August 3rd '10 - Second Day of Heavy Building

This day was our most substantial day in regards to the building yet. Starting out bright and early, we got changed into our Iron Age Gear and headed our to perform the  first immediate tasks at hand. We felt as though our posts were too high, reaching about the height of my chin. As the roof of a roundhouse slopes, the sides do not need to be head height. To make our house more historically correct, Richard began cutting a few inches off the tops of the posts and as a result, had to drill new holes into the tops. While he was busy correcting the miscalculations of earlier, Garrett and I ventured out to cut down small Poplars to be used in-between the main posts. These posts are hammered deeply into the ground and are used to wattle the willows through, creating extremely strong walls.

Armed with a Billhook, I cut down approx 18 trees. The trees were chose were in danger of being cut down through road-works anyway, so we felt it would be 'saving them' and putting them to a better use. Garrett sliced off the branches with the aid of a Kukri and we took them back to our building site. Many of the trees were able to be cut into two's and three's to make the 34 smaller posts we needed. Two of the poplar posts went in-between each of the main posts.

Once the poplars were collected, we went to work on the next part of the project. With the use of a heavy iron rod I made holes for all 34 posts, while Garrett and Richard worked to cut the poplars to size and pointed the ends of the posts to make them penetrate the ground with more ease. Richard also began pegging the doorframe posts together, drilling a hole between the posts and hammering in a wooden peg to hold them together. Next the poplar posts had to go in. Each post was set into the hole I had already crafted before Richard and Garrett took a hand held post pounder to drive them into the earth until they were solidly in place.

Some of the tools we've used.

Slowly but surely, it is starting to look a little more like a house...