not familiar with the shave horse it's heavy because this is all green - I just cut this tree down to clear a spot for the workshop up on the hill so it was freshly cut and I milled it with a chainsaw into this half log and then these timbers are the rest of it I split up so it's very heavy because it is still green anyway that was very simple basically that swinging mechanism just clamps down and the more pressure you put forward the more clamps they don't tight and holds that so what I should probably do is put a groove in here that'll hold the dowel in the center right there and it'll provide a little bit of sharp edges on the edges of that groove to dig into the ietf to hold it there but does a pretty good job didn't work out 100% the way I wanted to because that was hard getting that hole through there with a hand drill straight even so what happened is it's a little bit off this way so it needs to come back straight that way so I might have to I mean it functions okay maybe I'll live with it or I'll end up drill in another hole beside that one and make it more 90 degrees so that comes down flatter we'll see I always say that and I never get around to doing it especially if I end up making another one what's the point of spending more time on this so this these are 22 inches long that's about 14 15 inches from here to here like I said 19 inches off the floor oh this wedge just moves in and out so you can adjust this thing up and down depending on the thickness of the material of the item that you're shaving so you just move this in and out wherever you need it to be let's see now it probably made that too short so it's only temporarily deld in there pegged in there so I can move this or maybe I'll make a second one so I'm doing really thick material yeah I don't know might work cuz if it's thick material grab there yeah it'll work fine the way it is so couple of modifications I still need to make to it need to round these things off because I could see that the jaw shave or the spokeshave or the the draw knife is either hitting that or it's going to hit my hands so I'll shave this down round that off as soon as I find it where the most comfortable seating position is I'll curve sort of a bald seat here more comfortable more comfortable seat that's contoured so that if I'm spending a long time on this thing like I would be by making a bunch of shingles it's a little bit more comfortable so I'm just gonna leave it outside let it whether I'll throw some linseed oil on it just to give it some protection once it dries out a little bit and that's it pretty simple device but a very handy one there's lots of great videos out there I wouldn't build one based on my video but there's some good tutorials I think online that or on other people's videos actually Zedd did a really good one Zed Oh doors did a great video it's like three hours long showing everything in really really fine detail I only skimmed through it just to get a couple of ideas from it but if I was serious about making a really good one I've watched that video again for sure alright so that's it for this week guys appreciate you tuning in if you haven't subscribed to really appreciate if you could do that and like and comment of course like usual if you have any questions for me please ask them below as well and I'll try to get back to you or I'll make it the topic of a future episode as well I'm going to try to answer more of your questions that way so but I appreciate you two again and watching the video this far have a great week you'll see up at the cabin next week pick here [Applause]