Carpentry (165)

Photo by Lloyd Kahn

• Louie Frazier is featured in our books, Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter and Builders of the Pacific Coast.

Photo by Lloyd Kahn

• From www.lloydkahn.com/…

…Alan did everything himself: carpentry, plumbing, wiring (solar electricity and hydro), and developed his own water supply. He drives a tractor, maintains several miles of roads, makes beer and wine, and raises pigs and ducks. A lot of people have started homesteads since the 60’s, but seldom have they got as far along as this…

• From our book, Builders of the Pacific Coast

I finished building this sauna in June 2017 with some help from a few friends. All the wood is reclaimed apart from a a few lengths of dimensional timber. The round larch posts are leftovers from previous jobs.The floor, roof planks, internal and external cladding, benches, rafters, tie beams, wall plates, fascia boards, and even the door are made with reclaimed scaffold planks (96 of them!) that I bought from a scaffolding company. The banister and spindles are off-cuts from a job I did many years ago.

Only new items are the (old-looking) hinges, the insulation (aluminum-polyester blanket), the thermometer/hydrometer, and some stained glass. The wood burner was beautifully crafted from an old gas bottle by Ed Osborne from Parp Industrie in Devon.

The dragon heads up in the fascia boards have hollow eyes with embedded red stained glass. When the late evening sun hits the back of them, they shine and make the dragons look alive. Totally unnecessary detail but it really puts a smile on people’s face the first time they see it…

The platform is 3.9m long by 2.2m wide and the interior is 2.6m by 1.8m. It accommodates 7 people in comfort or up to 11 if they are very friendly…

I call the style “Euro folk fusion”. It’s based on the very rich (although a bit forgotten) European wooden building tradition. It’s one part traditional Finnish sauna, a Norwegian wood cabin, a Slovakian log cabin, a Spanish horreo from Asturias region and a splash of Swiss alpine chalet.

All the materials including wood burner, stainless steel flue, glass, screws, hinges, insulation, and timber cost me just over £1000.

–Jesus Sierra
www.sierraecocarpentry.com

• Two of Jesus Sierra’s creations are featured in our new book Small Homes: The Right Size.

Will Beemer of The Heartwood School for the Homebuilding Crafts was kind enough to send us this amazing book on learning to build using the timber framing technique. I have always been amazed by this particular process of framing, watched a ton of YouTube videos on builds using this technique, but never really understood the process fully.

I now know about wood selection, the tools needed, layout and cutting, framing, sills, joists, braces, etc. This book gave me a great starting point for using timber frame building techniques. Thank you so much Will! Can’t wait to start a project!

• You can find a copy of the book at www.amazon.com/…

…I felled trees on my site and had them milled on a portable sawmill. Last year, a friend and I started to prepare the timbers. We did 95 percent of the cutting with Japanese handsaws…

• From our new book Small Homes: The Right Size

All our bread is homemade, so we use a bread knife daily. We’ve had 3 of them, of different configurations. But we got this very unusual one a couple of months ago, and it’s not only better then any bread knife I’ve ever seen, but a delight to use.

Irene says: “I like making bread knives. I tell folks when they buy ’em, ‘If this doesn’t cut the bread SMACK out of the oven better then anything else you’ve ever used, then I’ll double your money back.’ No one’s ever returned a bread knife.”

The wood is cherry or mahogany, they are made in the USA, and available for $30 plus $10 postage (mail check) to:

Irene Tukuafu
2639 N. Sycamore Haven Dr.
Nauvoo, Illinois 62354

Check out also, Irene’s musical instruments:

• irenetukuafu.blogspot.com
• harp4you.blogspot.com

• From lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.com/…