In this video Shawn James shows the entire process of building an off girds log cabin from the cutting of the first tree to the laying of the last floor board – no food, no talking, no visitors, just carpentry, bushcraft, timber framing, blood, sweat and tears.
Shawn’s end goal is to have an off grid, primitive wilderness homestead, where he can practice primitive technology, bushcraft and traditional skills in an effort to become as completely self reliant as possible in this day and age. In late April, he cut the first balsam fir tree down on the property near Algonquin Park, Ontario, Canada.
Next, from June until August, he collected all of the building materials and fabricated the cabin using saddle notches in the corners. He cleared the land in August, laid down gravel for a pad and began erecting the off grid log cabin. By September, the walls were done and he started on the roof framing in October. In November, he burned the roof boards with shou sugi ban, an ancient Japanese technique for preserving wood.
Against convention, he installed the roof in board and batten fashion, using his roofing background to come up with techniques to keep the cabin watertight. Next, he moved inside where he installed a Vermont Castings wood stove on top of a limestone flagstone floor, which extended from the doorway to the center of the cabin underneath the fireplace.
For the rest of the floor, he framed it using 2×4 and 2×6 red pine boards and then installed 2x6x10′ boards, which he burned using the same shou sugi ban technique. Now in December, he’s chinked the walls with moss and clay and has been spending a lot of time in the cabin, starting rustic furniture made with materials from the surrounding forest. Check it out in the video below…
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