The Greenville journal. [volume] (Greenville, Ohio) 1850-1918, 1911-03-16

eight to ten miles distant from your nearest
neighbor. If you should so choose to settle,
among group of steep up-and-downs, quite
moved from wagon road, little nearer to
trail, and yet greater and laborous overland
distance from a sawmill, it is obvious that you
will have to depend, to great degree, upon your
own resources and upon your ability to create
with your own hands from those things which
4 nature has provided in well-wooded country.
Imagine yourself placed in one of these val
leys upon of these foothills, with no great
Ell amount of baggage, tools and provisions than
could be conveyed over country Of this char
acter with yoke Of Then, to be
manded, Here is the forest and all 1t contains
CO. prepare for yourself your future abode"
This Is a story of home making under such
conditions. The progress of the work is illus
trated and in its completion other than the
raw materials Of the forest entered into the struc
ture or its furnishings, small amount of
hardware and incdentals forming portion of the
initial supplies brought in a settlers outfit.
Two young men, homesteaders, both city bred,
completed the entire work, unassisted.
OF the tools used the doublebitted ak per-
formed the greater portion of the heavy work. 1t
followed in the wake of the cross-cut after
the Telling of the trees, and from then on was
the chief implement Of construction. With 1t
every duty of preparing the logs for raising them
into their positions in the building most ade-
quately performed First 1t scored the logs
lengthwise, on two opposite sides, ready for wedg-
ing and splitting into semicircular halves. Then
1t followed as the tool for heWing the fiat
faces Of the half-logs, which, completed formed
the smooth inside walls Of the dwelling After
each log had been raised into position came the
task Of "notching down." which required
more skill in the use of an AK. Those few of the
native inhabitants of the forest who are most pro-
ficient in making the dovetailed notches which
are necessary in completing perfect set of
1nterocking timbers are known as corner men,"
At native house raising the ones chosen for the
work are usually skilled woodsmen residing in
widely separated settlements among the hills.
How we'll this part of the work was done by two
young men totally unaccustomed to pioneer life
is better illustrated in the series of photographs
which shows each successive operation Of preparing
the logs and raising the framework of the structure
In going on to the flooring, shingling, window
framing, paEtitioning, finishing and furnishing
you would know how it all accomplished in
the absence of the products of saw and plan
ing mill or any of the manufactures so essential
to building construction and home making.
Five very common tools constituted the board
making outfit. This primitive substitute for a
sawmill included ak; two three steel
wedges and as many, hand made, OF hickory; a
frow, with hickory handle, the blade made of
section of iron tire; mallet and a maui, each
cut from unseasoned hickory timber
The selection of perfect board trees is
guess work to degree, practiced by the ma
tives. Out of every four trees chosen by the
woodsman's system of Identifying marks, usually
only is perfectly adaptable to board making
by the method OF splitting with mallet and frow.
The most reliable way to select the right kind
of timber is to observe the general trend of the
crevices in the bark. The course of these lines
should be nearly perpendicular with the trunk.
Another good method of Judging a straight
grained trunk is to note the distribution and the
general design Of the scaly, turtle-shell patches