log guage

[zato_ichi]

here's a handy little thing I saw in the book Log Cabins and Cottages : William S. Wicks originally published in 1929

I got my copy off half.com for under $5.00

I am sure some of ya'll are familiar withe this but it was new to me and you know I like to share when I find cool stuff.

anyway in an illustration of recommended log tools was this simple guage that you could make from plywood. obviously my mspaint drawing is not to scale but you get the idea. Its a quick reference for log selection that will tell you the diameter of the logs at a glance, just stick this guage around your log until it stops. be sure to mark the openings for how big they are, heck you could even make two, one for small and one for big, graduated by an inch.
http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q292/Ichi_Da_Killer/log_guage.jpg

[adubar]

Great old book. Have you read "Woodcraft" or
books by B. Hunt or the U.S. Forestry Service publications from the 1930's on log building?

There are several designs for these types of gauges. These days, they come in plastic and aluminum or you can make them yourself.
By the way, that style is like a Crab gauge (I have no idea which came first).

Pretty handy too.

-Andrew

[zato_ichi]

I havn't read any of those yet, but I'll definitely be on the lookout for them now. I have been trying to collect all the Daniel C. Beard books I can get my hands on atm, Me and my boys have been enjoying the american boys handy book and I really love the Shacks, shanties and shelters book.

What I think I love the most about these is the fact that they were written long before the whole "Kit" industry began. (RANDOM THOUGHT: did Sears and Roebuck start this trend with their catalog houses?) it's almost amazing to me that this knowledge is completely overshadowed by the whole contractor/subdivision/kit log home industry...it's quite nearly a dirty word to consider building your own home these days. I swear people look at me like I am insane when I say that I want to build my own house from the ground up, I think some actually believe it's illegal to do and I am some kind of seccesionist for doing so.....oh well that's corporate America for you. It's like PeeWee said," you don't want to get involved with a guy like me Dottie, I'm a rebel... a loner" LOL

I'll be looking for B.Hunt books, thanks for the tip!

[adubar]

Kit homes have been around longer than Sears and Roebuck's catalogs. There is evidence that they were manufactured and used in different circumstances during the westward expansion of the mid to late 19th century in the U.S. Some that I've read about were more of a "tent house.' Others were more like what one would expect from a "kit home.'

Beard's books are pretty cool. Similar genre-reprints have been produced in modern additions. Applewood Books, Dover and Harper Collins and the like are publishers that have republished original versions of everything from Buzzcott's Sportsman's Guide to original text Hardy Boys.

A very hot seller right now in the UK is the "Dangerous Book For Boys," which is a compilation of information and essays from many late 19th/early 20th century boy's book sources but developled by contemporaty authors. I have a pocket eddition. Not too sure if the larger book has things like "how to make acetylene" or not, but the "Boy Mechanic" from the early 19th century does ( reprints of all editions are still available in hardcover). ---A far cry from modern chemistry books and sets that only contain salt, vinegar and backing soda....

Lyndsay Publications also produces short run reprints on many subjects.

You will find that authors such as Buzzacott, Sears, and Seton, all of whom were involved in the "back to nature" and Conservations movements of the late 19th century (and some if not all of whom wrote at least one official handbook/manual for the BSA) illustrate and dicsuss log building techniques that were pupular during their time as well as what they considered "old fashioned" and "pioneering" techniques--many of which you will never find in a modern log home/timber frame book.

Unfortunately, this genre of books has now been discovered by the wider book collector body and original edditions are way out of my price range. I stopped antigue gook collecting a few years ago and now mainly rely on small publishers to produce facsimilies at far lower prices than the originals now go for.

There is a wealth of knowledge in publications from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Much of it now ignored by even the very areas of science and industry that they pertain to. Within their pages is a world of "new discoveries" to be rediscovered.

-Andrew