Chapter 10
In "The Boy Pioneers" I have told how to make various other forms of totems, all of which have since been built by boys and men in different parts of the country. Mr. Stewart Edward White, a member of the Camp-Fire Club of America, woodsman, plainsman, mountaineer, and African hunter and explorer, built himself a totem in the form of a huge bird twelve feet high from the plans published in "The Boy Pioneers," and I anticipate no great difficulty will be encountered by those who try to totemize a log cabin after the manner shown by Fig. 258. It will not, however, be a small boy's work, but the small boys who started at the beginning of this book are older and more experienced now, and, even if they cannot handle the big logs themselves, they are perfectly competent to teach their daddies and uncles and their big brothers how to do it, so they may act as boss builders and architects and let the older men do the heavy work. But however you proceed to build this house, when it is finished you will have a typically native building, and at the same time different from all others, as quaint as any bungling bungalow, and in better taste, because it will fit in the landscape and become part of it and look as if it _belonged there_, in place of appearing as if it had been blown by a tornado from some box factory and deposited in an unsuitable landscape.
Fig. 256. Fig. 257. Fig. 258. Fig. 259. Fig. 260. Fig. 261.
Fig. 262.
You must understand by this that unsuitable refers to the fact that a bungalow _does not_ belong in the American landscape, although many of the cottages and shacks, miscalled bungalows, may be thoroughly American and appropriate to the American surroundings despite the exotic name by which some people humble them.
XLI
HOW TO BUILD A SUSITNA LOG CABIN AND HOW TO CUT TREES FOR THE END PLATES
STANDING on a hill overlooking the salt meadows at Hunter's Point, L. I., there was an old farmhouse the roof of which projected over both sides of the house four or five feet. The hill on which it stood has been cut away, the meadows which it overlooked have been filled up with the dirt from the hill, and only a surveyor with his transit and the old property-lines map before him could ever find the former location of this house, but it is somewhere among the tracks of the Long Island Railroad.
Opposite the house, on the other side of the railroad track, in the section known as Dutch Kills of Long Island City, two other houses of the same style of architecture stood; they had double doors--that is, doors which were cut in two half-way up so that you might open the top or bottom half or both halves to suit your fancy. The upper panels of these doors had two drop-lights of glass set in on the bias, and between them, half-way down the upper half, was a great brass knocker with a grip big enough to accommodate both hands in case you really wanted to make a noise.
There was another house of this same description in the outskirts of Hoboken, and I often wondered what the origin of that peculiar roof might be. I found this type of house as far north toward the Hudson Bay as the settlements go, and still farther north the Susitna house explains the origin of the overhanging eaves (Fig. 268). Of course the Susitna, as here drawn, is not exactly the same as that built by the natives on the Susitna River, but the end plates (Fig. 263) are the same as those used in the primitive houses of the Northwest.
How to Cut the Tree
Fig. 264 shows a standing fir-tree and also shows what cuts to make in order to get the right-shaped log for an end plate. Fig. 265 shows the method of scoring and hewing necessary in order to flatten the end of the log as it is in Fig. 266. Fig. 267 shows the style in which the natives roof their Susitnas with logs. The elbows at the end of the plates (Fig. 266) serve to keep the logs of the roof (Fig. 267) from rolling off, but the Susitna log cabin which we are building is expected to have a roof (Fig. 268) of thatch or a roof of shingles, because we have passed the rude shacks, sheds, and shelters used for camps and are now building real houses in which we may live. The Susitna may be built of round logs or of flattened logs (_le carreage_), in which case we can use the General Putnam square notch (Fig. 263) for joining the ends of our logs. In raising the roof, erect the ridge-pole first. The ridge-pole may be set up on two uprights to which it is temporarily nailed, and the upright props may be held in place by the two diagonal props or braces, as shown in Fig. 263. If the logs are squared, cut a small bird's-mouth notch in the rafter where it extends over the side-plate logs of the pen and bevel the top end of your gable rafters to fit against the ridge-pole as in the diagrams. The other rafters are now easily put in place, but if the logs are round you must notch the rafters and side-plates as shown by the diagram between Figs. 263 and 267; the dotted lines show where the rafter and the logs come together. Nail your rafters to your ridge-pole and fasten them to the side-plate with wooden pegs or spikes. The ridge-pole may be allowed to extend, as in Fig. 268, on each side of the cabin or the elbows (Fig. 266) may be attached to each end of the ridge-pole with noses turned up and painted or carved into a fanciful head as in Fig. 268. If the roof is to be shingled, collect a lot of poles about four inches in diameter, flatten them on both sides, and nail them to the rafters not more than two inches apart, allowing the ends of the sticks to extend beyond the walls of the house at least six inches.
Fig. 263. Fig. 264. Fig. 265. Fig. 266. Fig. 267. Fig. 268.
If you desire to make your own shingles, saw up a hemlock, pine, or spruce log into billets of one foot four inches long, then with a froe and a mall (Fig. 179) split the shingles from the billets of wood, or use a broadaxe for the same purpose. Broadaxes are dangerous weapons in the hands of an amateur, but the writer split shingles with a broadaxe upon the shores of Lake Erie when he was but seven years old and, as near as he can count, he still has ten toes and ten fingers. If you intend to thatch the roof you need not flatten the poles which you fasten across the rafters, because the thatch will hide all unevenness of the underpinning. The poles may be laid at right angles to the rafters between six and eight inches apart and the roof thatched as described and illustrated by Fig. 66. The Susitna form of house is the one from which the old Long Island farmhouses were evolved, although the old Long Islanders copied theirs from the homes they left in Holland, but we must remember that even the effete civilization of Europe once had a backwoods country a long, long time ago, and then they built their houses from the timbers hewn in the forests as our own ancestors did in this country; consequently, many of the characteristics of present-day houses which seem to us useless and unnecessary are survivals of the necessary characteristics of houses made of crude material.
XLII
HOW TO MAKE A FIREPLACE AND CHIMNEY FOR A SIMPLE LOG CABIN
FIG. 269 shows a simple form of fireplace which is practically the granddaddy of all the other fireplaces. It consists of three walls for windbreaks, laid up in stone or sod against some stakes driven in the ground for the purpose of supporting them. The four-cornered stakes are notched or forked and small logs are laid horizontally in these forks and on top of this a pyramidal form of a log pen is built of small logs and billets, and this answers the purpose of a chimney. This style of fireplace is adapted to use in camps and rude shacks like those shown by Figs. 187, 189, 191, and 192; also for the most primitive log cabins, but when we make a real log house we usually plan to have a more elaborate or more finished fireplace and chimney. The ground-plan of Fig. 269 is shown by Fig. 270.
Mud Hearth
Here you see there is a mud hearth, a wall of clay plastered over the stones of the fireplace. This will prevent the fire from cracking and chipping the stones, but clay is not absolutely necessary in this fireplace. When, however, you build the walls of your fireplace of logs and your chimney of sticks the clay _is_ necessary to prevent the fire from igniting the woodwork and consuming it. For a log-framed fireplace, make a large opening in the wall of your house and against the ends of the logs where you sawed out the opening, erect jamb pieces of planks two or three inches thick running up to the log over the fireplace and spiked to the round ends of the logs (see plan, Fig. 272). Next, lay your foundation of sill logs on the fireplace, first two side logs and then a back log, neatly notched so as to look like the logs in the walls of the cabin. Build your fireplace walls as shown by Fig. 271, after which take your mud or clay and make the hearth by hammering the clay down hard until you have a firm, smooth foundation. The front hearth may be made, as shown in the diagram, of stones of any size from pebbles to flagstones, with the surfaces levelled by sinking the under-part down into the clay until a uniform level is reached on top. The fireplace may be built with bricks of moist clay and wet clay used for mortar. Make the clay walls of the fireplace at least one foot thick and pack it down hard and tight as you build it. If you choose you may make a temporary inside wall of plank as they do when they make cement walls, and then between the temporary board wall and the logs put in your moist clay and ram it down hard until the top of the fireplace is reached, after which the boards may be removed and the inside of the fireplace smoothed off by wiping it with a wet cloth.
Stick Chimney
After the walls of logs and clay are built to top of the fireplace proper, split some sticks and make them about one inch wide by one and one half inch thick, or use the round sticks in the form in which they grow, but peel off the bark to render them less combustible; then lay them up as shown by Fig. 261, log-cabin style. With the chimney we have four sides to the wall in place of three sides as in the fireplace. The logs of the fireplace, where they run next to the cabin, may have to be chinked up so as to keep them level, but the chimney should be built level as it has four sides to balance it. Leave a space between the chimney and the outside wall and plaster the sticks thickly with clay upon the outside and much thicker with clay upon the inside, as shown by Fig. 271 _A_, which is supposed to be a section of the chimney.
Fig. 269. Fig. 270. Fig. 271. Fig. 271A. Fig. 272. Fig. 273.
Durability
All through the mountains of East Tennessee and Kentucky I have seen these stick chimneys, some of them many, many years old. In these mountain countries the fireplaces are lined with stones, but in Illinois, in the olden times, stones were scarce and mud was plenty and the fireplaces were made like those just described and illustrated by Fig. 272.
The stone chimney is an advance and improvement upon the log chimney, but I doubt if it requires any more skill to build.
Chimney Foundation
Dig your foundation for your fireplace and chimney at least three feet deep; then fill the hole up with small cobblestones or broken bluestone until you have reached nearly the level of the ground; upon this you can begin to lay your hearth and chimney foundation. If you fail to dig this foundation the frost will work the ground under your chimney and the chimney will work with the ground, causing it either to upset or to tilt to one side or the other and spoil the looks of your house, even if it does not put your fireplace out of commission.
Stone Chimney
In laying up the stones for your chimney, remember that it makes no difference how rough and uneven it is upon the outside. The more uneven the outside is the more picturesque it will appear, but the smoother and more even the inside is the less will it collect soot and the less will be the danger of chimney fires. Lay your stones in mortar or cement. See that each stone fits firmly in the bed and does not rock and that it breaks joints with the other stone below it. By breaking joints I mean that the crack between the two stones on the upper tier should fit over the middle of the stone on the lower tier; this, with the aid of the cement, locks the stones and prevents any accidental cracks which may open from extending any further than the two stones between which it started. If, however, you do not break joints, a crack might run from the top to the bottom of the chimney causing it to fall apart. Above the fireplace make four walls to your chimney, as you did with your stick chimney (Fig. 271), and let the top of the chimney extend above the roof at least three feet; this will not only help the draught but it will also lessen the danger of fire.
XLIII
HEARTHSTONES AND FIREPLACES
IN erecting the fireplace for your cabin the stone work should extend into the cabin itself, thus protecting the ends of the logs from the fire. The stone over the top of the fireplace (_A_, _B_, Fig. 274) rests upon two iron bars; these iron bars are necessary for safety because, although the stone _A_, _B_ may bridge the fireplace successfully, the settling of the chimney or the heat of the fire is liable to crack the stone, in which case, unless it is supported by two flat iron bars, it will fall down and wreck your fireplace. The stone _A_, _B_ in Fig. 275, has been cracked for fifteen years but, as it rests upon the flat iron bars beneath, the crack does no harm.
Fig. 274. Fig. 275.
In Fig. 274 (the ends of the fireplace) the two wing walls of it are built up inside the cabin to support a plank for a mantelpiece. Another plank _C_, _D_ is nailed under the mantelpiece against the log before the stone work is built up. This is only for the purpose of giving a finish to your mantelpiece. The hearth in Fig. 274 is made of odd bits of flat stones laid in cement, but the hearth in Fig. 275 is one big slab of bluestone just as it came from the quarry, and the fireplace in Fig. 275 is lined with fire-brick. The two three-legged stools which you see on each side were made by the woodsmen who built the cabin to use in their camp while the cabin was being erected. The stools have occupied the position of honor on each side of the fireplace now for twenty-seven years. The mantelpiece in this drawing is made of puncheons with the rounded side out on the two supports and the flat side against the wall; of course, for the mantel itself, the rounded side must be down and the flat side up. This fireplace has been used for cooking purposes and the crane is still hanging over the flames, while up over the mantel you may see, roughly indicated, a wrought-iron broiler, a toaster, and a brazier. The flat shovel hanging to the left of the fireplace is what is known as a "peal," used in olden times to slip under the pies or cakes in the old-fashioned ovens in order to remove them without burning one's fingers.
XLIV
MORE HEARTHS AND FIREPLACES
SOMETIMES it is desired to have a fireplace in the middle of the room. Personally, such a fireplace does not appeal to me, but there are other people who like the novelty of such a fireplace, and Fig. 276 shows one constructed of rough stones. The fireplace is high so that one tending it does not have to stoop and get a backache. The foundation should be built in the ground underneath the cabin and up through the floor. A flat stone covers the top of the fireplace, as in the other drawings. Fig. 277 shows a fireplace with a puncheon support for a plank mantel.
Fig. 276. Fig. 277. Fig. 278. Fig. 279. Fig. 280.
A Plank Mantel
_A_ and _B_ are two half logs, or puncheons, which run from the floor to the ceiling on each side of the fireplace. _S_, _S_, _S_ are the logs of the cabin walls. _C_ is the puncheon supporting the mantel and _D_ is the mantel. Fig. 279 shows a section or a view of the mantel looking down on it from the top, a topographical view of it. Fig. 278 is the same sort of a view showing the puncheon _A_ at the other end of the mantel before the mantel is put in place between the two puncheons _A_ and _B_. In Fig. 279 the reader may see that it will be necessary to cut the corners out of the mantel-board in order to fit it around the puncheons _A_ and _B_; also, since _A_ and _B_ have rounded surfaces, it will be necessary to so bevel the ends of the puncheon (_C_, Fig. 277) that they will fit on the rounded surfaces of _A_ and _B_. Fig. 280 shows the end of _C_ bevelled in a perspective view, and also a profile view of it, with the puncheon _A_ indicating the manner in which _C_ must be cut to fit upon the rounded surface. This makes a simple mantelpiece but a very appropriate one for a log cabin.
XLV
FIREPLACES AND THE ART OF TENDING THE FIRE
ONE of my readers has written to me asking what to do about a fireplace that smokes. Not knowing the fireplace in question, I cannot prescribe for that particular invalid, but I have a long acquaintance with many fireplaces that smoke and fireplaces that do not--in other words, healthy fireplaces with a good digestion and diseased fireplaces functionally wrong with poor digestion--so perhaps the easiest way to answer these questions is to describe a few of my acquaintances among the fireplaces which I have studied.
There is an old fireplace in Small Acres, Binghamton, N. Y., of which I made sketches and took measurements which furnished me data by which I built the fireplaces in my own houses.
In Binghamton fireplaces the side walls are on an angle and converge toward the back of the fireplace, as in Fig. 274. The back also pitches forward, as in Fig. 282. The great advantage of this is the reflecting of more heat into the room.
Fig. 281 shows the fireplace before which I am now working. The fire was started in last November and is now (April 1) still burning, although it has not been rekindled since it was first lighted. This fireplace is well constructed, and on very cold days I have the fire burning out on the hearth fully a foot beyond the line of the mantel without any smoke coming into my studio.
Fig. 282 shows a diagram with the dimensions of my studio fireplace and represents the vertical section of it. I give these for the benefit of the people who want to know how to build a fireplace which will not smoke. But, of course, even the best of fireplaces will smoke if the fire is not properly arranged. With smoke the angle of reflection would be equal to the angle of incidence did not the constant tendency of smoke to ascend modify this rule.
Throw a rubber ball against the wall and the direction from your hand to where it strikes the wall makes the angle of incidence; when the ball bounces away from the wall it makes the angle of reflection.
Management of the Fire
But, before we enter into the question regarding the structure of the flue we will take up the management of the fire itself. In the first place, there is but one person who can manage a fire, and that is yourself. Servants never did and never will learn the art, and, as I am writing for men, and the ladies are not supposed to read this article, I will state that the fair sex show a like deficiency in this line. The first thing a woman wants to do with a fire is to make the logs roost on the andirons, the next thing is to remove every speck of ashes from the hearth, and then she wonders why the fire won't burn.
The ashes have not been removed from my studio fire since it was first lighted last fall. Ashes are absolutely essential to control a wood-fire and to keep the embers burning overnight. Fig. 288 shows the present state of the ashes in my studio fire. You will see by this diagram that the logs are not resting on the andirons. I only use the andirons as a safeguard to keep the logs from rolling out on the hearth. If the fire has been replenished late in the evening with a fresh log, before retiring I pull the front or the ornamental parts of the andirons to the hearth and then lay the shovel and poker across them horizontally. When the burning log is covered with ashes and the andirons arranged in this manner you can retire at night with a feeling of security and the knowledge that if your house catches afire it will not be caused by the embers in your fireplace. Then in the morning all you have to do is to shovel out the ashes from the rear of the fireplace, put in a new backlog, and bed it in with ashes, as shown in Fig. 286. Put your glowing embers next to the backlog and your fresh wood on top of that and sit down to your breakfast with the certainty that your fire will be blazing before you get up from the table.
Don't make the mistake of poking a wood-fire, with the idea, by that means, of making it burn more briskly, or boosting up the logs to get a draught under them.
Two logs placed edge to edge, like those in Fig. 288, with hot coals between them, will make their own draught, which comes in at each end of the log, and, what is essential in fire building, they keep the heat between themselves, constantly increasing it by reflecting it back from one to the other. If you happen to be in great haste to make the flames start, don't disturb the logs but use a pair of bellows.
Fig. 287 shows a set of the logs which will make the best-constructed fireplace smoke. The arrow-point shows the line of incidence or the natural direction which the smoke would take did not the heat carry it upward.
Fig. 285 shows the same logs arranged so that the angle of incidence strikes the back of the chimney and the smoke ascends in the full and orderly manner. But both Figs. 285 and 287 are clumsily arranged. The _B_ logs in each case should be the backlog and the small logs _A_ and _C_ should be in front of _B_.
Fig. 281. Fig. 282. Fig. 283. Fig. 284. Fig. 285. Fig. 286.
Fig. 287. Fig. 288.
In all of the fireplaces which we have described you will note that the top front of the fireplace under the mantel extends down several inches below the angle of the chimney.
Fig. 283 shows a fireplace that is improperly built. This is from a fireplace in a palatial residence in New York City, enclosed in an antique Italian marble mantel, yellow with age, which cost a small fortune. The fireplace was designed and built by a firm of the best architects, composed of men famed throughout the whole of the United States and Europe, _but the fireplace smoked_ because the angle of the chimney was below the opening of the fireplace and, consequently, sent the smoke out into the room. This had to be remedied by setting a piece of thick plate glass over the top of the fireplace, thus making the opening smaller and extending it below the angle of the chimney.
Fig. 284 shows the most primitive form of fireplace and chimney. One that a child may see will smoke unless the fire is kept in the extreme back of the hearth.
The advantages of ashes in your fireplace are manifold. They retain the heat, keep the hot coals glowing overnight, and when the fire is too hot may be used to cover the logs and subdue the heat. But, of course, if you want a clean hearthstone and the logs roosting upon the andirons, and are devoid of all the camp-fire sentiment, have some asbestos gas-logs. There will be no dust or dirt, no covering up at night with ashes, no bill for cord-wood, and it will look as stiff and prim as any New England old maid and be as devoid of sentiment and art as a department-store bargain picture frame.
XLVI