Building a Log Cabin, the Old Fashioned Way Quiz

Answer: Split logs used for flooring

Splitting a log in half produced two almost-flat surfaces that could be smoothed with an adze, requiring no tedious sawing. It wasted a lot of wood compared to sawing floorboards, but wood was cheap on the frontier and there was always more work to do.

The puncheons were thinned on each end so they could rest on floor joists and a rough sort of floor was created, better than a dirt-floored cabin.

Answer: Chunks of wood or similar things to support the mortar that was "daubed" on

Original log cabins generally had little split chunks of wood inserted partially upright between the logs so they looked like books that had fallen slanted in a bookcase. They were the chinking, and mortar was pressed over and in between all the many little cracks inside and out, and that was the daubing.

Other plentiful things could be used as chinking, such as corncobs, even stones, but wood was plentiful. Nowadays, "chinking" is almost always used to refer to what a pioneer would have called "daubing."

Answer: Lime, mud, straw

Mud was usually available from subsoil, so only lime needed to be purchased, but even then, ashes could be substituted for lime, and a binder such as straw, horsehair, Spanish moss in the south, or leaves in the fall would work as well. This mixture was shoved into the cracks in the chinking.

A cabin built quickly with green logs and little or no underground foundation would be settling a lot in its first few months, so no daubing mixture could flex enough to remain sealed without cracking. Even after the initial drying and settling, humidity would change, so there was an expectation that replacing daubing would be an ongoing, inevitable chore, unlike today, where there's hope that the sealing between logs will be long-lasting.

Answer: Nails

A weight pole roof was crude, but required nothing more than an ax and froe to make it, plus wood of course. Shingles 3-4 feet long were split by hand, placed on the roof and weighed down by logs running horizontally. The lowest roof log was held in place by pegs or short limbs left on the top house log, then each subsequent weight pole was held with spacers between it and the one below. Gravity alone kept the shingles on, and though not perfect, it cost no nails.

The weight was tremendous, and the inevitable accident did occasionally happen: a family story was passed down about a man killed by the falling logs of a cabin roof in northern Ohio.

It would be natural to stand just outside the door, where the logs would rumble down when the first broke loose and the rest followed. Yet the style was common, and one can recognize it in period drawings even on little cabins in the distance by the horizontal lines running across the roof.

Answer: Loft

The problem with heating a cabin in winter was the heat always went up, while the people lay down. A low ceiling solved some of the problem, but even better, a loft with a ladder let people lie in the warmest part of the cabin without requiring a full second story or staircase.

Answer: Someone could unlatch the door from the outside and come in

A latch could be made entirely of wood and string, by fastening a springy piece of wood on the inside of the door and tying a string to it. Pull the string up, it unlatches. Let go of the string, it falls or springs down and catches in a latch on the wall.

It could always be worked from the inside by grabbing the wood or the string. From the outide, it could only be worked if the string was fed through a hole in the door and allowed to dangle outside. If the family left the latchstring out, anyone could pull on it, unlatch the door and walk in, though it would be polite to knock first, of course. If the family entered the cabin and pulled the latch string in with them, a person outside would just see an empty little hole where the string was, but have no way to unlatch the door themselves, even if they were invited in.

Answer: Saddle notch

The saddle notch, sometimes called the steeple notch, was just an axe cut popped out of the bottom of the uppper log. Sometimes both top and bottom logs were cut, but it required only the most basic axe work. Other methods required sawing or hewing and splitting, and a bit more careful measuring than just eyeballing it, but the logs were locked together better and were better at draining rainwater to the outside.

In general, when one examines surviving cabins today, the newer and better built ones have half dovetail or another style, while the saddle or steeple notch is typical of cabins that are cruder and older (first quarter of the 19th century). One will even see a mix of styles, perhaps when logs were reused or newer logs were inserted.

Answer: Oiled paper or cloth

Oiled paper or cloth wasn't transparent like glass, but the oiling made it translucent, so some illumination came through from the brighter sun and sky outside. When the weather was good, simply leaving the window open was an option, and a window could be made with a shutter to close at night or during hard rain or cold temperatures, but then there was no light coming in at all on a rainy or frigid day.

The oiled paper or cloth solved that. As soon as civilization neared, glass windows appeared, and some historians believe they may have come closer to the edges of the frontier than people think. Screen was quite rare and expensive, and metal bars did nothing to keep out rain or cold.

Answer: Build a mud and stick fireplace and chimney

When items could be hauled to the cabin site right away, a stove was possible, but that was more typical of prairie pioneers in the later 19th century. Where few roads ran through the woods, hauling anything significant was virtually impossible, especially a stove. Truly crude cabins could leave a hole in the middle of the roof and build a fire under it, similar to an Indian teepee, but the typical pioneer solution was to build a fireplace of logs lined with clay, with a chimney of smaller sticks lined with thinner clay above it.

The clay was slathered on for many layers and heated in place, almost like kiln-fired pottery, until the heat couldn't penetrate through to the wood. A big backlog was often placed at the back, when the fire was laid, to protect the back of the fireplace, the area most likely to burn through first.

The chimney was built outside the wall so if it caught fire, it could be pushed away from the house and fall into a smoldering pile spread out away from the house. Once a stonemason could be hired or bricks could be burned, a regular fireplace could be built.

Answer: Add clapboard siding outside and plaster inside, with nice shingles and trim

A log house with vertical furring stripes on the outside and lathe on the inside, carefully made vertical without bulges or dips, could be covered with wood clapboards and plaster about as well as a frame house. The log house probably would be several years old, so a family could hope it had finished most of its settling. With nice window frames, a sawn shingle roof nailed to roofboards, and a good coat of paint, the house could pass for a frame one, except for the very thick walls, visible only at the door and window openings.

Some homes to this day look like any old fashioned home, and it's hard to believe there's a hidden log house inside. What you usually won't find is the oldest, crudest log cabin preserved this way, with round logs and a mud chimney, because it was made to be temporary and torn down or demoted to a corn-crib or chicken coop when a better log home was built.