My Old Log Cabin

Merry Christmas everybody, hope it was a good one. This is a log cabin I built when I was a teen. I started when I was 12 years old back in 1972 and finally finished it in 1976, when I was 16. We had Christmas dinner with family at the farm and after dinner we went over to the back side of the farm and I made a video of it. If I had put it up on a better foundation and had peeled the logs it would have been in a lot better shape, but hey, I was 12. Most of the logs are still solid despite my mistakes. If built correctly and taken care of, a log cabin will last hundreds of years. I am planning on building another one but much bigger, so I hope to document that too.
 I hope you like it and thanks for watching, God bless and have a happy, prosperous new year.

Even though its settled on you, still a great job for a 12 year old!  
My first cabin attempt made it too waist high, before I switched it over to 2 x 4 to finish.  Straight, level and plumb were obviously foreign terms to me back then.
I bet your grandchildren (if your old enough that is) will love hanging out in it as they get older.

 Hey Thomas, hope you had a good Christmas. Do you have any pictures? I would like to see anyone's pictures or videos of their childhood cabins, forts or tree houses they have built. I think it does a person good to reminisce about the good times they had as a kid. I'm 59 now no grandkids yet but my great nieces and nephews sure like it. My nephew owns it now. I still plan to build a log cabin so I still have a little kid in me yet.
 Thanks for watching and God bless.

Sorry William;  That building went away many years ago.
I do live in a 90 year old cabin now though.  Fire killed cedar logs from the big 1910 fires in the N.W.
I can't claim to have built it. I'm only one year older than you... 15 x 20 a whopping 300 square feet ! Multiple additions give us a huge 600 ft or so.

William Egan wrote:  Hey Thomas, hope you had a good Christmas. Do you have any pictures? I would like to see anyone's pictures or videos of their childhood cabins, forts or tree houses they have built. I think it does a person good to reminisce about the good times they had as a kid. I'm 59 now no grandkids yet but my great nieces and nephews sure like it. My nephew owns it now. I still plan to build a log cabin so I still have a little kid in me yet.
 Thanks for watching and God bless.

I built many, many sapling and bough cabins like this when I was a kid. I mostly used wire to tie the saplings and boughs together, would spend a winter night in the cabin and cook meals of canned soup and whatnot over a fire. My mother did not care because in the winter there was snow on the ground so I could not start a forest fire. But she must not cared about me much either, because it would get down t zero degrees F some nights, and was not too worried that I was alone out in the Maine woods alone in the middle of winter.

To this day I still do this. I do so prospecting, but I am alone, snowshoe a lot, and like this cabin, go out and build fun shelters with my wife and kids so they can experience how good it is to own a few acres of land.

I often wonder if more people would build cabins if they did it Maine Style?

This is where the logs are laid vertically instead of horizontally because it allows a camp to be made with smaller logs, and shorter logs. I know it does not have the traditional look, but Maine Loggers developed this because the logging companies did not want to use good trees to make logging camps for the loggers, but instead wanted those good trees to go down to the mills as logs, and instead use smaller, shorter trees to build cabins to live in as they cut wood.

thomas rubino wrote:Sorry William;  That building went away many years ago.
I do live in a 90 year old cabin now though.  Fire killed cedar logs from the big 1910 fires in the N.W.
I can't claim to have built it. I'm only one year older than you... 15 x 20 a whopping 300 square feet ! Multiple additions give us a huge 600 ft or so.

That's really cool Thomas, Thanks for sharing.

Travis Johnson wrote:I often wonder if more people would build cabins if they did it Maine Style?

This is where the logs are laid vertically instead of horizontally because it allows a camp to be made with smaller logs, and shorter logs. I know it does not have the traditional look, but Maine Loggers developed this because the logging companies did not want to use good trees to make logging camps for the loggers, but instead wanted those good trees to go down to the mills as logs, and instead use smaller, shorter trees to build cabins to live in as they cut wood.

I belonged to a black powder shooting club and we built a cabin like that out of cedar and it worked really well, the French trappers would use that method also. I would char the logs that go in the ground to prevent rotting if it were me. I used to do a lot of winter camping when I was younger but I almost 60 years old, I don't seem to bounce as good as I used to especially when I'm cold. I think -10 is as cold as I ever camped out but we cheated, Teepee with a fire inside but was windy, still a cold night.

I looked at some pictures of vertically log cabins and I did not think they looked that bad. I know they are unconventional, but I think they have a lot going for them. They would be easy to build, use normally unfit wood for log home building, not be prone to shrinkage as much, and be faster to put up.

They claim up north you can walk out through the millions of acres of forest that the paper company owns and stumble upon old log cabins used to cut wood back in the day, but I am not so sure how true it is. I would think they would be pretty rotted. They were never made to last, just a glorified hovel for men while they cut the wood in that area for the winter.

We were up there this summer, some 82 miles of gravel road in, and went to see the old trains in the woods. This is where (2) huge locomotives were left behind, and other than steel, there was not a lot left. But they were abandoned some 90 years ago too. They stopped making log cabins, and went to portable modern cabins in the mid-1960's, so a logging camp cabin, built in the early 1960's, MIGHT be standing...but I doubt it. That would be 60 years old, and not a well made cabin.

But around here, we still have some Hermit Shacks still standing. I am 45 years old, and as a kid I remember them having hermits staying in them. I might do the same thing if I was suddenly became a widower (meaning if Katie died). I would rent my houses out, build a cabin out in the woods and just live out my days. I am 45 years old, of ill health, and been married three times. I said Katie would be my last try at romance, and I will stick to my word if her passing comes before mine.

Kind of a funny side story on "Katie".

As I said, I have been married twice before, so when I met Katie, and things got serious between us, I was worried as she had two children, and I did not want to enter and exit their lives and cause irreversible harm. So I prayed, because I am a believer, and it was like he answered clear as a bell in a quiet voice, "And who did you say you were going to marry when you were a kid?"

When I was young, and played with my toy tractors and trucks, I always pretended I had a Katie for a wife. Then one day I heard a sermon on prating specifically, so I prayed my wife would be a Katie, that is how I would know.

But then I married a Tina and a Patty and wondered why it did not work out? Katie though, she is special, and my best friend. It is also why I use her name Katie a lot instead of wife. Her name means so much to me.

Travis Johnson wrote:Kind of a funny side story on "Katie".

As I said, I have been married twice before, so when I met Katie, and things got serious between us, I was worried as she had two children, and I did not want to enter and exit their lives and cause irreversible harm. So I prayed, because I am a believer, and it was like he answered clear as a bell in a quiet voice, "And who did you say you were going to marry when you were a kid?"

When I was young, and played with my toy tractors and trucks, I always pretended I had a Katie for a wife. Then one day I heard a sermon on prating specifically, so I prayed my wife would be a Katie, that is how I would know.

But then I married a Tina and a Patty and wondered why it did not work out? Katie though, she is special, and my best friend. It is also why I use her name Katie a lot instead of wife. Her name means so much to me.

That story about your wife is so cool, Hope you guys have a long wonderful life together. My wife is the most wonderful gracious woman I could have ever found. If she passes before me I will probably most assuredly do the same, hell I might even go off in search of Bigfoot, lol.