Lester & I went up Thurs. July 10 and came home Sat. eve. I cut rebar and he put the logs up by himself. We were thinking we could possibly stop at the 18th layer but it was not high enough so we decided to put up 20 layers. Les put up 13 logs by himself so we have 3 more logs to go and then we need to put up the remaining 2 rpsl's and the ridge pole.  That is going to require some bigger equipment.  I was trying different methods of cleaning the logs on an extra log we had, but did not decide how we are going to clean the rest of the logs. 

 

We started searching for some trees to build our cabin with. We found a red pine plantation in Potter County (about 1 hour northwest of our land) with some nice trees on it.  In March 2008 Lester picked out some of the 100 logs we would need and they started to cut them down for us. 

We would of liked to have them delivered in the end of March but it was too wet. Lester was getting impatient and anxious to get started  so the first week-end in April he went to Potter Co. and peeled some of the logs on the pile.   

Finally it was dry enough to have two loads of logs delivered the 3rd week-end in April and we all got a taste of the long, long, process of peeling logs.  A week later we had two more loads delivered.  We had 98 logs that needed peeled. It looked overwhelming to me.

Lester had our neighbor man make some heavy steel saw horses that worked great to put the logs on as we peeled them. 

We had some good help peeling logs. We had neighbors, friends and family members help.  We also had one Sat. where 4 people whom we never met before, from the LHBA (Log Home Builders Association) come and help. They all plan to build their own log house someday. We also had 2 guys who were experienced at peeling logs help for 5 days. The two of them could peel about 3 logs per hour. 

May 10th was the last day of peeling - we had 8 logs to do that day and that is when the folks from the LHBA were there. It was great to get to know each other and share ideas about the building process. Thanks Kyle, Rod, and Larry & Donna.