Draw Down

~Before

One of my log home clients needed two extra logs to complete the deck on the back of their log home, which was set up last Summer. A few weeks ago Pioneer sent two cedar post down on a truck that contained assorted logs and log furniture destined for several different client locations across the country. Unfortunately, the logs didn't make it to our destination in Pittsburg, Kansas with the load of furniture that was shipped to Mitch and Vicki: I'm guessing the two post were mistakenly off loaded on one of the prior stops, so on to "plan B".

A few months back I'd given my Madison County, Arkansas clients the two logs you see above from my personal inventory, but it turned out they were too large in diameter for their purpose--thus the special order of two 10" post from my friends at Pioneer. When I realized the post I'd ordered from Pioneer didn't make it here, I decided to just take the two post I'd given Paul and Karen initially and carve them down to about 10" in diameter. It turned out to be quite a task and took me about 5 hours of whacking, cutting and gouging with my box of hand tools. In the end, however, I was pleased with the results. The logs turned out nicely in my opinion. I made a good effort to give each of them as much character as I could muster, with the use of my Gransfors Bruks small Scandinavian forest axe, Gransfors Bruks draw knife and my personal slick provided by Pioneer. I must say the GB axe performed admirable, but the GB draw knife turned out to be way to small and light for removing material on this kind of project. Essentially, it's a finish knife. I'm going to look into obtaining a much beefier draw knife, so I'm better prepared for my next little log project. I'll keep you posted....

~After 5 hours of hand work (a true Pioneer craftsman could probably have down this in a lot less time than it took me)