You might want to check out Trooper Toms log house building. I build a log house from scratch back in the late 80’s using his book. Along with some other ideas. All the way from cutting down the trees….peeling them…designing and building the log house. The property is was built on no longer has any connection to me but the house still stands.
What are you presently reading?
- Thread starter mikeriley
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Thanks for the suggestion I will check it out!!!
Here is another classic. More detail than Trooper Tom’s. But Trooper Tom is straightforward and works just fine. If you want more detail for things like dovetailing….scribing logs..then Mackies is a good book. I have the mackie old spiral bound version I borrowed from a friend years ago and never returned it LOL. Gotta get that book back to my friend! I do see a cheaper updated version than the old spiral bound version is also in this link.
I didn’t have to have alot of tools and power lifts. I just picked a building site with two good sized trees diagonal above the site. I strung a used 5/8” steel cable (probably off a crane of sorts) that I bought from a metal recycling plant. I held it on place around the trees with large nails or spikes at an appropriate height above the building site. Then I clamped tightly around the trees with double cable clamps and then rigged a pulling system to ride back and forth down the cable across the building site. A pulley system that could jump off the cable. I put a chain tackle and block hooked to the rolling pully that could not jump off the cable. I had timber hooks end attached to the chain and tackle lift (no wooden handles on the hooks). My logs I pulled to the building site with a chevy impala and chain wrapped around the log and bumper LOL. BACK then cars had steel bumpers! Most any pickup would have worked. Once I got the logs there and they were peeled I would just roll the pully system over the log site hook timber hooks in a log. Wrap a chain for safety and lift the log single handly with the heavy duty chain and block tackle. Then with a rope I pulled the entire thing with the log hooked on it over the building site and let it down on the walls that were going up. Since cable was strung diagonal I could turn the log in the best position for which side of the wall it was gonna go on. Let it down… unhook it and roll it over to the wall end by end with timber hooks.
I just went up with the logs drilled holes pinning them together with 1/2 galvanized water pipe and a drive pin. I had a machine shop lathe down the drive pin out of a steel rod so it would slide easily but snuggly into the inside of the pipe and easily pulled out to drive the next pipe. The drive pin had a shoulder that would rest on the outside of the pipe and have about 4 inches above the shoulder to pound on with a sledge hammer. I drilled the holes in the logs so the galvanized pipe would go in, but tight.
I knew where I wanted my windows ( as I drew on an 11” x 8” paper) my homemade house building plans LOL. As the wall would go up I would pin one log to the one below it staggering the pins a ft or so apart on each successive log. Staggered on the the outside perimeter of any door or windows placement. I just raised the wall up this way. Once it got to the height I wanted I plumb bobbed it and drew in the door and window openings within markings of the galvanized staggered pins and I took a chain saw and went down the plumbed bobbed marked lines. Thereby cutting my openings for doors and windows and they would be plumb! Then I just cased them in all around to the logs with 2” by 10” (or however wide the logs are) thick boards and larges spike nails. I think I also liquid nailed the casing to the logs ends. Then hammered them in place leveling them with a level. They were generally level on the plumb bobbed sides but still the edge had to be leveled vertically and the bottom and top of casing had to be leveled. For the top and bottom casing boards I had to level the log flat (with a chain Saw) so the board would lay snuggly against the log. The bottom case board I sloped slightly down towards the outside of the wall so when it rained water would run off. Windows were later hung in the spots.
I had a welder make me a heavy duty peelers with a wood handle on it. A piece truck leaf spring is heavy enough. It had to be heavy to push through little knots and things on the log. Some logs I sat on and peeled with a draw knife. Logs look prettier if peeled in the fall. Cut the trees when sap is down. Peel in the fall. Peeling is alot of work. And peeled logs are gonna check (that means “cracks” will form as they dry). I discovered a lazy way to get the bark off trees. Build a platform off ground. Put the logs on it spray with insecticide if worried about bark beatles. Leave them there for several months. The logs will cure and the bark will loosen and I could then peel the bark off in big chunks with my bare hands. The log underneath would have virtually no “checks” in it. There would be a few beatle trails here and there. But nothing serious. Peeling logs in the fall while they are green looks prettier but is alot of work.
Trooper Toms book talks about some of these techniques and how to get the foundation ready for the first logs..etc.
Mackies book is more detailed. How to make and use a scribe…etc and scribe the logs to fit better..so on and so on…
I just built more Trooper Toms style and chinked the logs well after stuffing insulation between them and driving small nails into a log and bending them up to the log above it every 6” inches or more. That gave the mortar mix something to grab onto. I mixed cement with sand (a person probably could just brick mortar) and with a putty knife worked and smoothed the mortar in working down the log. Once it cured good I painted it white. Looked right pretty against
the logs as I stained the logs outside dark brown and sprayed them with several coats of water seal like Thompson water seal (but wallmarts brand LOL). The white mortar mix looked nice against the dark logs. They make profesional chinking material. I just never bothered with it. Installed windows and doors and left interior logs natural or stained if I wanted to.
For flooring I attached a 2” by 10” (if i recall correctly) to the bottom log all the way around) made some sills in middle of floor level with top of the board. Then run floor joist on top 2”x10” or 2x8 (don’t remember) them put down 5/8” or 3/4” tongue and groove plywood flooring down. Made for a sturdy floor if space joists close enough together.
Anyway here is link for Mackies book. More advanced stuff. Troopers book more pragmatic and simple to grasp but both are good books. I mostly followed Troopers ideas and added a few things along french style of building.
Have fun if you decide to build. Be careful. Take all safety precautions. Try to never stand directly under logs. Always think through things well before shifting and moving logs. It ain’t like working with tiny 2”x4”. One mistake can do a body in.
My log building was a product of the wind..the rain..the sun…adapting as working off my sheet of hand drawn plans…LOL. Much like trading…Going where the market takes me…ROFL. A window here…a door there…….etc.
I ain’t giving building advice in these posts here except be careful so don’t take these posts as building advice. I am just relating how I did it.
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I first heard of trooper Tom through Mother Earth magazine and ordered his manual. That was years ago. The ideas worked for me. Very Well. But log building is a lot of work but most rewarding. I think I got the idea of a cable between two trees from Mackies book however I had worked around bridge building in younger years so had some experience working with heavy timber and chains.. cables..etc. I picked two sturdy trees for my pully system but in addition back staked the trees with smaller cable too if I remember much like telephone and power poles have staked guide wires. Trooper Tom built several smaller cabins. Here is his larger 4500 ft house.
https://www.motherearthnews.com/sus...environment/building-log-cabins-zmaz86ndzgoe/
https://www.motherearthnews.com/sus...environment/building-log-cabins-zmaz86ndzgoe/
I have yet to read the original 'Market Wizards'. But I am starting with the 'Stock Market Wizards' book for now. Been planing for some time to get through all of Jack's books.
I have read enough about forex trading in the beginning. I am presently reading charts and looking for my entry and exit points.
Oh, and another book from my local library (yes you can laugh). I'm not really expecting to learn anything here, just curious what the authors are preaching to the masses.
So, done reading that timing book. I was ok, nothing special. Odd, the author said near the end that professionals only sell options. ????
Then goes into his explanation why only idiots buy options, because sellers are favored. Oh really? So it's that simple I guess!
In any case, I just started the next library book:
Then goes into his explanation why only idiots buy options, because sellers are favored. Oh really? So it's that simple I guess!
In any case, I just started the next library book:
I got interested in trading back in the day from all those mail outs were sent by the cigar smoking cowboy. Then I bought a lot of Jake Bernstein's stuff on seasonal commodities. But it was Christopher Farrells books day trading that pushed me towards scalping.
Concerning Farrell’s books Here is a quote from Wiley Books:
“His latest book, released in 2009, is the hardcover updated and revised second edition of Day Trade Online seen here in the orange cover. Written as a first time author at the age of 25 in 1999, the first edition of Day Trade Online (green cover) became a Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, USA Today and New York Times business bestseller and sold over 100,000 copies. He is also the author of The Day Trader's Survival Guide, written in 1999 and released in 2000 thru Harper Collins. He has been a guest on numerous television and radio programs, including CNBC and BBC World News, featured in magazines such as BusinessWeek and Worth, and has been a guest speaker at MIT. In addition. Mr Farrell was a featured chapter in former TheStreet.com editor Mark Ingebretsen's book "The Guts and Glory of Daytrading: True Stories of Day Traders Who have Made or Lost $1,000,000.00 "
Still occasionally for fun I look back through some of these books. I have gobs of other trading books along with the Livermore classic. Sometimes I will flip through them. It is interesting to see how one’s ability to grasp what trading authors are saying as a trader gets more and more knowledge “under their belt” so to speak. What seemed hard to understand in the earlier years later leaps out of a book nowadays where it was apparently hidden cognitively from me but was there all the time, really right there in plain sight. I just couldn’t “see” it.
Farrell was the main force that induced me to scalping and I have never looked back. Even though his strategies became less effective and hard to implement when they went to decimals and tiny spreads. Nowadays I most focus on reading books about price action and apply that to scalping. By scalping I now mean something like 1 to 8 points in an instrument such as the ES. I know that is not the traditional definition for scalping but it is what I use. I am anything but traditional and often buck tradition and established rules in trading and in other areas of life. I like to find work arounds.
So, nowadays books about price action such as those by Al Brooks grab my interest. Other PA authors too grab my attention.
Concerning Farrell’s books Here is a quote from Wiley Books:
“His latest book, released in 2009, is the hardcover updated and revised second edition of Day Trade Online seen here in the orange cover. Written as a first time author at the age of 25 in 1999, the first edition of Day Trade Online (green cover) became a Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, USA Today and New York Times business bestseller and sold over 100,000 copies. He is also the author of The Day Trader's Survival Guide, written in 1999 and released in 2000 thru Harper Collins. He has been a guest on numerous television and radio programs, including CNBC and BBC World News, featured in magazines such as BusinessWeek and Worth, and has been a guest speaker at MIT. In addition. Mr Farrell was a featured chapter in former TheStreet.com editor Mark Ingebretsen's book "The Guts and Glory of Daytrading: True Stories of Day Traders Who have Made or Lost $1,000,000.00 "
Still occasionally for fun I look back through some of these books. I have gobs of other trading books along with the Livermore classic. Sometimes I will flip through them. It is interesting to see how one’s ability to grasp what trading authors are saying as a trader gets more and more knowledge “under their belt” so to speak. What seemed hard to understand in the earlier years later leaps out of a book nowadays where it was apparently hidden cognitively from me but was there all the time, really right there in plain sight. I just couldn’t “see” it.
Farrell was the main force that induced me to scalping and I have never looked back. Even though his strategies became less effective and hard to implement when they went to decimals and tiny spreads. Nowadays I most focus on reading books about price action and apply that to scalping. By scalping I now mean something like 1 to 8 points in an instrument such as the ES. I know that is not the traditional definition for scalping but it is what I use. I am anything but traditional and often buck tradition and established rules in trading and in other areas of life. I like to find work arounds.
So, nowadays books about price action such as those by Al Brooks grab my interest. Other PA authors too grab my attention.