WHETHER ERECTING a log barn or a timber-frame barn, builders need four things: good timber, good tools, good sense, and good neighbors. These qualities were especially essential when construction was more dependent on hand labor, and the margin for error was virtually non-existent. The preparatory work required long hours of back-straining effort. Mistakes were unbearable. A towering tree, felled and hewn into a massive beam, then cured for a year, could not be replaced as easily as can dimensional lumber from the local lumber yard. If many men are working together with muscle and might, ropes and pike poles, to raise a section of barn frame (known as a bent), no one wants to hear “Oops, I measured wrong” when thousands of pounds of timber are nearly in place.
For those familiar with the architecture of timber-frame barns, terms like sills, purlins, girts, queen posts, braces, king posts, rafters, bays, and bents are just a few of the words in their working vocabulary. Words like mortise and tenon and peg are spoken with reverence because they refer to a frame built without nails with tremendous attention paid to every detail. The story pole, or measuring staff, is as important to a barn-builder as a compass is to a ship’s captain because on it is marked every essential measurement.
The building of a timber-frame barn begins with the aging of the timbers, as freshly cut wood is wet, heavy, and apt to split, warp, and twist. If a barn is built entirely by hand labor, a variety of tools are used to hew the logs square, measure lengths to ensure proper fit, and cut an opening into one (mortise) to receive a protruding piece from another (tenon). Meanwhile, other members of the frame are also being made so that, like pieces of a puzzle, every piece fits and bears its weight appropriately. Wooden pegs hold the frame together through holes (drilled with an auger) into the mortise and tenon joinery at corners, braces, and all other points where parts of the frame come together.
The same need for attention to detail was true for the construction of log barns, which were built using one of two styles: an “even tier” in which logs were laid evenly all the way around by being cut to fit into a corner post, or “alternating tier.” For the latter design, the logs were notched, using cuts such as square or round, v-notch or saddle notch, dovetail or half-dovetail. They were then fitted together. The roof was usually shingled with slabs salvaged from the tree’s outer layers and bark, 3 to 4 feet long and horizontally overlapped by about 50 percent. The space between the logs was filled with “chinking”: a mixture made from mud, straw, grass, or even cattle manure. This kept the cold out and warmth in. Upper logs were left unchinked to provide air flow as it was believed an air-tight barn was unhealthy for animals. A similar, but controversial, sentiment exists two centuries later with regard to pole buildings. Some people have attributed joint stiffness and lung infections in animals and rusting in machinery to the lack of air movement and condensation inside metal buildings. Refinements have been made and pole, or prefabricated buildings, are now used throughout the United States.
Controversy also exists over whether it is cheaper to put up a pole building than to repair a traditional timber-frame barn. There is no one answer, as there are many considerations, such as the condition of the existing barn and the intended use. Tax implications are high on the list since new construction is generally taxed higher than are repairs to an existing building. Many agree that a traditional barn is a more durable and infinitely more attractive structure. As traditional barns are now being re-sided in steel, another American adaptation is being created.
Amish barn builders work together to raise a bent.
Attention to detail shows in a pegged post and the braces of a 1900 timber-frame barn being dismantled for reconstruction at a new location.
The hand-hewn plate (horizontal beam at right) of this century-old barn stretches more than 40 feet. Rough-sawn roof boards from virgin timber are more than 18 inches wide.
Whereas the first log barns were essentially one box-like structure, later log or log crib barns might be four separate units with a second story above and an aisleway through the center, allowing for a wagon to completely pass through the barn side-to-side or end-to-end.
More early log barns and log homes still exist, hidden under boards, tar paper, or even metal or vinyl siding. For some, this was a matter of increasing the utility of the structure. For others, it was a means of dressing up an old barn to make it fit for a changing society which tended to associate log structures with being primitive or crude.
Log structures are still being built, though almost exclusively for display at historic sites, to teach the craft, or to become prestigious homes and lodges. Pioneers, who were eager to move out of a log structure, would shake their heads in wonderment.
Barn-building changed when builders had access to sawmills. The earliest known water-powered mill was built in Maine in 1623 but not until the early 1800s in the Midwest and further west. Steam later replaced waterpower and “up and down” saws were replaced by circular blades as early as 1838. This means that marks on posts and beams can reveal the approximate age of the barn as it can be seen whether the wood was processed in a sawmill and if so, what kind of blade was used. Other advancements came with the invention of planing and nail-making machines in the late 1700s. By the mid-twentieth century, barn builders had the benefit of tractors, trucks, hoists, and cranes to assist with the heavy and dangerous lifting. Dimensional and laminated lumber had taken the place of most solid timber-frame construction.
This log cabin was quite impressive in its day—the mid-1800s.
Craftsmanship has helped this northern log barn to remain in use more than one hundred and fifty years after it was built.
When done by hand, the foundation of the barn is built and mortises are cut into the sill or base supporting timbers. The bents are then prepared on the ground and positioned into place using a series of carefully coordinated steps, involving lifting, pushing with pike poles, and bracing with planks to take the full weight off the crew, while tapping the bases of the bent with mauls until each tenon lines up with and settles into the correct mortise in the sill. A gin pole may be used to aid the process as well. To place beams at the top of a frame, scaffolding is built and each beam is raised using muscle, ropes, and pulleys. Many injuries and fatalities have occurred in the process of building a traditional barn.
Teamwork is also essential when moving a barn. Barns have been moved for as long as they have been built, initially with the help of horses or oxen. But it is possible to move a barn if enough man- and womanpower can be garnered as proven in Bruno, Nebraska in July 1988 when 344 people took up position around a metal frame affixed to a 17,000-pound barn and in unison, lifted, walked, and moved it a short distance to higher ground. Each person bore about 56 pounds of barn and frame weight. The video of this feat has been viewed online thousands of times.
In the early hours of August 26, 2007, the Breeden Barn was moved from Matanuska to the grounds of the Museum of Alaska Transportation and Industry, Wasilla. The barn is actually two c. 1930s barns, one of which had already been moved once to be joined to the other.
Affectionately called “Old Girl” by its owner, this kit barn stands proudly in southwest Michigan.
The “Sylvania” was a 210-foot kit barn with a 14-foot-wide riding ring inside its outer walls. Sold by Sears, Roebuck and Company, this model was built on Meadowfarm in Orange, Virginia as a boarding stable.
Another type of barn raising that took place in America until about 1936 was the building of “kit barns.” Several companies already producing “kit houses,” by the late nineteenth century, expanded their line of pre-designed, precut, prepackaged homes to include barns and other farm buildings. A customer could choose from a variety of roof styles and could even purchase a round or polygonal barn. At its peak in 1919, Sears, Roebuck and Company offered twenty-six different models. The barns arrived with everything packaged and accounted for, right down to nails, shingles, and paint. Agricultural colleges and companies also sold a variety of barn, outbuilding and silo designs. The University of Illinois, for example, in 1910 published a bulletin, “The Economy of the Round Dairy Barn,” and in 1918 updated and republished it as “The Round Barn.”
Most barn raisings in twenty-first-century America, unless done the old-fashioned way, lack creativity and personality. Prefabricated metal buildings have come a long way as ventilators, cupolas, and ornate doors and windows have been added. But watching a stick-frame structure quickly fastened together with power equipment with screwed-on metal siding and roofing cannot take the place of the intimate relationship with timber, tools, and teamwork that was required to build the kind of barn that shaped America.
Back-breaking labor went into the building of a now-abandoned, century-old barn in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
