Pitts Blacksmith shop - Spring cleaning.

Saturday was a day out at the cabin. No big projects going on just yet so I decided to do a long overdue spring cleaning at the smaller cabin, the Pitts Blacksmith shop.
Over the years I have intended to use this cabin as first a workshop, then it ended up being used for storage. Then I was turning it into a Girl Scout cottage, then guest cabin, now, at least for a little while, storage again.

Although a lot of work, I was able to clean out the bays on both sides of the cabin. The most fun was re-discovering things long buried over the years.

Found lots of tools I had not used in a while, including this old wooden handled shovel.

 Came across several old door and window jambs.

In this photo are two door and two window jambs.

I have held on to these as teachable moments if anyone asks, and I have used a couple as coat and hat racks in the main cabins.

In this picture (of the main cabin), just above the piano, you can see one window jamb being used as a hat rack.

Just to the left of this photo would be another I use for a coat rack.

 Here is one with a square peg in a round hole.

And you can see some square nails in this jamb.

A slightly closer look.

Here I am holding one so you can see that it is actually a square peg that goes into a round hole.

A square peg would fit tighter than a round peg when hammered in, making a better fastener.

Here is one of the window jambs with a fine tenon that would have fit into a mortise on the bottom side of a log above the window.

Mortise and tenon jambs would have to be planned for during construction, and not added later.

 This window sill or window head (I don't remember if this one was the top or bottom, there were two) came out of the Pitts Blacksmith shop and at one time had square wood bars like a jail cell.

Although they would not have been strong enough to keep a man in, they must have been used to keep some animal in or out of the building, while still allowing for air flow.
  Or maybe just a little security to protect tools, knowing even though they could be broken, it would make a lot of noise doing so.

And, well, since it was a blacksmith shop, if they needed metal bars, well . . . they could have made them.

You can also see at the top of the piece where the jamb would fit into the sill notch.

 A closer look and the square mortise work.

Another tenon.

This one you can see my numbering written on it.

Which means if I wanted to I could go back and find which window it went into at one time.

 Circular saw marks on some old lumber.

 These are some log dogs a blacksmith friend made for me about twenty plus years ago.

 The well weathered look of a half dove-tail notch.

If you protect the logs after a rebuild, you can save some pretty worn looking logs if they are solid otherwise.

 Glass insulators for lightning rods.

These came off of one of the buildings.
I also saved some of the rods and the bracket that held the rod and a glass ball at the top of a roof.
None of the glass balls were intact however when I took the cabins down.

 Some of the metal punch-outs I used for my numbering system to tag the cabins before taking them down.

 Only time I have seen this.

On a double-pen dog-trot cabin I took down, the outside was covered with the metal siding in about 2x4 foot panels.
Each panel had a brick patten stamped into it.

I saved several of the panels to hang up, once again to be teachable moments.

An early version of siding.
I have seen stamped tin siding with large stone work patterns stamped into them (usually for commercial buildings), but never a brick pattern.

 Another panel.

Once again, the occupants wanting to get away from the image of living in a log home.

It would prevent some air drafts, and somewhat protect the logs also.

 This is one of the original doors from the Pitts building.

I just had to save this wooden latch.
And it is still used every time I go into the cabin.

A friend actually copied the pattern to make a latch for a basement bathroom that had a rustic look.

 Here you can see some of the axe marks in one of the jamb boards.
Even the jambs and sills were made by hand, as were the pegs used to hold them in.
In the original build very little, if any, sawed lumber would have been used.

Here is one of the square nails in one of the jambs.

I am going to carefully pull this one out, next time I am out there, to see if it is hand wrought or an early cut nail.

(Do you know, at one time nails were so valuable that Virginia had to pass a law making it unlawful to burn your house down when you moved  to get the nails. Often times abandoned houses would be burned down to get the nails.)

 One of the notches from a top plate log.

Spring flowers were out.

 One cleaned out bay where you can now see the old Ford Tractor that helped me raise the logs.

 Made enough room near the entrance of the other bay to hang a swing.

All cleaned up.