You’re totally right. Also this is way more relaxing to watch. No (scripted) chaos or whatever to make it seem cooler and more action packed, just the content you came for.
I’ve always been curious about this - we know that fires were a big problem in the olden days, but were there any mitigating measures taken to keep oilcloth and pitch-sealed wood from catching flames? Natural sources of boron retardants or the like?
@@danowest yeah, that entire towns made totally of wood was kind of major factor. It's why London was rebuilt in brick after the Great Fire. Boston too, I think.
@@andrewevanjohn1482 It seems not much. I think most people at this time were limited to proactive vigilance, and if a fire does occur they had to quickly salvage the most valuable things in the house (which is what the 'bed key' and 'salvage bags' are for - quick collection and dismantling of valuables). They did have many forms of fire resistant materials, but they weren't widely available to safeguard an entire house until asbestos mining and refining became a really big industry in the states during the 19th century.
There were doors in Europe and Asia made to far superior standards. This is a frontier door. It wasnt even in its own day meant to be the best door possible. Frequently families played a game of hopskotch with family homes. They'd build a cabin like this then a small brick home then add to it a while then more and more modern until today. Unbroken lineage of door making before and since.
They used to have folks in workhouses and jails pick apart old ropes for turning into just that kind of wadding. You can imagine it was very tiring and unpleasant work with stiff and tightly wound old ship rigging and the like. Wikipedia tells me it was also a common punishment detail for sailors who'd been caught misbehaving.
Quite a while ago I read Two Years Before the Mast. If I recall, sailors work was unending, but yes, the less pleasant work was usually reserved for the lazy guys, but the amount of unpleasant work available generally made for everyone getting their share.
@@aaronloiselle7404 They put the bad carpenter in irons and parade him around to town for him to see err of his way, unless there is no blacksmith and the carpenters reign of terror goes unchecked... Just guessing here but it seems legit.
Same with stonemasons. In a castle build in Europe at that time the guilds frequently cooperated to form novel and otherwise impossible solutions. Some of which remain architectural world heritage sites to this day. Particularly in the UK from whence many of the founders of this nation carried forth
I remember, as a kid, helping my older brother, restore an old lobster boat and caulking the seams with a robe like substance mixed with tar! Great memories and fascinating to see the same technique used on a door! Great video!
I recently bought a 15 acre homestead in Maine with a hand built cabin on it. My husband and I are living here fulltime. We're literally going to be using these techniques to fix the cabin so that we can live in it this winter. We've been staying in our rv, and I can't wait to actually be warm by our woodstove next winter. Thank you for everything you do!
Except log cabins like that dot the wilderness all over the united states, especially in the Rockies and Appalachian but they're also a common sight throughout the deep south in the back woods and very rural areas. They're time tested structures used for hunting, camping, get aways and vacation. And so long as they're well maintained can last decades.
@@matildas3177 That's rather optimistic and assumes a dry climate where wood rot wouldn't compromise a vital part of the structure, forcing a repair that would effectively require dismantling it. Unless wood is treated and covered by some form of paint or covering, wood will eventually rot or succumb to moisture, and even then sun bleaching will compromise it no matter how much you maintain it. It can last decades without any major repairs so long as insect and rot is kept to a minimum but everything needs repairs at some point and for a typical log cabin, if the repair is near the base of the structure which it generally always is considering it's sitting on the ground where insects and moisture stay, it would require dismantling the entire cabin to replace those logs.
@@ComotoseOnAnime in my part of the world replacing parts of or entire logs is considered an integral part of normal maintenance of a timber cabin. That's why we have timber structures that are literal centuries old all over the country.
But would Washington's men have any? That's the theme of this cabin... what a primitive, thrown-together cabin would be like; the kind you slap up so you can survive building a better one...
@@maugusenergy7008 Sure are! Ive treated and oil painted hundreds on Nantucket and most historical renos Ive worked on. My carpenters would hand cut and nail lead into corners as well. Now I torch the insides to a light char and then 50/50. 🙏
I was about to suggest it too. Also: dry moss can be used instead of ropes. Strips of hardy leather could be nailed to the door frame to further cover the gaps between frame and door. Old blanket or tarp can be hung from the top of the frame (on the inside of the room of course) to reduce the drafts even further. And finally, small covered vestibule could be build outside, with another door at the end. It would isolate main room from the outside cold, reduce amount of snow brought in by either wind or feet, and provide space to leave wet or snow covered outer garments and shoes. All those methods were used in old Polish houses I've seen preserved in open-air museums.
Why not just use battens to cover the gaps between the vertical boards. Blocks/stops attached to the doorframe to seal the edges. No fussing, No tar/ caulk.
@@joshh5336 My first thought was grooving the plank edges for an inlay strip or packing a channel between the boards, and/or shaping them on a V or a flat angle to nest with thinner packing (felt scrap, etc), but they're beyond that point.
I ws just about to suggest filling the gap in the door with oakum. The spaces around the sides of the door could be covered with leather,, attached so that it can flex to allow the door to open and close.
Tarred oakum and leather sealing on the door would do wonders for the habitability of the house - this rope isn't sealing much, since you can see the outside right through it.
That's a fantastic idea Ace! The only thing I wonder about it how often you would need to replace it, even with that in mind I bet that idea would've been GREAT during the winter time!
@@wedohedoshedooowee828 Replace it when the wind starts coming in around the door. Wrap yourself in a nice warm blanket and lie down by the fireplace to keep warm
@@defeqel6537 I think also that you can use the hide for a lot of other things, especially if it's big/numerous enough to cover a door of that size, so it be inefficient use of materials for this repair. Granted probably you could tar up some trimmings of rags or junk leather and it would be a good substitute for the rope.
I would assume even a ruff blanket hanging from the door frame would help cut down on the draft. But most cabins are always colder in the winter, from my experience from camping. An open fire all, a hot meal and clothing that covers the whole body you don't notice it so bad.
That would work to block drafts while inside for the evening, but might need to be tied up or folded away while you're out. I'm not sure many frontier folks could afford to use that much fabric for the purpose? Might be helpful next winter, though!
It's Brandon the Stoic Blue Man! Hope to see some more blacksmithing projects soon. I never would've guessed at using rope with tar to fix the gaps! I would've guessed a stick and daub but I guess that would be extremely temporary at the very best with the constant movement of the door. Neat!
I cannot emphasize enough just how soothing your channel is. Whether it's the cabin, the meals, you give off such pure excitement over things that would either be forgotten or ignored. Hopefully in 300 years someone does the equivalent to what you do for our century. Much love from the Nutmeg State!
I’m curious how long a door like that would have gone without a protective coat of linseed oil paint being put on it. Was raw wood more common in the 18th century, as far as you can tell, or is that just further down the to-do list for the cabin?
Cabins here in Appalachia had untreated wood doors,usually white oak. There are several in my area(southern West Virginia) that are mostly original, but a few have been relocated to historic sites more suitable. I've visited several of them for more than 30 years and aside from roof patching,they haven't been altered in those 30+ years. As long as water can be shed and it can dry immediately after rain and snow the wood will not rot.
@@charlesmay8251 Not true,many were built from squared logs and are still around today. Here in West Virginia the lower logs,door and window frames were usually made of rot resistant white oak while the majority of the logs were tulip poplar or pine. The chinking was tucked up under the above log and ran to the outer edge of the lower log. This allowed the walls to shed water efficiently. Rechinking every year or as needed was just an accepted part of living in a cabin. Timber frame homes were derived from some European cultures, but many settlers were born,raised,and died in the same log cabin. Round log cabins last just as long assuming proper precautions are used and maintenance tended too.
I think it's usually pine tree sap mixed with Charcoal dust and maybe some other materials, but those two are generally the base ingredients from what I've seen.
Comforting video. Using what's at hand, to improve the homestead. There's an old nautical phrase "The Devil to pay, and no pitch hot!". The Devil was supposedly a difficult-to-caulk deck seam by the rail. Paying meant stuffing into a crack. And now we see what 'no pitch hot' meant!
Your great big boards on the door are a perfect illustration of why board siding has battens laid across where the boards meet. Board and batten. The big boards can expand and contract with the weather, and so can the battens - but there's enough overlap that coverage is maintained despite the movement.
Usually with smaller gaps between planks oakum - fibres pulled apart from old rope- would be used. My grandfather taught me a rhyme that talked about "Pulling the donkey's tail", as if it was a common saying. Then I saw a rope that was being picked apart and realised that it looked just like the illustrations of Eeyore's tail in Winnie the Pooh. The saying must have come from Victorian times .
My grandpa’s old house had old iron thumb latches just like that!!! It didn’t have rotating door handles for most of the doors. The one I remember the best is the old kitchen door, and the mechanism worked exactly on the same principle, just on a slightly smaller scale and I’m pretty sure it was mass produced. I think his house was built in the 1880’s by Swedish immigrants.
I know this vid is a year old now and I'm sure someone has probably suggested it somewhere in the 709 comments that came before mine, but I had to wonder why you didn't just put trim pieces on the door jam on both sides and the top of the doorway? Because your door opens inwards, you could've just made three trim pieces...two for each side edge and one across the top...that were thick enough to cover all of the edge gaps in the door, then shut the door, push the trim pieces flush with the door and then nailed them in place on the door jam on each side and the top. And it could've been done on the bottom as well if need be. It would've made your doorway a few inches smaller but I don't think that's a big deal...especially considering that you are definitely gaining (a seal around the entire door) more than you are losing (doorway width). IDK...that was just the first thing that came to my mind for the edge gaps.
How about battens on the door cracks nailed to one side of the crack to cover the pine tarred rope? A leather flap seal could be used to seal the edge as well.
Small battens nailed or pegged to the casing to form a door frame for the edges. Battens on the cracks that's how many of the old doors I have seen and built where done. Nails would be expensive so wooden pegs would suffice and often be used instead of expensive nails.
Back in the day carpenters from Nordic cultures would pack moss in very tightly between all of the logs and planks. In the winter when weather was damp it swelled up and blocked the leaks, in summer it would dry out and shrink down allowing airflow again.
Great vlog today! Welcome to "This Old (construction method and design) House"! Jon, didn't your mother ever tell you not to play with liquid pine tar on the dining room table? (think - heating in pine tar to the bottom of wooden cross country skis) :)
I'm a blacksmith who forges with a charcoal side blast (much like the setup ya'll have going on) and I recommend lowering the walls of your forge so the top of your fuel pile is an inch or two above the walls. This way you can access the neutral layer of the fire better and you can heat up a larger section of metal.
I want to do this!!!!! You guys are killing me! So cool to work through issues within the parameters of what was available in the 18th Cent. Great work once again! Thanks guys!
You could use battens to cover the gaps, which allow for expansion and mud or pitch from behind to seal the air. But I definitely learned something about making a rope last longer! Always enjoy your channel!!
Guys, this video is amazing !!! Your cabin is awesome. Watching you working on it is very interesting. Keep going, you do a wonderful and precious work. That's reenactment ! That's living history ! Thank you so much !!!
When I saw this episode, I remembered the door to "Minnie's Haberdashery" from Tarantino's "Hateful Eight". Well, let's see how the door fares when a blizzard comes. The real traditional way to fix a door in the colonies is probably waiting for a religiously persecuted Master Doormaker to emigrate from the Europe.
Incredible teaching, fascinating to watch!! Everything was so labor intensive in those times. Thank you for sharing your skills & efforts. Good work gentlemen!!👍👍
There are still door latches like that one in Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. It's a 24 hour operation so modern methods of door operation aren't necessary 😐 Historical preservation of the buildings is also the situation, Noah was a baby when Portsmouth was building ships 🙃
Question: why didn’t you just make a frame to stop the door as it closes? That would have closed off some of the gapping from shrinkage and allow for some expansion without sacrificing fit. I’ve seen that on many colonial buildings, so it isn’t a modern architectural addition.
I live in a house from the 1500s in England. We have handles like this on our doors, but we also have wooden latches which work in a similar way but instead of an iron leaver, it’s a leather cord. The wooden latch is hinged from further away and is quite large so gravity pulls it down and secures the door.
My great grandfather used to tell me stories about living in this type of structure ... he said snow would blow thru the gaps in the walls at night, so he would use mud, paper (whatever he could find) to sure things up. The interior was so cold he had to chip away ice from the water basin to clean his face in the morning. A very difficult way of life ... cold in the winter, hot in the summer.
After you put the ropes in, you could have poured tar into the gaps over the rope to help seal it up a bit better. IIRC you just have a dirt floor in there anyway, so if some leaks through, who cares? In fact, you could still do this with it installed, just paint it into the gaps with a brush.
Just double the thickness with more boards over the cracks. Shiplapping the board edges would have been a much better idea but that's a mitered rip cut without a table saw.
were there no door stop moldings in the 18th century? Even today none of our doors fit tight to the jamb, but a doorstop molding (with some modern weather stripping) forms the seal on the face of the door
Back in the 18th Century, in winter they would have nailed a blanket or bearskin to the inside of the door's lintel to act as a flap to keep the cold out.
i used some of these methods in a house i used to live due to a lack of money and a crappy landlord. you would be surprised how well it works and how good it looks, we eventually remodeled in that style it looked awesome
