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Aug 28
Love0

Top 5 Natural Building Reads on The Year of Mud

By Resources, Strawtron

reciprocal roof frameIt’s fun for me to track the content on The Year of Mud to see what people are reading and sharing the most. It is definitely the how-to articles that attract the most attention — here are the top 5 natural building posts on The Year of Mud:

As the building season dies down and time becomes more available to me, I have plans to travel backwards in time to create more how-tos, and detailed posts about all of the building we’ve done this year — timber framing, straw bale building work, etc. Look forward to more articles about our adventures with the new straw bale & timber frame home!

Aug 25
Love0

Rainy Sunday Natural Building Reading

By Resources, Carpentry
Canadian Timber Hewing

How to spend a rainy Sunday… when you’re not doing this…

We finally have a day of rain in the forecast for tomorrow — a 100% chance. I will definitely take it. It has been weeks and weeks of drought here. To celebrate, here are a bunch of fun building links. Perhaps you have your own rainy Sunday coming up. Check out these cool natural building and carpentry websites in your time off:

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Aug 13
Love1

How To Build a House That Will Last 200 Years (Or More)

By Resources, Timber Framing

Bayleaf Farmstead Timber Frame House

“The life cycle of timber frame structures is measured not in decades, but millennia.”

It’s true: timber frame houses are built to last, and their durability surpasses conventional stick frames by leaps and bounds. The renowned Ise temple of Japan is, astoundingly, over 1300 years old and claims the title of the oldest existing timber frame structure in the world. And there are many more 500+ year old timber frame barns, homes, and buildings scattered globally, especially throughout Europe.

If you want to build a house that will last 100, 200, 300 years or more, the timber frame is the only answer to long-lasting framed buildings.

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Jul 04
Love0

Unique and Interesting Antique Woodworking Hand Tools For Sale

By Timber Framing, Resources, Hand Tools
Millers Falls Boring Machine Bits

Lovely Millers Falls Boring Machine Bits from Jim Bode

There are a wealth of interesting antique woodworking hand tools out there in the world, and thankfully Jim Bode has a great online shop devoted to preserving and reselling some of these beautiful items. I recently received 3 lovely drill bits for our Millers Falls boring machine, a 2″, 1 1/2″, and a unique 1″ bit, all lovingly sharpened and cleaned, and a sheer pleasure to use for the first time. Wow!

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Jan 11
Love0

Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter: Lloyd Kahn Book Review

By Resources, Media

Lloyd Kahn is an owner-builder’s best friend. His colorful books document owner-builders’ projects across the world, chock full of captivating, beautiful photographs and valuable information for both the aspiring and active builder folks among us.

Each announcement of his book releases come with a certain wave of excitement, and Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter rides on the wave that Lloyd has been stirring up for over 30 years since the release of Shelter, and delivers a unique look into the newly exploding popularity of tiny houses.

Read ahead for a book review of Lloyd Kahn’s latest.

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Sep 12
Love2

All About Hand Hewing Beams

By Timber Framing, Resources, Video, Hand Tools

I read a great post last night on the Holder Bros. industry blog about hand hewing beams with broad axes. It’s worth a mention here!

Beams that are hand hewn get a flat face treatment with nothing more than a felling axe and a broad axe. This is how beams were converted from round logs before the age of cheap fuel and portable mills and all that jazz.

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Sep 10
Love2

Inspiring Video about Gränsfors Bruks Axe Company

By Resources, Video, Hand Tools, Timber Framing



Lately, I have been doing a lot of reading online about hand tools, especially those for timber framing. A couple of websites have caught my eye recently (which I’ll mention soon elsewhere), and during one of those late night reading ventures I stumbled upon this excellent video about the history and transformation of the Gränsfors Bruks axe company of Sweden, one of the top hand-forged tool manufacturers around.

I’ve been reading snippets about the company and its products elsewhere (mostly in catalogs), but this video gave me a much broader knowledge of the company than before, and I must say, it was very satisfying. Inspiring.

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Aug 10
Love0

Earthen Floor Demolition Video

By Resources, Video, Earthen Floor

Here’s yet another video of me destroying something in or around my cob house. This time, I take a pickaxe to the earthen floor inside Gobcobatron. Breaking it up was fairly tough work, but worse is trying to cleanly scoop up the material and carry it out of the house in buckets. Yuck. Well, I’m glad that’s over with, at least! It took a bit more than a day to complete, not without the help of a few hands throughout the process.