The Cordwood workshop was an unqualified success that exceeded many of our expectations.
There was a great deal of preparation work that was done prior to the workshop. Most of this preparation involved peeling cedar logs, squarely bucking them into 8" long pieces of cordwood with a chainsaw, and generating coarse-grained sawdust.
On the day of the workshop, we met on the deck of the Perrine house and had some quick coffee and breakfast and everybody introduced themselves.
Then we piled into a bus and went to Peter's house to get a closer look at his timber-framed and cordwood infilled sauna.
We also demonstrated how to mark and buck up cedar logs into 8" rounds while simultaneously generating coarse-grained sawdust.
Then it was off to the Timber Frame. Here, Peter explains how to cleanup the ends of the cordwood rounds using a coarse rasp.
A lot of folks spent some time cleaning up cordwood, including the kids!
Down the hill, we had a recipe for our special mortar mix nailed to the shed post.
Mixing mortar was one of the day's most laborious and dirty jobs. Every wheelbarrow full of mortar had to be pushed uphill to the studio.
Here is the soaking wet sawdust we used in our mortar mixture to retard and even out the drying process:
Peter demonstrated how to lay two lines of mortar and span it with cordwood to get folks started.
We had some quick learners and very, hard workers!!
The workshop participants were really amazing. Many stayed much, much later than we had anticipated, and some even returned well past midnight to perform some crucial late-night tuck pointing.
The final result was absolutely stunning:
The 3' high cordwood "wainscotting" on three sides of the structure, capped with cedar trim boards is absolutely gorgeous. While covering part of the base of the timbers, it also accentuates the timber frame and gives some sense to the final overall scale of the building.
