NARRATOR: Deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains,
on the far edge of Eustace Conway's property line, he
and apprentice, Raleigh Avery, are standing their ground
and building a lookout cabin as a first line of defense
against the rash of intruders stepping in on Eustace's
new plot of land.
Man, it's been crazy, all these trespassers.
I mean, we've had squatters.
We've had poachers, moonshiners.
We need to establish a presence really.
We need people to know that we're
here because I will scare them.
[LAUGHS] They don't want to mess with me.
NARRATOR: The quicker they can get the cabin built,
the easier it will be to protect the land.
But Eustace's methods take time to learn and to perfect.
I don't know anything about this style of building,
so this is going to be a great opportunity for me to learn.
NARRATOR: Each 16-foot board weighs approximately 200 pounds
and needs to be hand carved.
Every corner gets a dovetail notch
to lock the logs together.
There's just a beautiful simplicity
to the dovetail notch.
It holds.
It bonds.
You don't need to have any nails.
It's going to be there forever.
All right.
That a pretty tight fit in there.
That's gorgeous.
Yeah.
The base logs aren't that hard.
You can just kind of roll them into place.
But the higher you get up on the wall, the harder and harder
it is to lift these heavy things.
Just roll it all in place, if you can.
OK.
Ha!
Ooh!
God all mighty.
And that tore that corner up.
We've got to figure out some way to pick these things up
that's not so dangerous and, hopefully, it's
a little faster.
What about some heavy equipment or something like--
I don't mind using the new tools
or trying something like a track hoe,
if it can save us holes on the floor,
or breaking a leg, or something.
My neighbor, Frank, owes me a favor.
And he's got a big old track hoe.
If he's not using it, I might be able to borrow it.
Let's go talk to him and see what we can do.
NARRATOR: Eustace is trying his hand at a new tool.
I think he said these control that.
Let me just push one.
Let me see if I pull it, what happens.
Whoa.
It's really interesting in working with this machine.
You know, you go from zero to 100 about half a second here.
So you just have to really be careful with these levers.
Wow.
That wasn't too bad.
All right.
Let me see if I can figure how to let it down.
NARRATOR: Lowering the logs into position
requires precision to get the dovetail notches to interlock,
and Eustace is learning as he goes.
Sweet.
That's what I'm talking about.
Woo!
This might be the easiest job of stacking up
cabin logs that I've ever had.
I think we're going to get all these cabin
logs up today after all because this
is really speeding things up.
That's not close enough.
You can come down a little bit more.
[SCREAMS] Eustace!
Ah!
NARRATOR: 200 pounds of raw timber
have dealt Raleigh a crushing blow.
What happened?
Oh, my hand.
Oh, good lord.
The daggone log came down on it.
Man!
I'm going to sit down.
I need to sit.
Yeah.
It looks like it's shagged up right there.
See if you can move it.
Ah.
Wow.
We need to get you to the hospital.
NARRATOR: Raleigh races to urgent care after suffering
a crushing blow to his hand.
I'm worried about Raleigh.
These logs are so heavy they can easily
crush all the bones in a hand.
So what did you do to this?
Well, a log dropped on it.
Smashed it.
Between two logs.
OK.
Point to me where it bothers you the most.
Well, can you see that bulge right--
Yeah.
That's the pain there.
And this finger, I can't really move without it--
Without it really just hurting.
It's like a nine out of 10.
Right.
I've never seen him express this level of pain,
so I know it's got to be serious.
Because he's pretty tough to begin with.
So you did break it.
Ah, my god.
You got it pretty good, right in the shaft of it.
Didn't break it in a couple of pieces.
So I don't think we need to rush you or go do any surgery on it.
We'll be able to splint it.
Right.
So that's good news.
But we do need to protect it for a while and let it heal, OK?
The most important thing here is
trying to take care of Raleigh's hand,
just because he's got hurt hand.
But, at the same time, I know that somebody with a hurt hand
can't do nearly as much work around the farm.
So it might be a real limitation here.
NARRATOR: It will take at least three weeks before Raleigh will
be out of the brace, and six weeks before
the bone heals completely.
There's so much more to do on the cabin,
and I'm not any good just sitting
around with a broken hand.
I came here to work and learn.
So I need this hand to heal fast so we can get back on it.