Better for dried or green wood

[earlsyr]

I to am new to the building process.  I have built one shed out of old electric poles milled into 4Xwhatever then stacked.  My next project is cabin built out of whitepine cut into D shape for ease of handling.  I am curiouse as to whether I should work them green or let them season for a year or two.  Any comments would be greatly appreciated. and thanks.

ealsyr

[bigshow]

well for log building, Scandinavian scribe log building is designed to be shrink to fit for green logs.  I've heard some horror stories using dry, milled dlogs - warping, twisting, etc.  Dlogs seem to add a level of precision (tiny tongue and groove lateral) that seems to be a bit ambitious for a 30ft milled piece of timber that will inevitably find its way outside again.  Dry or not, let it stand outside - its gonna want to go round again and find its original shape.  Where, scandinavian scribe or even a chinked shell just needs to be square and level.  So, D shape or not...i think it depends on the lateral groove and notches.  Shrink to fit saddle notch, gaskets and/or chinking in the lateral - could be sound.  Oh, and 8" minimum diameter for the logs.  Man, if your doing this yourself...i'd really consider whole log and a good class.

[jpgreen]

Same interest here.

Been wanting to make small out buildings with 4x6's stacked to make good use of small diameter trees- pines, green.

One idea I've had is to drill and stack and run all thread bolts every so many feet from top to a bottom platform frame- running through the walls and tighten down the stack as it shrinks.  Screws are dang expensive, and I can get the allthread pretty reasonable.

To make things easy I wanted to use butt and pass joints, but I'm not sure how well they do when they shrink?

Do dovetails shrink together like the Scandinavian or swedish type joints?

Any thoughts on the all thread idea would be appreciated also..  8)

[bigshow]

jpgreen: sounds like you should check out piece en piece log building - kinda part timberframing/part log building.  You have posts and make a groove - straight or half dovetail, cut corresponding tongue on what will be the horizontally stacked timber and slide them down into the grooves in the posts.  Some log builders, even ones who scandinavian scribe, do put thru bolts thru the entire height of of the log wall and do exactly what your talking about - tighten them down from time to time. Its infuriating that there is no particular 'right way'.  This coming from the guy who gets tired of hearing 'it depends'.

[Stephen1]

if you are going to use green, count on 3\4" per height of wood wall and add that amount above doors & windows. It took 6 years for my walls to shrink 6" in height.
We have company up here uses threaded rod top of the wall down to a car spring in the basement under the wall, that way you get to tighten it a couple times a year.