Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1911-03-22

ne1ghbor. If you should choose to SETTLE
among a group OF steep upand-downs, quite re-
moved from wagon road a little nearer to q
trail, and yet greater and laborious overland
distance from a sawmill, it is obvious that you
VIII have to depend, to great Degree upon your
own resources and upon your ability to create
with your own hands from those things which
nature has provided in well-wooded country
Imagine yourself placed in one of these val
legs or upon Of these foothills with no great
er amount of baggage, tools and provisions than
could be conveyed over a country of this char
acter with yoke Of oxen. Then to be COM
manded Here Is the forest and all it contains
go, prepare for yourself your future abode"
This Is story of home making under such
conditions. The progress Of the work is illus
trated and In It's completion no other than the
raw materials Of the forest entered into the struc-
ture or its furnishings, save small amount of
hardware and incidentals forming portion of the
initial supplies brought in q settlers outfit
Two young men, homesteaders, both city bred,
completed the entire work, unassisted.
OF the tools used the d0uble-bitted ak per-
formed the gre.ter portion Of the heavy work It
followed In the wake OF the crosscut saw after
the telling OF the trees, and, from then on was
the chief implement Of construction. With it
every duty of preparing the logs for raising them
Into their positions i'll the building was most ade-
quately performed First it 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 sur
faces of the halflogs, 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 even
more skill in the use of an ak. Those few of the
native inhabitants of the forest who are most pro-
| hcient in making the dovetailed notches which
are necessary in completing a perfect set of
lnterlocklng t1mbers are known as corner men,"
At native house raising the ones chosen for the
work 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 successiveoperation of preparing
the logs and raising the framework of the structure
In going on to the flooring, shingling, window
framing parttioning, finishing and furnishing
you would know how it was all accomplished in
the absence of the products of a 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 an ak; two or three steel
wedges and as many, hand made, Of hickory; a
frow, with hickory handle, the blade made Of a
section of iron tire; mallet and maui, each
cut from unseasoned hickory timber.
The selection Of perfect board trees" is
guess work to degree, as practiced by the ma
tives. Out Of every four trees chosen by the
woodsmans system Of identifying MARKS usually
only one 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