Woodworking 101 It is a well-known fact that hobbies contribute to our mental and bodily health, particularly those that combine the exercise of the mind, the hand, and the eye. Much satisfaction is found when even the simplest objects of craftsmanship, those that may employ the common-sense ingenuity used in traditional methods of construction [...]
The Old Way We’d been given the tip where it might be but we’d need a canoe to get to it. That was OK with me. I’m as comfortable in a canoe as a chrysalis in a cocoon. We came back a few days later and paddled across, saving miles of treacherous undergrowth and [...]
Insult to Injury I’d heard the rumors. That piqued my curiosity. I drove into the mile-long driveway to the top of the hill where the c1840 log church that I’d built for Jim Calladine and his wife Kathryn has stood since 1980. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I couldn’t see it for ugly additions [...]
TRADITION There is a timeless truth that is as relevant today as ever. And that is tradition. To speak of tradition is to speak of an immutable principle and an application that transcends this moment by its having been a primary precedent of conscientious men. Tradition, not as custom or habit, nor even [...]
Home There’s a house I think you’d better look at west of town.” This from a realtor friend who knew the kind of place that might interest me. I’d been looking around Port Hope, Ontario for about seven years for something worth restoring. When I saw the house, such as it was, set well [...]
THE WALLFLOWER One of the biggest ideas I ever had, architecturally speaking, that is, was coming up with the design and material needed to create the one-hundred-and-twenty-foot-long hexagon. She was a real looker, that’s for sure. She required four of my best-by-hand built log buildings, each dressed carefully as runway models in subtle shades [...]
Our early history suggests the reasonable assumption that log homes were built for the protection of farmers, woodcutters, fishermen and others whose temporary huts offered scant security against Indian raids, not to mention our sometime ruthless weather. This is borne out by the character of the buildings, whose exterior walls are of square-hewn logs [...]
What would it have ...you might ask? Well there’s one available right now that may answer that question for you. Here’s a list of the features we would expect a “Mini Country Estate” to have. It should come off a good well-maintained road for easy access to schools, shopping, health clinic, etc. Probably in that [...]
After much deliberation, I couldn’t think of a better name for my log building company than Tradition. It seemed to exemplify everything I came to appreciate regarding the ongoing work of artisans that respectfully endeavor to preserve and maintain it. The earliest houses were an example of the direct outgrowth of architecture from function [...]
If I were to consider the greatest gift of my youth, it may not have been the English sheepdog I met when I was adopted at the age of four or that tricycle when I was five. Now that I think back from my current perspective that has spanned about seven more decades I’d say [...]