Our POLE BARN

First we had to choose the site and that was a tough decision. The land here is hilly and wooded with very few places that would not need extensive excavation and clearing. We wanted the barn near the house but yet secluded. We finally selected a site southwest of the house. The area selected required the least work to clear and level it. There were about 8 large madrone trees and a drop of about 7 feet in elevation form one end to the other.

The barn was originally planned to be 800 square foot (20 ft X 40 ft) but it kind of grew as you can see from the sketch . Ha! Ha! Now it was time to find some wood to build it with. I decided that I wanted to remove some trees from our place and have them sawn into boards so off we went.

Here you can see Midge (my wife) looking over one of the fallen trees. The first batch of logs were sawn into 10 foot lengths and piled at the side of the shed waiting for the sawyer to arrive. My poor tractor really had it's work cut out for it though. I used it to move them around and they seemed to all weigh tons..ha ha.

This is about half the logs we eventually had sawn into lumber. I think we cut down 15 douglas firs for the barn. The sawyer finally got here and work began. They either charge by the hour or the bdft. I suggest if you are providing labor you have it done by the hour.

The saw is a big bandsaw on rails. The sawyer and crew must roll the log onto the rails and clamp it in place. The sawyer cuts the logs into cants. These in my case were 5.5 inches thick. Then he resaws the cants into the dimensional lumber. The boards must be moved from the saw to the storage stack and stickered so air can move around them. This keeps the boards from rotting and allows them to dry.

Sorry if this is boring to you but go back and check out the rest.

More to come just follow the arrows.

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You can reach me by e-mail at:

cldwarrior@oocities.com

This page was created sometime Updated Januray 28th 1999