Section Two t Uarrett Record seaionTw°
Complete News Coverage Of Warren County
Volume 80 15c Per Copy Warrenton, County Of Warren, North Carolina Thursday, November 3, 1977 Number 44
Raising
Your
Own
Roof
Lost Art Of Log Cabin Building
Being Revived In Warren County
B\ KKN FERRUCCIO
Staff \\ riter
Laura Bennie and Charlie Davis began building their
log cabin in the spring of 1974
"Originally,' says Laura Bennie. "we were going to
move a tobacco barn onto the site anH maybe put a bunk
bed and table inside. But then we ran into all kinds of
' • problems such as rotten timber.
"So, we thought, why don't we build a log cabin. We've
got rocks in the fields for the foundation; we've got the
trees and the land." Everything was there."
Then Laura Bennie and Charlie began to notice how log
cabins were constructed. They chose the finest features
« from each of the cabins they inspected and assimilated
them into what they thought would be the ideal cabin.
"However," insists Laura Bennie, "we did not
, consciously decide to build the cabin as we did. It took
* shape as we went along
"We thought a rock foundation would be the prettiest.
We laid the rocks and then hand-dug the cellar.
"At first we wanted a space just large enough to store
the canoe, but then we decided to make the cellar deeper
and dug 12-15 feet "
Laura Bennie and Charlie went to the mountains of
North Carolina where most of the cabins they viewed had
the dove-tail notch. They liked it because they felt it to be
prettier and more advantageous than the regular square
notch.
"The advantage of the dove-tailed notch," says Laura
Bennie, "is that it interlocks the logs and pulls them even
closer together with time.
"And wherever we could, we used locust pegs instead
of nails because a nail will rust in time and logs will
loosen, but locust is hard wood and won't rot. It will swell
and in time become even more tight."
Last February, things began to move very quickly. In
one week, wall logs were laid 11 high.
Charlie threaded the eye of a pulley with a cable. He the cabin. Finally, he hooked the chain hoist to the pulley,
then clamped the cable to two trees, one at each end of and the logs were lifted in place.
At this stage, rafters and wind-beams will have to be raised and lowered right over the cathedral beams.
Charlie had spent many a month in the woods,
selecting the choicest trees, cutting them down with a
chain saw, hewing them with a foot adze, then
transporting them by a flatbed, pulled sometimes by
tractor, sometimes by pick-up truck, to the site. There
the logs were treated and stacked.
Sometimes Blaine Tharrington would be there to help
out and the two would work side by side all day with chain
saw and foot adze.
Blaine hand-hewed the upstairs banister. In a
seemingly effortless way, he carried it like a spear high
above his shoulder to the cabin where it was hoisted up
the wall and pegged in place.
With his great strength and the stocking hat he wore
last February, Blaine might have been mistaken for Paul
Bunyan.
It was-AUVhitmore who had suggested to Charlie that
he borrow Bobby Bolton's chain hoist to left the logs.
Charlie thought this the wisest course of action to take.
So he threaded the eye of a pulley with a cable. He then
clamped the cable to two trees, one at each end of the
cabin Finally, he hooked the chain hoist to the pulley.
This allowed Charlie to pull the chain hoist along the
cable to the edge of the log cabin's foundation where a
log, which had been dragged by a tractor, was waiting.
The first four logs were hoisted to the necessary height
and laid on the foundation where they were notched and
set in place.
The logs that came after were hoisted up until Charlie
and his crew of volunteers could set them down on the
wall logs that had already been placed. These new logs
would then be notched and fitted on to the preceding logs.
By this procedure, the cabin grew 11 logs high during
one week's work last February. All volunteers were from
the Warrenton area but Larry McCall, carpenter and
friend of Laura Bennie and Charlie, who had come down
from Hot Springs
Charlie, Laura Bennie and Blaine all agree that the
most difficult and frustrating part of building the cabin
was putting on the roof, putting the rafters and windbeams
in place.
To make these parts, hewn logs and tier poles from
near-by tobacco barns were used.
By this time, the cathedral beams had been hewn,
notched and pegged in place and the subfloor of the
upstairs had been laid
With this much accomplished, the most challenging
part of the construction was about to begin.
The tier poles would be hoisted up and laid across the
cathedral beams, a considerable height from the floor.
Standing on the cathedral beams, with the balance of
an acrobat or tight-rope walker, Charlie would cut the
male notch out of the end of the first tier pole and the
female notch out of the end of the second by skillful use of
his chain saw. He would then fit the male and female
notches together and peg them.
At this stage of their construction, the rafters worked
like the legs of a compass. They could be pulled further
apart or pushed closer together until the correct distance
between them was discerned
A long board, serving as a temporary wind-beam,
would be nailed to the rafters to keep them from moving.
Then the whole structure, which looked like a large A,
would be lifted.
If the apex of the A touched the string above it that ran
parallel to the floor, the structure could be lowered, laid
across the cathedral beams and the wind-beam notched
and pegged permanently to the rafters.
The structure would then be raised again and set
permanently into its place.
But if the apex of the A did not touch the string, the
board serving as temporary wind-beam would have to be
taken off, the legs adjusted, the board renailed to them,
and the whole structure raised once again for perhaps yet
another adjustment.
The most precarious moment of the whole operation
occurred when Charlie, a running chain saw in his right
hand, stepped ffom a cathedral beam onto a wind-beam
which had already been pegged into the rafters.
But, as the wind-beam was upside down, it was pushed
through the pegs when Charlie stepped on it.
His body must have done his thinking for him, for he
fell in such a way as to allow the cathedral beam to catch
him under the arms. And there he hung, smiling, the
chain saw still running in his right hand.
Everybody knows there is some element of risk in
using a chain saw. The same holds true for the foot adze.
Arthur Williams, teacher at John Graham, showed
Charlie how to use the foot adze, and Charlie says it was a
few months before he got to where he could use it quickly
and skillfully.
But it is a dangerous tool to use It has a wooden handle
and the head of it is curved. You straddle a log and swing
the axe between your legs, thus stripping off the bark and
squaring the log at the same time.
Watching Charlie at work one day, Gid Thompson,
always helpful with advice, cautioned him: "Be careful
of that foot adze, son. It don't know ya "
But Charlie was never hurt, either by chain saw or foot
adze, and it is said around these parts that the foot adze is
a lost art which Charlie has revived
Laura Bennie says the problem of chinking is now
holding up the progress of the cabin.
There is no authority to turn to, she says, because
"everybody had their own way of doing it. Some people
chinked with red clay, som<»jjpth.gray. Everybody did it
their own way. You can ask five different people and get
five different opinions."
She does not want to use cement, preferring something
more natural and is thinking about using white dirt
"We won't know if it works until we do it. We hope it
sticks a long time." she says.
When Laura Bennie was asked if she had any advice to
give potential cabin builders, she said "Everything about
it is going to be a lot harder than you thought it would be
and it is going to take a lot longer I don't know. It
wouldn't be that had to do another one because we've
learned a lot "
She added that "the hardest part is what you're doing
right then, because you haven't done it before and don't
know how you're going to do it."
A log cabin has certain associations concerning lifestyle
and many of these associations hold true for Charlie
and Laura Bennie Davis
They walk through the woods and fields of their farm
out at Warren Plains and those of Afton-Elberon
They meander along the solitary stretch of Kerr Lake
shore-line known as Beer Beach.
They have been known to knife their canoe through
Fishing Creek, and camp high on a rock over the
Roanoke or pitch their tent on the island of Ocracoke,
where they might even take their horses, and their
huskies. Jason and Shocca
The life they live with their baby girl. Benjamin
Mariah has many characteristics reminiscent of the
frontier spirit.
A long board Serving as a temporary wind-beam would
be nailed to the rafter* to keep them from moving. Then,
the whole structure, which looked like a large A would be
lifted.