Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Stacked 2x4 construction

Just curious if this method is used in other regions of the country.

This is NE Oregon, where there used to be a considerable amount of sawmills. I see lots of outbuildings, cabins, and even homes that are built in this fashion, probably just by utilizing mill ends, leftovers, rejects, etc.

The joints in outbuildings are usually left exposed and visible, but I've seen older homes that have walls framed like this but then sheathed on both sides. Can't even tell once the finishes are on that the walls are stacked like this.






Is this common anywhere else, or just a regional thing?

I've never seen it here in eastern N.C.

Lots of logic in that... FOR THE TIME PERIOD.

Nails were expensive... Wood was not.

Bat insulation did not exist...

Strong and easy to build... etc.

Are they still building like that? I would assume not, but I have certainly been wrong before.

To answer the question, I have seen them in hollers before, mostly in Buchanan WVA, but a few out here in the Lynchburg area too.

Look at the grain in that wood.
Not widely available today.
Interesting build design, never seen it in the south east.

To build a "typical" 8' modern wall you would use 12 pieces of 2x4x8'... plus drywall, siding, insulation.

To build the wall shown would take 64 pieces of modern 2x4x 8 foot lumber.

If 8/4 it would be 48 as shown.

Good lumber was MUCH MUCH cheaper back then.

I built some small rental cabins like that.

I used mostly 'mill ends' that were 14 to 24 inches long.

For floor and roof sheeting I used 1x6, 1x8, 1x10 and 1x12 mill ends cut to 16 inches.

Rafters and floor joists were the old telephone pole cross ties that had once supported colored glass insulators. If I recall they were either 10 or 12 feet in length and about 4x5 inches w/h.

I got those for free when they were being removed along the railroad, glass insulators intact.
The mill ends cost me $10 per pickup bed full when dumped in by the front-end loader at the mill.

It was a time of little cash flow for me.
I rented out those cabins for years and eventually sheeted the exteriors with 2 inch foam board and OSB.

Everybody liked the butcher block appearance interiors.

It'd take a few truckloads to complete a cabin but with nails and rolled roofing included they cost less than 4 or $500 each to construct.

Never seen this before but just simple lap joints. Roof pitch looks like 3-12 pitch or less. Any pics of the inside?

I bet there is a lot of live edge showing inside.

That stuff is mill scrap.

Seen one of them up here only cuz the guy got access to a bunch of military base spare lumber otherwise it's a waste of 2x4s and you better have a spray foam factory as you're going to fill in every crack I think they used felt or something on that old one I seen they call it a piece of s***

Mine were in my campground and used as summer rental cabins.

KOA stole my idea and started building Kamp Kabins in their campgrounds.



I was years ahead of them.

Tide Change;
Good afternoon sir, I hope your part of the world is getting the mild winter we're having up here thus far and that you're well.

In our part of south central BC, I have seen a couple smaller houses or better said cabins built like that and an octagon house built with full dimension 2"x 6" planks that way.

If I was to guess at their age, I'd say just post war, perhaps pre, but somehow I don't believe they were made as far back as the Depression.

On the octagon house, the roof was sheathed with some sort of metal that was from the printing industry as there were either flyers or newspapers on it as I recall. Please understand it was nearly 40 years back that we saw it so I'm reaching back into the time machine big time for this.

In the earlier days when this area was settled, boards were quite expensive apparently, as we'd see logs from cabin bases, but any and all boards were pulled up and used elsewhere.

There's a local church in the small village we're closest to, there's a church which was initially 16 miles up the mountain in a mining camp. In order to salvage the wood, they actually blasted the church with dynamite to loosen the boards, then they took it apart moved it into town and reassembled it, where it stands today near where our daughter and her husband's place is.

https://blastedchurch.com/story/

Here's a link to some photos of it today.

https://okfallsunited.ca/

Back to that method of construction though, if I'm not wrong, the prairie grain elevators that I recall as a kid were built with wood on the flat like that or at least some of it was. Again the way back machine isn't quite firing on all cylinders, but when they were taking the elevators down, they salvaged tons and tons of wood from them.

Sorry for the meandering response, but for sure Merry Christmas to you and yours.

Dwayne

They were as common as weeds here in Northern Calif. The logging railroads used to employ 'trackwalkers' and they had a cabin every 6 or 7 miles and would inspect and do minor maintenance on their section. Usually it was some old bachelor type, often times with an injury and those cabins were the center of his world. Most of the cabins interior walls were done in newspaper and or cardboard for insulation. What could be seen of the newspapers made for some interesting reading in later years. McCloud River Lumber Company, because of the snow, used 2 man trackwalkers. One spring in the late 30's they had to shut down, too much snow, everybody went to town. One of the trackwalkers partners got hurt in a car wreck and they discovered at the company hospital the trackwalker was a woman. Her partner got quite a ribbing for not discovering the fact over the course of a whole winter.

I remember reading about someone who bought an old farmhouse in New England somewhere. It had siding that was junk. They pulled the siding off to replace it and found the walls were made like that but of 6x6 oak. If I remember right, they got a professional to finish the wood and didn't reside it. I would have done the same.

Welcome to Termite Town

😃

Fortunately, termites ain't a thing in cold dry climates like NW Montana.

No heartworms or fleas for my mutts either.

Pest Control mf'ers gotta make a living off the hard stuff like spiders and bats.

Pretty cool to see.

Unless you had a way to get scrap 2x4s it wouldn't make sense with today's lumber prices.

-Jake

My hunch is the millworkers back then built some of these structures Johnny Cash style.

Throw the rejects in the back of the pickup truck after your shift, eventually you have enough lumber to put up your barn / machine shed / outhouse / whatever.

I've never seen it exactly as that here in the Upper Midwest/Great Lakes region. We build like that, just don't make em into 2x4's - keep the whole log round lol.

Hi Dwayne - pretty cool story about the church, thanks for the links. Merry Christmas to you and your family as well.