"How To" Build This Log Cabin for $3,000

Rating:
Summary: Read This John
Review: Hey John, Happy Thanksgiving! I don't know your email address but if you could email me back that would be great. Letters just don't seem to be working for us. Say hi to Geri for me. Love Stephanie [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: A Helpful Guide for Those with Serious Ambition
Review: I get a kick out of John McPherson's books.

They're self-published guides that can teach you almost-forgotten crafts, such as how to tan deer skins with brains and ashes.

This book will show you how to build a log cabin SHELL (be forwarned) using simple hand tools and back-breaking effort.

To be fair, McPherson apparently considers a cabin complete when the log walls are up and chinked, and the roof is up and shingled. No doubt he doesn't need electricity or indoor plumbing. So, there's not anything here about how to FINISH a cabin--you know, silly things like wiring.

This book is an incredible guide on how to do about two-thirds of the work required to have a liveable cabin. I've lived in dwellings like the one he made, and it can get real thin, after a while.

What is really neat about this book is that it does show you how to erect a cabin in the old style. The most useful parts concern safety. Listen to the man so you won't get squashed like a bug, OK?

For those of you who are really determined, this book will be extremely valuable, since it is clear, practical, and very well-illustrated with about 300 photographs. For the rest, just read the book in your easy chair while drinking a cold bottle of beer, and then go back to watching a ballgame on the telly.

Rating:
Summary: ECONOMICAL LOG HOMES
Review: THIS BOOK WAS VERY HELPFUL, ESPECIALLY FOR FIRST HOME BUIDING PROJECTS. HAD EASY TO READ INFORMATION, GOOD INSTRUCTION AND HELPFULL HINTS THROUGH OUT THE BUIDING PROCESS.

Rating:
Summary: not so good
Review: This book, written in a so-called 'laid back style', is even hard to read for a foreigner like myself. Quoting from memory, a typical sentence might read like this: 'Put lotsa goop all over and a coupla nails here and there and you're alright'. In another place the author says he 'saw a list of the good woods for building log cabins once, but he lost it'. That's a little too laid back for my liking. The pictures on the cover are good, but on the inside they are ugly black-and-white photos with maybe two shades of gray. The author says he will 'cover notching in depth later', but that chapter must be missing in my copy. All I could find about notching could be summarized by 'scoop out the wood with the chainsaw'. He guides you through the mistakes he made in building the cabin (which weren't few). That may be helpful to avoid pitfalls, but a better idea would probably be to buy a book written by someone who really knows how to build a log cabin. "If I can build a log cabin, you can too" says the author, and I believe him.