The Year of Mud: Cob and natural building Rotating Header Image

Posts from ‘March, 2008’

Peeling bark

The past couple of days, I began peeling bark off of the logs for the rafters of my living roof. I’m using a borrowed drawknife, a long, curved, two-handled blade for peeling back the bark. It’s sorta like whittling, only on a bigger scale. The idea is to peel back both the bark and cambium, [...]

Human-powered transportation

Today, Thomas and I went out to the land to collect and transport some of the pin oak trees I’ve cut to the village. We went out with the infamous ‘Cynder cart’ (a homemade handcart), which would serve as our sturdy, two-wheeled transport vehicle.
First, we had to drag the 30 foot long trees out to [...]

Lumberjacking

The days have been packed recently. A few days ago, I began cutting down pin oak trees for the living roof of my cob house. On Tuesday morning, Dan lent me a hand and we took down three trees in an hour and a half, despite the ground being quite muddy.
This morning, I went out [...]

The latest cob house designs

In an earlier post about my cob cottage plans, I mentioned that I had some new design ideas. I’ve done some thinking about a new shape for the house, this latest (and perhaps final?) design being more like a spiral. (Or a scotch tape dispenser if you think about it.)
Check it out:

Originally, the design was [...]