Chinking: The material used to fill chinks (i.e., long cracks, openings, or fissures), especially between logs that form the exterior walls of log cabin construction. Where the cracks are small, the filling material is often mud or plaster; where the cracks are large, the filling may include wood chips, pebbles, straw, or small sticks.
Imagine frosting a giant cake. That’s kind of what chinking a log cabin is like except replace your stand mixer and spatula with a wheel barrel and a hoe, your moutwatering buttercream frosting with sand and cement and your off-set knife with your hands. The first step in the chinking process is to clad your hands with sturdy rubber gloves (this prevents the lime in the cement from eating away your skin, yuck), grab a five gallon bucket full of cement and pick out your favorite hole in the wall. Next press handfuls of cement into the wire backing between the logs to create a solid base for future chinking. Always press the cement firmly into place to prevent pockets of air from forming. After this layer dries, press in another layer starting at the bottom of your log with an inward and upward motion using super wrist power. This presses the cement firmly in between the logs and creates and excellent seal. After your finished with this step your thinking to yourself, “this looks horribly messy”, and you would be right. As the final coat dries you have what looks like bulbous amounts of cement oozing out between the logs. This is where the finesse comes into play. Like a sculptor, you scrape the excess cement off shaping and smoothing it into it’s final desired shape and voilà.
We arrived at the Farm to a cool, fall morning. Not great chinking weather but there was the promise of a warmer day. Dad, Janice, Phil and his friend Larry were already on the job when we arrived. In between carpentry work inside the cabin, Phil would put the finishing touches on the chinked logs, shaping them just before they dried and would “clean up” the logs that had already dried and been shaped. This means scraping and brushing any lingering cement off the logs, making them camera ready.
We broke for lunch around 11am and met Phil and Larry at Mary’s Place on North Water. It was still chilly out and it was nice to sit in a warm, comfortable diner with a hearty appetite. After lunch we headed back to the Farm and proceeded to chink to our hearts content.
While we were chinking machines, Josh, Jill and Levi met Norma at the Goddard School for a Fall Festival, did a little shopping and went to see “Hotel Transylvania” at the movies. After we cleaned up the work site, Dad took Terry to the office to make a pair of glasses, Janice went next door to see Bill, I hopped in the shower and changed clothes and Chris came over and prepped hamburgers for dinner. After dinner we all fell out on the couch and fell into a stupor until it was time for us to head home.
