Monthly Archives

February 2015

Two Great Classic Books about Old Barns

By Timber Framing, Traditional Building
Old Barns

Curious about old barns? Check out these two classic books

Old barns litter the American countryside everywhere you look. Many are mediocre, some are nice, and few are outstanding. And usually, the older the barn, the grander the construction. Sadly, the truly outstanding barns are few and far in-between. As industrial agriculture eats up acres and acres (and everything/everyone on them), all barns of old are left to crumble. Though once the most important building on a small family farm, they are mostly mere symbols now. Most “barns” these days are soulless metal boxes built with reckless speed and probably with no more of a lifespan relative to the time they take to build.

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Wanted: Your Feedback and Comments!

By Uncategorized

pug-dog-shopEDIT: I’ve just learned from a reader that Disqus may not be the best choice, because the system keeps track of your comments and they cannot be deleted. That doesn’t sound all that great to me. I’m currently re-evaluating my choice and considering going back to the default WordPress comment system, and hoping that an oddball plugin is causing my quirk with the comments periodically disabling themselves. Any other input would be great!

Maintaining this blog extends beyond just writing and posting new articles. There’s a fair amount of fussing and managing WordPress and other web stuff, too.

Anyway, without boring you too much here… I’ve had a nagging problem with the WordPress comments settings changing themselves for a couple of years now without any good advice about how to resolve the problem. More specifically, the comments basically disable themselves periodically, so people cannot post comments unless I somehow catch the problem after it happens.

Today, I’ve updated the comments feature on the blog to a third party system. To that effect, I would love your feedback on the new system — please let me know how it works for you.

You can leave comments as a guest without registering, and if you already use Disqus elsewhere, you can log in with your information here. I would dearly appreciate any comments and feedback about this change. And if you find that you suddenly cannot comment on a new post, please contact me and let me know! Thanks for reading!

 

how to make cob

How to Mix the Perfect Batch of Cob

By Uncategorized, Cob Building
Building With Cob

Stomping a batch of cob on a recycled lumber tarp

In the seven years I’ve run The Year of Mud and written about building with cob, I realize I haven’t written a simple ‘how to mix cob’ post. For many folks, particularly anyone coming across my various cob oven articles online, it may not actually be obvious how you mix cob, whether it’s for an oven, bench, building a house, etc. So, better late than never — here is a handy reference if you want to mix the perfect batch of cob for your project!

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Mini Workbench Photo Update

By Woodworking
Jointing Split Top Roubo Workbench Top

Sending one half of the (heavy) workbench top over the jointer

During my five day Roubo workbench building marathon with Jacob, I didn’t take much time to pick up the camera. But I did snap a few photos when I could. The days were rather long. Now that we’re home and the workbench is painfully close to completion, I thought I would share a few from our recent expedition.

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DIY Woodworking Workbench Plans

By Woodworking
split top roubo workbench plans

Roubo-style Ash Workbench

The time has finally arrived. After almost two years of dreaming about building a workbench for woodworking, and sitting on a cache of wood for the project for nearly a year, we’re building a Roubo workbench. This style of bench is named after André Jacob Roubo, a French woodworker who lived during the 18th century and wrote a massive three volume series on the subject of working wood called L’Art du Menuisier (The Art of the Joiner).

One of his particular drawings of a workbench design has become newly popularized by the likes of Christopher Schwarz and other current day woodworkers. Lost Art Press, a small publishing outfit is actually translating Roubo’s writings into English. Schwarz’s book on workbenches and blog probably helped catapult the Roubo design to the point where you can find many, many images and videos of different people’s own Roubo workbench designs.

Having only been recently exposed to this type of workbench a couple of years ago, it’s hard to imagine wanting to build anything else. The beauty of the Roubo workbench lies in the sheer simplicity, versatility, functionality, and heft of the design.

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