The birth of a wooden house

Found this video and thought you guys would lke it.



"This is a documentary movie uncovering the process of building a wooden house with hand tools from local materials starting from forest till the living space.
"Our house has been built using timber we felled and extracted from our own forest. We built it using mostly hand tools and human energy. It is timber frame construction with log walls.
The main construction holds together with wood joints - there are no nails or screws used.
Walls are insulated with pine and larch shavings. Overall wall thickness is 50 centimeters.
The frame posts, sills, top beams and final cladding boards are preserved using Japanese traditional wood preservation technique - Shou Sugi Ban 焼杉板 ,
Roofing is 3 layer white oak shingles layed in two directional technique. Roof is insulated with wood fibre wool and has natural clay and lime plaster finish on the interior walls.
My aim was to build a natural wooden house, a nest for my family that would be thermo and energy efficient. As Richard Pronneke would say: It was a hard work but I enjoyed it!"
Jacob, carpenter, craftsman and founder of John Neeman Tools."

Great find!

Excellent! The best thing I've seen in a while.

Beautiful. Thanks for posting this.

Yes, indeed... heartwarming, even ;)

amaizing

That's a great video, really nicely made. As for the house...wow. These guys are true craftsmen. I wonder how many years they took to build it? To be honest it made me exhausted just watching it. I want to self-build a natural house but at my age I just don't have the time or the energy (or the skills!) to do something like this. I take my hat off to them...

Thanks for the wonderful share.

That house certainly isn't going anywhere for a few hundred years...built like a rock.

Joe Black wrote:I wonder how many years they took to build it?

I'd assume one year. Cut all the wood during the winter months, chisel all the wood down and build the foundation in the spring, summer start putting everything together and by the time the snow hit again they had it pretty much done.

Based on how much the cute little kids grew, I'm pretty sure it took several years.  That was a beautiful video and a wonderful build.

Does anyone know what you'd call that shingling technique?   He called it a "two directional technique" but if it's known by another name I'd love to hear it.

Thanks for posting!

Beautiful. I just hope they do not have extensive termite problem...

@jarret@joe, there have been a couple follow-up videos to that original video.  IIRC, the builder said it took 3 summers to complete.

Thanks kw. I really didn't think it would be possible to build such a structure in less time than that! I live in a hot, humid sub-tropical area where termites are a serious problem so a wooden house is out of the question here (even though we are surrounded by commercial pine plantations) but it was interesting to see these craftsmen building such an outstanding house.

@hatten, do you have a link to those follow up videos? It seems like there has been some more info added...

As of video, it's a nice work...
There are oak shingles mentioned..but they seem to me like thin oak boards.. can anyone confirm this?
We make shingles by splitting spruce or larch. Boards are maid by sawing them. Shingles last much longer than boards ( larch can last up to 70 years but it really depends on local conditions)

Also, why burning method is not used on shingles? It would be a pain to burn them by hand but if one would make kind of "fire planer" that would be much easier...

Anyway, craftsmanship like this is great to watch..

Br,
Klemen

This is a beautiful video. I spent about 20 years working on historic houses as a hobby. The work I did made a place to live our home. We moved into a relatively new house 12 years ago to pursue my farming dream but as I face a probable layoff at 61 (and divorced) I am weighing my options. I would like to be closer to the fossils I love in Pennsylvania and I was thinking one scenario would be to buy land and build a small timber frame house. This beautiful house has survived almost 350 years in Medfield MA. These plans are from the work done in the 30's to record these buildings and put architects to work.

I am new to Permies. Enjoyed this video much! I find Permies way too complicated to navigate for my 68 year old head. I have studied architecture and am no dummy but... Senility?

Welcome Stuart!  I know what you mean.  At first I didn't know what to look at or how to post.  I started by finding a topic I liked on the far right and then looking at the posts/threads in that category.  Some have pages and pages of posts.  When you have something constructive to add, speak up and post.  You'll get the hang of it

Thanks Mike you've encouraged me to venture forward into the great Permie adventure in Internet land!😄

Someone asked about other videos and such - John Neeman Tools finally led to this founded by Jacob, who built the house in the vid.  Probably as close to the old guilds as they come these days.

http://northmen.com/en/about-us/who-where-and-why

Enjoy, K

Love to do this my church design using this method of construction!

What an amazing build. What an amazing family. Watching this made my day. Thanks.

Showed this video to my middle son, the one who wants to build log homes. He can have trouble with getting distracted but watched this from beginning to end and nodded "yes" when I asked if it was cool.