Still looking for things to do till my shoulder gets better . . . .

So I took some more bad photos of old slides . . . .

 These first two are of a cabin that stood just a few miles from my place.
It has since been removed.

For many years it had an old wood burning stove and other things inside.

 The logs had never been hewn.

 This one is the start of my pile of stones for the main cabin.
I found a local quarry that would let me go in and hand pick the stones I wanted. In the end I ended up hauling over 20 tons in my old Ford Pickup truck.

 These next two are a little more about the process. This cabin is the one that ended up giving me the logs for the Adirondack Shelter.

Once again you can see the framed side of the house that was just as big as the log side.
Both sides made for a pretty big farm house.

I completely removed the frame side so I could better get to the logs for inspection and tagging.

Here you can see I left the roof on the log side for weather protection.

In the end the logs had been cut up pretty bad when more doors and windows were added. It would have been tough to put it back the way it was.
While the logs did not make it back into a completed cabin, I like the project I used them for.

This is where those logs ended up.

And I may still have enough for another project.

More on Mr. Franks chapel

 I have shared the story of this small chapel I built for a friend a few times.

It is gone now.
But while once again going through old slides, I came across a few photos of it being built.

Here is one with the first rafter going up.










This one is probably the same day just before I put up the rafter.

The chapel was built from logs from three sources.
An old log cabin, a old barn and some left over logs from a new cabin built for a Cardinal baseball pitcher.

One that got away . . .

 This was the first cabin I ever took down that was going to be for me.

But alas.

I only took the cabin because I wanted a large blue cook stove that would be coming with it.

We were told that at one time it had been a slaves cabin.

 Which I am sure it could have well been.

The chinking between the logs was much newer than the cabin, but it to was old. Written in the chinking while it was still wet was 1896.

For many years it had been used as a small canning kitchen. That is where the blue stove was.

When I got this cabin I still did not have any land to keep the logs on so I had to store them on a friends property.

By the time I got my own land, and moved the logs again I was involved with the other two big log cabins and these logs never got used.

I hate to see any of them lost.

Found it!

At one time, the book of books!

Unless, when you dismantle an old log cabin, you just plan on using the logs for random projects, you have to have somewhere where you keep all your information on how you have it tagged.

Mine was this little inauspicious book with a hard cover and three rings. I guess we called them three ring binders. Pretty common when I was growing up.
Not as big as most. 5x7 pages I believe.
But easy to carry around and keep in the truck.

Inside I kept track of my numbering system.

And while taking a tea break, make sketches of some of my ideas of how I hoped the finished cabin may look.

My concepts were much more imaginative then the finished project.

 This picture shows how I alphabetized the corners and numbered the rows of what back then I called the summer kitchen, but now call the main cabin.

This one shows the rafters on one that I never got to put back up. I called it the slave cabin. And will post more about that this week.

This one is of what was called then, the Blacksmith Shop. Now known as the Pitt's Blacksmith Shop or cabin.

 And this page is for the cabin shown below, which at the time I was taking them down I called the Main House.

The logs from 'the Main House' were the ones I used for the Adirondack shelter project.

While in some cases on the smaller buildings I drew out each log.
On the larger buildings I just recorded my numbering system and a general map of the walls.

No matter how you do it, you have to have a system that works for you.

B2R by the fire - Braving it by James Campbell

James take us on three adventures to the Alaskan wilds with his 15 year old daughter.

As a dad who is always planning 'adventures' with my daughter, I loved the book.

Very well written and open.
We got to see one person, the daughter open up to the wilderness experience while watching the dad realize his big adventure days are coming to an end.
So he makes the best out of his time with his kid.

A very good read.

Found some pictures from the early 90's, 1990's, of the cabins as I was taking them down.

Up until I built the Adirondack shelter, this is how the cabin basically looked for many years after I rebuilt it

I have tried to share photos of the process as I came across them.

Being out with shoulder surgery, I have been able to start sorting through slides and pictures.

Last night I came across several and have taken some quick, low quality pictures to share here.

These first two are basically the same view as above, and this is how I first saw the cabin back around 1990 or so.

Outwardly it does not appear to be a cabin, just an old house.

This is how we find many old log cabins.

A little closer.

 I always tell people there was a cow living in it when I started taking it down.

And here he is.

 These next few are of various stages of removing the siding

Outside the two windows on the shaded side is the 15 inches of manure that was inside.

 In this one you can see how the siding was attached to the cabin by those long vertical slats.

The logs would occasionally have a little notch in them so the slats would be level up and down.

 The grey area under the window is where the siding had been missing  so the logs had turned grey there.

In the previous picture you can see how brown the covered logs were under the siding.

Only a short time in the sun turns them grey.

In the back on the left side you can see a white building.

This building was the house that contained the logs that I used in the Adirondack shelter.

(In the lower right corner in the front of the photo you can see how the corners can deteriorate from moisture. I ended up having to replace seven logs on this cabin.)

Here it is later with some of the siding off. Only the right hand side was log. The left, while still old, was framed.
At one time it was a grand farm house.

More on this, actually both, building as I go through more photos.

Here is the cow hoping I will give it a ride to a new home.

Still out with shoulder surgery and thought I would just add a few from over the years . . .

Some are recent . . .

  . . some go back four or five years.