My name is James Tyree I've always had a love for history very much so
but primarily because my grandfather he he was raised when things here were still being done
the way they were you know in some cases 100 years earlier he was born in ,14,
1914 and just his stories made me want to learn how to do that stuff
of course he always you know "why you want to learn that silly stuff" you know just
like throwing out the corner cupboard so you could have a nice hoosier cabinet.
But it still it set the foundation for wanting to learn
the the older ways uh what was modern technology 200 years ago
that unfortunately has been lost we're progressive in this country and that's I've spent my whole
life trying to learn that you know traditional techniques in blacksmithing and woodworking,
timber framing, stone masonry more than I could ever hope to accomplish in a dozen lifetimes.
We've done the easy part now you know as long as we we make sure we'll say it's easy it's
not easy but the first course is really the hardest and that's getting our foundation
plumbing level and then getting everything square and that's what makes the rest of it
easy as far as the the pins themselves building these structures is not easy at all I mean there's
obviously a lot of labor in it but there's also a lot of research involved and what I mean by that
is when somebody comes into a new land the first thing they're going to do
is obviously find out where they want to clear for for their structures their house first of all
but then they've got to source material other than just your logs that you're going to build with
and that's where our foundation comes in if you cut down logs and lay them straight on the ground
yeah that might suffice for a very short time but quickly moisture and termites all kinds of pests
are going to destroy the structure you've built so to stop that from happening you have to find
stone that's the best thing for your foundation well we are very lucky in this area that we have
a huge amount of surface layer limestone that with a good hickory stick you can actually pry
it from the ground and it's already flat on top and bottom so you don't have to have any stone
mason tools at all and you can take other rocks and cut these to a relative size that you want
there were so many trees here that they didn't care to waste trees and so you would cut down a
virgin poplar let's say that very possibly could have been easily eight foot in diameter across the
stump and so when they felled these trees they picked out the size of limbs or whatever that
was this approximate size they wanted and 10 or 12 inch in diameter is a size that just a few people
can handle pretty easy and can go pretty high you can actually climb with with one that size and
so they would they would cut those limbs and such out and then the rest that would go to the wayside
to either rot or or later you know if they got tools or something else they would try to split
that wood apart and get what they needed out of it. The barn we're building today is out of tulip
poplar which is native to this area and was very much used you know 200 years ago 250 years ago
it was a much easier wood to use much much easier to manage as compared to oak or the chestnut or
woods like that if you cut tulip poplar in the springtime the bark is very easy to peel off
and bark had many many uses it was used for shingles on barns or houses uh roofing material
it was used to make buckets all manners of things out of the bark whereas like the oak trees
you know they were very hard to harvest first off the bark didn't come freely away from the wood
even though it was used for tanning the the bark was but it just it was harder to get
the material you needed poplar easily splits so it was very easy to split material out to make
floorboards or furniture or even shingles for a structure a roof
it was easily carved to make watering troughs out of it had a very tight the virgin timber had very
tight grain it was watertight it didn't shrink or check crack too much just had many uses all
the way around utensils it was just an all-around all-purpose wood. We stripped the bark off not
that we're necessarily going to use all the bark for shingles on this particular project
but the bark naturally separates from the log due to bacteria between the bark and the log
it separates and it makes makes a house for all kinds of critters and creatures and all
that kind of stuff so we strip the bark off just to make this structure last a bit longer
that's the reason we don't see a whole lot of these period structures left
they they when they were built nobody had the intentions of these structures lasting 200 years
they meant for them to last 10 years they left the bark on they didn't peel it off if they
didn't need to because that was extra work you know they they needed to get crops in the ground
or whatever they spent as little time as possible it was a necessity not a not a want or a pleasure
as it is today so yeah we strip the bark off we will use some of the bark for buckets and
and shingles and such but we're doing it for the longevity of the structure uh and these
are spring cut logs which means they they peel off very easy actually quite enjoyable to strip off.
The part they're working on right now making the plates for the top which is what the rafters will
sit on now that is really the most accurate part of the whole structure because this is
the part where we do absorb any inaccuracies as far as level and the tops of the pins
once we get these plates on and they are leveled and trued then the rafters are pretty easy going
uh you know it's a simple a-frame with a gusset you know or a collar tie in between
to hold in place to keep the thrust from you know kicking the roof out
once we get the first one made and determined that is correct then that's the pattern and the rest of
them you're just basically stacking them up and make it just like it and then we start raising
them that's where the manpower comes in you know having to lift these green green wood poles up
and already assembled and hold them in place till they can be fastened in place and once you get a
couple of them and then they hold each other up you know you've got scabs as they call it put
on and then we'll put on purlins which is pretty easy except for the very top of the roof so i'm a
little skinny monkey and I've got a feeling it's gonna be me because I'm the last one here uh gets
to climb up on them slick poles and nail in the purlins and then we'll put on the bark shingles
which once you got the purlins on you sort of got like a ladder to climb on so that's not too bad.
The top plates if you'll notice they're overhanging on each end that's called a cantilever
obviously that is to help keep the water away from the foundation and which helps keep it dry on the
inside and not as much disease issues and such as that unfortunately the material we can get today
it's hard to find a piece that's long enough to go the whole length of these two cribs as well as
the cantilevers so we have to put several pieces together to make up that length
and we're doing this by using a lap joint which simply means they lap on top of each other we'll
cut out x amount of material from one and cut out that same amount of material out the other
and we'll using handovers we'll bore holes through and just simply peg it together.
Now how this works you might ask why does this not slide out from the
roof thrust the plates are green the pegs going in place are dry so as this material dries the plates
they shrink around the pans and actually acts like a vice a peg and a vise it squeezes down
on it and it won't allow it to flex this is called a two pin barn they were very common in this area
anyway what two pins means you have two separate structures you know built out a log of course and
to tie those together so they have a shared roof one roof covering all that we have what's called
plates. Plates go up on top and the rafters actually sit down on those plates all right so
there's several reasons in that one reason is it's a lot easier to build one roof
than it is to build two separate roofs and with these two pins close together
you go down one roof and you've got a breezeway through the middle
that helps any moisture that might build up our passing through to make that evaporate it helps
keep livestock cooler if you have them in the pins and traditionally it would have been hogs in the
bottom and then you would have your hay or oats or whatever up top that helps keep that mold free
so there are several reasons in building it this way but simplicity is really one of the
main reasons. You know you don't have to cut as much material when you're done one shared
common roof it's easier to tie all the shakes together your roofing material bit be it bark or
slabs or shakes shingles if they're sawn which they wouldn't have been in this area uh it's
easier to tie them together under one roof at one at the same time than it is to build two separate
and later come back and join the roof so it's just all about being easy people are just as lazy then
as we are now you know the easiest way they could find to do it to serve the purpose that's what
they've done. The myth that that pioneers you know come walking into a new piece of property on the
frontier or the backwoods you know they come in carrying an ax and the tools to set up a house
and all that is absolute rubbish that is not true at all now there were cases where they did come
in to a place and they did have these but first off tools were extremely expensive at that time
and these people that were coming in frontier very few of them were wealthy they were coming
into the frontier for a reason there was no law the British had no rule in this area at that time
you know the natives were the only law really so they were coming here where they didn't have
to pay taxes or such things so it was poor people at first so what would follow you you might have
somebody come in and they do establish a small little settlement you know three or four cabins or
something like that well christ people and trades people christ people in particular timber framers
to be exact you know they they were coming over here to make their fortune just like anybody else
well they had the tools after they went through an apprenticeship that was part typically that
was part of the apprenticeship when you finished you left with a set of tools where you could start
into business so they followed these people there'd be enough people there to justify
them coming there but they follow these people and and you know come into a community let's say here
for instance there might be four or five families set up and they come rolling in would you like
for us to build you a barn or something like that that's when you start seeing the nicer buildings.
What would have been made first they might have had an axe or something like that likely would
have had some maybe a worn out one they would have built something very crude and very rough.
No logs were hewn using what's called a broad ax which is is not an axe you would use to chop down
a tree it was a an axe used to make very clean flat surfaces originally the the first structure
would have not been had any hewing done to it at all because the the felling axis is a it was an
expensive tool but it was cheap in comparison to the more more specialized tools such as a broad ax
or a goose wing hewing axe such as that so they wouldn't have had it they couldn't have done it
and this structure was meant to be a short-term structure anyway so there was no need and making
sure the roof set down good and flat or the joints were perfectly sealed tight together
they didn't care it was a rush job get it done we are hewing the top plates in this case which are
what the rafter set on we are hewing those flat we're doing that for the purpose of longevity
we want this structure you know to last as long as it possibly can we're working real hard to do
this and we want everybody to see it we want to want everybody to learn about these structures so
we are putting a little bit more into it than what would have been, traditionally speaking