A busy 6 months

As I've said before, a long lull in website updates always means a busy spell in the workshop...but this long has been too long. This time my excuse is largely the birth of my second son; I'd rather be with him and his brother in the evenings than staring at the computer screen.
But there have been some nice projects coming out of the workshop since my last post; a mixture of green oak framing and other structural timber work, and its time they were aired.

As mentionned before Christmas, I'd spent lots of time last year working with a client on the design of a traditional Swedish savusauna, a smoke sauna

We used authentic techniques learned from 2 Swedish cabin builders; logs are initially rounded on the top and grooved on the bottom, before being notched and lapped over the previous one. The shape of the lower log is then scribed into the bottom edge of the upper log, so that there is no gap between them. Over time the building settles, under its own weight and that of the turf roof, so doors and windows have to be designed with that settlement in mind.

The project took a lot of careful thought and planning, in a field different to one we're used to working in; but was immensly rewarding too.

It seems somewhat counter intuitive to spend weeks putting together an authentic log cabin style construction, and then to light a fire in it and shut the door. But this is the principal of a savusauna, and early tests seem to show that it works really, really well.