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Log Selection and Notching

Trees are like people. They are living creatures and are affected by where they live, and come in a variety of sizes, shapes and styles. Just as I needed to find my home in log construction, there are only certain trees that make the right fit for our log homes.

Just as people have different hair colours, trees have different grain styles. Wood grain is a technical term that describes the amount of twist that the wood fibres have. The International Log Builders Association has set standards for the maximum allowances of spiral grain, with left hand spiral being worse than right hand spiral. In my opinion, any spiral is bad. The spiral of the log comes from a variety of factors, including genetics, wind, slope, and availability of light. Therefore a tree may start as a straight grained young tree, and by maturity have severe spiral grain. Once the tree dies, the moisture begins to leave the tree and it begins to shrink in size. As it shrinks it follows its grain, and in effect, unravels. This can cause a lateral joint in a log home to open, and although we do as much as we can to mitigate log movement, it is virtually impossible to eliminate – making log selection one of the most critical aspects of log selection and wood joinery.

We use only the tallest and straightest grain trees for construction, mostly from the community forest on Hudson Bay Mountain. These trees are selected for they short growing season, and mature state which gives us the tightest growth rings possible for the most stable house logs.

Of these logs, we match their qualities to the style of construction (ie. Shrink-fit saddle notch vs. Dovetail).

If the style of building warrants the use of green logs (shrink-fit saddle notch), we only use winter cut logs, as they have gone into a dormant state. In their dormant state, they have stored all their nutrients and sugars (commonly called sap) in the root system – ready for a vigorous start to the growing season in the spring. This is beneficial to us as the sap can create sap rot if the logs are not debarked in the summer after harvesting, or creates a log that is sticky and attracts dirt. 

Saddle Notch
Insert photo of saddle notch here with description

Dovetail

If the style of building warrants the use of dry logs (ie. Dovetail notch) we use, whenever possible the largest of the mountain pine beetle killed wood. It is very probable that we use less than 2% of the stand structure to meet our quality standards. The majority of our dovetail projects (although not limited to) have logs flattened on the interior and exterior, and remain a minimum of 10 inches thick, but still have the full scribe, handcrafted fit. This allows a flat wall inside the building and has become very popular in the past few years.

Log Home Gasket

As mentioned earlier, it is virtually impossible to stop movement of wood, and because we make use of the underscribe method of saddlenotch construction, it is our goal to create a home that is as air-tight as possible. In order to achieve our goal, we gasket all our homes with a closed cell foam gasket (sof-rod) that acts as a lateral groove vapour barrier. The gasket is installed on a special ledge that is built into the lateral groove, on the inside and outside of the groove. The center is then filled with insulataion, creating a seal between the two logs at the start of the settling process, and is maintained throughout the life of the building.