Cheese House Project - Käserei Adler

[D L Bahler]

No pictures yet (keep forgetting to grab the memory card for my camera  )
But things have progressed quite well the past week.

Got things cleaned up around the site -so that it will be a suitable place of business,
and between swatting mosquitoes I've managed to get just about all of the available parts stuck up. Now I just need to go out and pick 3 good trees for purlins, and get those up and ready to go.

I'll get pictures soon. Promise.

With it all going together, it brings back fond memories of the Berner Oberland.  Must mean I'm doing something right 

[D L Bahler]

Here are the pictures  8)



  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

[Jim_Rogers]

Thanks for sharing.

Jim Rogers

[D L Bahler]

Cutting poles for roof beams. Here is the ridge, a decent sized red elm log with a little crook in it, take care of that in the hewing this beam will be hewed with a slight crown along its length to account for the slight curve of the log. The elm here rarely grows straight. But we are using these due to the Dutch Elm Disease, which kills all of our elm. A shame, the wood from these is beautiful. We cut these trees out to keep our wood healthy -important to us, since we make syrup out of the woods. Leaving dead and diseased trees around lowers the quality of maple syrup. We used to sell our sap, and the guy we sold it to loved the clarity and richness of our sap, and when he saw how well kept our woods is compared to most around here, he understood why.

Though elm are terribly difficult to split due to interlocking grain, it is surprisingly easy to work with a good sharp axe, and hews well. I like it better than oak when it is green. When it's dry though, forget about it. It's tough as nails. I can also trust these logs to be stable when in place, so I'm not so much worried about working them green.



 

This tree was felled with axe and crosscut saw, you can see at the base the technique.

When I fell trees with the crosscut, I have adopted the practice of cutting a shoulder all the way around the tree, having first cut the face notch with the saw and axe. The shouldering removes bark which can damage the saw teeth, and also greatly reduces the amount of wood I have to saw through (especially on an elm which has a great deal of root flare) while still leaving the tree stable enough that it should do what I want.
The tree is cut through on this shoulder (unlike a chainsaw felling where the felling cut is higher than the face notch, with a crosscut the bottom of the notch and the felling kerf are on the same level, leaving a level stump) then a metal wedge is driven in until the tree leans a bit, then the sawing continued until the tree starts to fall over. As soon as you can, the saw is removed from the opening kerf and you run for your life. It's easier to me to get a crosscut felled tree to go exactly where I want than with a chainsaw. Probably because there is an inherent patience that comes with hand tools.

As soon as this tree was felled, I took a spud (well, actually its a long handled scraper) and removed the bark. On an elm and similar trees, if you do it right away you can pull the bark off in a single sheet. Which is good, because inner bark is useful for a lot of things.

These beams will be rough hewn. I thought about leaving them half round -squared only where they need to be- but the ridge beam will be squared and made to look nice, since it will show on the interior of the building. When I saw the rich color of this log, I knew I would have to show it off  8)