WOODezine - Volume II - Issue III - MARCH 2004

Jason Hill
Father,
Fireman,
Outfitter
and...


Log
Furniture
Builder

  

(Click on the thumbnails for larger images)
 


Jason and Cindy Hill's beautiful little girl Paige celebrated her first birthday in February. In the weeks before she was born, her Dad spent every spare minute in his garage workshop, building her the crib shown above. It took a fair few sessions, because Jason's a pretty busy guy. He holds down three jobs!

With such a tight schedule, he had to find a woodworking activity which he could start and stop frequently, and which produced results in a reasonable amount of time. The fact that he spends most of the fall as a professional hunting guide tells you he loves the outdoors, so it was no surprise to Cindy when he started building log furniture a few years back.

The Construction Process

Jason prefers pine logs, which are readily available in the mountains near his home. However, aspen is a viable alternative. He buys debarked, air-dried lumber from a sawmill. If he were harvesting his own logs, he says he would look for standing dead or deadfall limbs, because drying is a critical part of the puzzle. While the debarked logs are certainly convenient, his next project calls for unpeeled lumber which he will debark himself as needed, using a drawknife. Most of the mill's output is intended for fence builders, so the stock Jason buys is 8' to 10' long posts and rails which are all the way up to 18' long.

After cutting all the parts in a project to length, the first step in construction is to create the tenons (Figure 1). This is done with a power tenon cutter chucked in a 1/2" drill. He mills 2" diameter tenons on the structural parts, and 1-1/2" tenons on spindles and small rails. A drawknife and a hatchet are used to reduce the end of the workpiece to a diameter which will fit the tenon cutter (Figure 3).

With the tenons cut, he snaps a chalk line along the log and uses this to line up his mortises. Then he drills the mortises with a Forstner bit.

 

 


Figure 1
Round tenons are cut on the ends of rails.
Click for a larger image.


Figure 2
This power tenon cutter from Veritas™ chucks into a 1/2" variable speed drill.
Click for a larger image.


Figure 3
Thicker parts can be reduced to fit in the tenon cutter by using a drawknife or a sharp hatchet. Sometimes the same part will feature both a tenon and a mortise which is bored with a Forstner bit.
Click for a larger image.

 

Racheted straps or tie-downs are used to draw the joints together. The parts are not glued, but each mortise and tenon joint is reinforced with a Timberlock™ landscape screw. These come in lengths from 6" to 16" and Jason predrills for them and counterbores the heads. After the final fitting, when all the parts are in place, he plugs the counterbores with 5/8" pine plugs which he cuts on the drill press with a plug cutting bit.

For a finish, Jason likes three or four coats of oil-based poly, applied with an HVLP sprayer and sanded between coats. Some of his projects (like the table shown above) also receive a light stain.

Questions? We will be happy to forward your eMails to Jason.

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