Finnish log building methods.

[Max sawdust]

TW,
KITOS HEI ;D
As Thehardway said, this information is very hard to come by in the states.  I could not find anything on birch bark shingles.  I can not say thank you enough   If I build one, I will be sure to take pics.  All our Birch our is on the way out because of drought and changing climate.  I have many sheets of lower grade bark peeled looking for good use.

I have been to the log building museum, outside Helsinki on a little island you walk across a bridge too.  Do you know the one I am talking about?  I have been there many times.

Thehardway, 
Northern WI, MN and MI (UP) have quite a few Finnish/Swedish and Norwegian immigrants, with quite a few structures that were built with the Scandinavian methods.

In my humbe opinion I think the Scandinavian's mastered log building and it is the ONLY way to build with log. 
As far as Timberframing goes the Brits, Germans and New Englanders get that prize  ;)

[TW]

Good that it was useful information.

I could make a principle drawing sometimes in the next couple of weeks, and post it here. Some rainy evening when nothing productive can be done.

The museum island is Fölisön (no idea what the finns call it) I have walked around it once and looked at the buildings from the outside, but I could not then afford the entrance fee to enter the buildings.

By the way
I belong to the Swedish minority in Finland and I am barely able to communicate in some kind of broken Finnish, But of cause, how could you have known that

[TW]

Here is a scetch of a section of a birchbark roof. This is the most complicated form of overhang, which would be used on a larger farmhouse or such.


Some details may be wrong as this scetch is partly based on oral descriptions.

Note that the roof boards stand in a rebate on the plate log in order to save nails. Note also the weight stone.

[nsmike]

TW you have posted a lot of good information. There is a local company here in Minnesota, called Terrasol, that rehabilitates old log cabins and timberframes. It might be worth your time to look at the pictures on their site, it's www.terrasol.net, some of the pictures show good detail on older pioneer log cabins,there are also two videos. A couple of the cabins have good detailed pictures of the dovetail joint but most will show you how different laog cabins were built here.
****

[Raphael]

I know Terrasol, a real nice group of guys, they did the addition on my brother in law's place.
He had the 5th oldest log cabin in Minnesota and Terrasol brought in a recovered cabin of similiar vintage to create the core of his addition.

In fact I just found Mark and Donna's place on the Terrasol website:
http://www.terrasol.net/sections/galleryItem.php?intGalleryCategoryID=1&intGalleryItemID=14