The Birth Of A Wooden House

For anyone interested in exquisite woodcraft, this documentary movie from Northmen: The Northern Guild of Master Craftsmen uncovers the process of building a wooden house with hand tools and local materials – starting with finding timber in the local forest till finishing the living space.

“To preserve the wood from the spoiling, fame posts, sills, top beams and final cladding boards are treated with fire and pine tar mixed with Tung oil. This wood preservation technique was adapted from the Japanese traditional wood preservation technique Shou Sugi Ban (焼杉板).”

Master Craftsman

“I built my house from trees that I felled with an axe and two man crosscut saw in my own forest. I did it following the research of old carpenter’s calendar that coniferous trees should be felled in January’s first days when the new moon rises and the deciduous trees should be felled in the winter time during the old moon. In winter time trees are sleeping and the juice and moisture content is very low in them. As time passes timber felled in winter becomes light and strong.

In the building process I used mostly traditional carpenters hand tools – axes, hand saws, timber framing chisels and slicks, old Stanley planes, augers, draw knives and mostly human energy. All the ground work for fundamentals and the basement earth digging was done by hand with shovels. The foundation consists mostly of bigger and smaller rocks and boulders. Lime, sand and concrete mixture are using only in small amounts – to hold the boulders together. The visible part over the ground level – boulder mosaic has been masoned with hand split local granite.”

Master Craftsman

About Northmen:
We are a guild of northern master craftsmen who use our heritage of craftsmanship handed down through many generations to design and create woodworking tools, knives, weapons – bows and swords, leather goods and watches. Our process, our method and mission is to keep these traditions and crafts alive and well. In this high-tech age, our own traditional craftsmanship is flourishing.