Summer Camp at Rabbit Rock 2005 A Photo Essay

Larry L. Dill's   New Hope Journal   Personal Essays and Public Opinions since 1979           September, 2005

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The Zen of Personal Architecture The Building of Rockledge, "Le Petit Salon de Roc" A Photographic Essay by Deborah Gaddy with Commentary by Larry L. Dill Page Two

The vertical pole framing follows a tradition I started in Nacogdoches in the 1970s of framing out the building in heavy rough logs, some buried 2 feet in the ground and then filling in the walls with whatever material was suitable.  The lower horizontal cross beams are placed according to where the bottom of the windows in that wall will be placed.  I am standing where the bcak door will be. The front door will be directly across on the right.

The dog, AK, who weighs about 50 pounds, shows how small the cabin will be.  But he knows instinctively that it is going to be some sort of house. Perhaps a dog house.  You can see in the crooked logs the future problems I will encounter.  When my daughter, Camen, asked me how I figured out how to work with the crooked logs, I told her that you have to be able to imagine a straightline running down the center of the log, whether horizontal or vertical and when you build the house you measure everything from the imaginary line rather than from the log itself, just as AK is imagining that he is inside a house that does not yet exist.  Directly in front of AK and to my right is the pile of remaining rocks that will form the lower walls of the house.  In the far right foreground, covered in black plastic is the sand pile for the mortar and the tubs of dry cement.  The water needed to make the cement (though not visible in the photo) has already been piped down from the same spring that feeds the main lodge.   The main lodge is about 100 yards up the road in the upper right hand corner of the photo.

Here I have completed the loft floor which is of 1x4 pine boards of the cheapest grade available.  The loft will be 8 feet high at its highest point and with a floor space of 8x8.  Because the pose seems to merit it I will describe here my outfit.  The leather vest is pigskin salvaged from the gay thrift store in Austin, Texas when I realized a few years ago on a trip to Rabbit Rock that like chaps for the chest it would be a rugged form of protection while working.  The utility apron was purchased from an army surplus store in Silver City, New Mexico. It had once belonged to a Mexican named Joe Morales (whose name is written in black felt pen in three different spellings all ovever the apron) who had hocked it there.  I asked how long it had been in hock and was told two years.  I said, ok I'll take it then.

My intention all along for this cabin was to get the roof on as soon as possible. So the cabin is being built as if it were a picnic pavilion at a roadside park.  I did make one concession.  Here I am notching logs to be the plates for the rafters, but as described in the previous photo I have already laid the loft floor.  It is what I am kneeling on to do the notching.  By putting in the loft floor before going forward with the the rafters I have given myself a scaffold from which to launch the roof.  The log I am hewing is made of hickory and has been stripped of its bark to prevent insect damage, a step hardly necessary in the locust logs used for the main structure which have their own natural resistance to insect damage.  The chisel I am using belonged to Deborah's grandfather and the hammer, my favorite hammer, belonged to my grandfather and then to my father. Both have their original hickory handles.  The hammer is at least 80 years old.  I have used it myself on three log cabins and dozens of furniture and other carpentry projects.  I know personally of two houses and a barn my grandfather used it for (and that does not count his years as a professional carpenter) and my father used it for everything he built all my life.

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