# 150 year old solid oak house



## gav (Oct 12, 2009)

My inlaws bought this place last year, and it's been undergoing renovation slowly.
It's made from hand sawn 10cm thick oak slabs that are dovetailed together at the corners and doweled between slabs. The fit slab to slab is amazingly tight, no caulking used. The dovetails are also very accurate. Apparently this is the same kind of oak that Venice is built on. Incidentally, the White house is built from stone from the island of Brac in Croatia.(nothing to do with this though)
This farm house was moved to it's current position over 40 years ago from a village several kilometers away. As the story goes, it was moved in one piece ! As explained to me, they somehow rolled it on logs, with the use of a group going ahead and placing a stake in the ground and then using a block and tackle or winch to pull it along !!
Quite an effort, which apparently took 2 weeks to complete.

I'm posting it because firstly it's an amazing piece of woodwork, and more specifically, I found one compound dovetail that is quite strange.
I'm wondering if it might be the builders 'signature'
Anyone seen anything like this before ?


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## xplorx4 (Dec 1, 2008)

When I was in high school my folks bought a farm house out side of Chagrin Falls, Ohio. It was 150 years old over 50 years ago. The foundation was hand cut sand stone blocks resting on bedrock. The sill plates were 8x8 hand hewn oak, the joists were oak logs hewn flat on one side. The flooring was random width tongue and groved 2" thick oak, The exterior walls were 2x4's run horizonal "off set" to function as "lath board" for plaster, the walls were stiffened with vertical members. It was a farm house and they were clearing the land so lumber was no problem. It was amazing what was once built!!


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## drasbell (Feb 6, 2009)

Great story would like to here more on your house its very intersting.


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## harrysin (Jan 15, 2007)

gav said:


> My inlaws bought this place last year, and it's been undergoing renovation slowly.
> It's made from hand sawn 10cm thick oak slabs that are dovetailed together at the corners and doweled between slabs. The fit slab to slab is amazingly tight, no caulking used. The dovetails are also very accurate. Apparently this is the same kind of oak that Venice is built on. Incidentally, the White house is built from stone from the island of Brac in Croatia.(nothing to do with this though)
> This farm house was moved to it's current position over 40 years ago from a village several kilometers away. As the story goes, it was moved in one piece ! As explained to me, they somehow rolled it on logs, with the use of a group going ahead and placing a stake in the ground and then using a block and tackle or winch to pull it along !!
> Quite an effort, which apparently took 2 weeks to complete.
> ...


What a fascinating story Gav and what workmanship, all with hand tools, I feel embarrassed when I think of all the power tools that I have and still wouldn't be able to construct such a cottage.


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## gav (Oct 12, 2009)

These days, when people do actually make that type of house with compound dovetails, they use a chainsaw and a jig such as this one....
Dovetail log homes and cabins ~ Great Northern Dovetailors

The curved one in my first picture has really got me thinking though. I see no reason for it. I'm going to have to start taking a look at the other wooden houses in the area and see if I can find any more examples like it.

I'm tempted to make a play house for my son out there in the same fashion, probably couldn't afford to do it in oak though. Would be quite a challenge.


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## harrysin (Jan 15, 2007)

If only those old craftsmen had those tools Gav.


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## TwoSkies57 (Feb 23, 2009)

Gav..

that really is quite a unique dovetail. The first of that type I've ever seen and very impressive considering the amount of work that had to go into it. Like everything else though, I'm sure the builder did enough of em that it came quite easily. I don't see any real mechanical advantage to the joint that would warrant such effort? Perhaps it has something to do with controlling the amount of water (rain/melting snow etc.) that might weep its way into the joint, and migrate into the inside of the structure????

I live in the foorhills of the Appalachian mountains here in the NE US.. There are still hundreds of old log/wood cabins scattered about the area and several restoration sites
that gather old structures and create settlement recreations and I've never seen anything like this one. Very cool!!!

thanks for the post


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## gav (Oct 12, 2009)

That is the only dovetail on the house like that, all the rest are standard straight cut. That's why I was thinking it might be the builders 'signature feature'.
If they'd done the whole house like that, they'd probably still be going today !


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## BigJimAK (Mar 13, 2009)

Heck Gavin, I've never seen a picture of a dovetailed house. There's certainly none here in Alaska!



gav said:


> My inlaws bought this place last year, and it's been undergoing renovation slowly.
> It's made from hand sawn 10cm thick oak slabs that are dovetailed together at the corners and doweled between slabs. The fit slab to slab is amazingly tight, no caulking used. The dovetails are also very accurate. Apparently this is the same kind of oak that Venice is built on. Incidentally, the White house is built from stone from the island of Brac in Croatia.(nothing to do with this though)
> This farm house was moved to it's current position over 40 years ago from a village several kilometers away. As the story goes, it was moved in one piece ! As explained to me, they somehow rolled it on logs, with the use of a group going ahead and placing a stake in the ground and then using a block and tackle or winch to pull it along !!
> Quite an effort, which apparently took 2 weeks to complete.
> ...


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## Hamlin (Dec 25, 2005)

It just shows what craftsmanship really meant in those days. I'd say that, that unique DT joint IS the builders signature. It's not unheard of. Many builders in the day used to "stuff" unique to their style.


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## istracpsboss (Sep 14, 2008)

Hi Gav

Where is it located?

Cheers

Peter


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## gav (Oct 12, 2009)

Hi Peter,
It's in a small village called Donja Gračenica. A little bit too close to the A3 between Popavača and Kutina.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...8994,16.673126&spn=0.186946,0.308647&t=h&z=12

There's a lot of those types of houses out that way, a lot going to ruin unfortunately.


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## istracpsboss (Sep 14, 2008)

Thanks Gav. It is interesting that you referenced it by the road number. One thing that has fascinated me here is that whereas everywhere else in Europe people talk of road numbers, here they never seem to use them. They'll talk of the road between two towns or, here in Istria, perhaps the Ypsilon. All the main roads have numbers. For trunk roads they even have two numbers: the Croatian one and the European one. No-one ever seems to know them, only the foreigners. 
Even in towns like Porec, they'll talk of where a bank is or some other landmark rather than the name of the road. Although I've worked in Porec for 8 years, there are only a couple of road names that seem to be regularly used by name. If anyone ever used any of the others, I'd need to check a map.

Those Slavonian buildings are fascinating. Over here, old buildings are always stone. Although oak is plentiful, it isn't usually all that big. Stone, though, is everywhere. When Agrolaguna buy land for turning into vineyards, they use big tractors to haul out all the huge lumps of limestone buried in it. I think it is probably all originally glacial, deposited when the glaciers retreated in the last ice age.

Cheers

Peter


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## rwyoung (Aug 3, 2008)

I'm with gav in thinking the curvy tails are just a signature joint. 

My next thought is that is probably wasn't as difficult as you might think to cut them. If the wood was green, not sopping wet green but rather having seasoned for a little bit, there could be a lot of compression as the joint went together without fear of breaking anything. The grain runs the same direction in the joints so if all the wood is the same species, if it went together tight it would stay tight as it finished drying. 

I'm guessing that back in the day, the dovetails were roughed in with an axe and then refined with a slick. If you had a large gouge, and probably a pair of in- and out-cannel, cutting the curvy tails would be done the same way.

You can see checking in the other DT pictures which is what made me think of putting it together while the wood still had a relatively high moisture content. That checking could be from the time just after construction or it could have come along much later, I can't say.

Anyway, nifty!


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## rwyoung (Aug 3, 2008)

Looking more closely at the second picture, that looks like each board has a "tail" and they are cut such that when the boards are put side-by-side it also forms the pin. Since the shot is not straight-on I' can't tell if both the vertical and horizontal boards have the same pieces cut in them.

Even if they don't you could gang cut at least 1/2 the boards with a saw. The shoulders look quite clean too.

If I was going to make up a bunch of these to be cut (handtools or power tools) I'd seriously think about how to make a jig (appliance) to make it easier. Remember, just because somebody uses a handsaw or chisel to shape something doesn't mean they don't use a jig to guide the work.


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## Damir 66 (Dec 18, 2009)

This oak house is typically for region name Posavina.Posavina is spread along a river Sava.In Posavina and Slavonia exist many oak forests.Today, many Croatian use this oak house for cottage.In village name Krapje all houses is from oak timber and all village is under the cover of UNESCO.


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## Knothead47 (Feb 10, 2010)

Is that a tile roof? I found this to be very interesting. I have never seen a dovetail like that. Thank you for sharing the story and pictures.


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## Damir 66 (Dec 18, 2009)

Yes, this is tile roof.We in Croatia this tile called "pepper".I don´t know why.


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## Metalhead781 (Jul 27, 2010)

The house i live in is estimated at 200 yrs or so. The main parts of the house is post and beam construction with pegs and halflap joints. 2 1/2" thick planks are spiked or pegged vertically on the outside of the beams and range from 6" wide to 12+" wide. There is very little spacing between the inside planks. Interior walls are build pretty much the same but with larger spacing between the planks. The rafters are hand hewn logs only flat on one side and most of them are cherry. about 6" in dia. the orriginal floor is 2" thick T&G hemlock. Hemlock was also used along with pine for the beams. Anything horizontal seams to be hemlock. Pine was left for the vertical beams. There really isn't any kind of special joinery but the carpenter that did the finish work must have been drunk most of the time. Nothing even looks square but was fitted that way.


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## janpan59 (Jun 13, 2010)

Wholey Molely, I gasped when I saw the first picture of the dovetail. Thanks for sharing this.

My Dad built a small barn in the 1950's out of rough Mahogany (just the framing). I don't recall where he got the Mahogany but it was back in the day when it was cheap..........it had to be because he was too!! LOL!!

Janice


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## Glenmore (Sep 10, 2004)

Gavin this the first time I've ever seen a dovetailed home and I seen a lot of barn and old farm house construction with mortise and tenon with the wooden pegs. Just amazing thanks for the pics. By the way the house how much is it off for the renovation probably pretty square with the type joinery.


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## gav (Oct 12, 2009)

External walls are still pretty square but internal walls are far from it. 
I'll be going out there next in September and will take some more photos. It's pretty much fully renovated now. I just need to build the kitchen benches and such.
Hopefully I can convince my mother-inlaw that solid wood is a much better choice than laminated particle board in this historic setting.


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## mtnmaniac (Aug 24, 2010)

gav said:


> External walls are still pretty square but internal walls are far from it.
> I'll be going out there next in September and will take some more photos. It's pretty much fully renovated now. I just need to build the kitchen benches and such.
> Hopefully I can convince my mother-inlaw that solid wood is a much better choice than laminated particle board in this historic setting.


Any updates since your September visit?


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## gav (Oct 12, 2009)

Was out there last week making part of the kitchen, forgot to take the camera though.
Everything is coming along nicely, almost all done.
I'm off to Australia next weekend so there won't be new pics for a while.
A little bonus to this renovation is that I get a bunch of rough sawn oak plank offcuts.
Look in the show and tell section for a box I just made with some.


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## KUMZUM (Jun 19, 2010)

gav said:


> My inlaws bought this place last year, and it's been undergoing renovation slowly.
> It's made from hand sawn 10cm thick oak slabs that are dovetailed together at the corners and doweled between slabs. The fit slab to slab is amazingly tight, no caulking used. The dovetails are also very accurate. Apparently this is the same kind of oak that Venice is built on. Incidentally, the White house is built from stone from the island of Brac in Croatia.(nothing to do with this though)
> This farm house was moved to it's current position over 40 years ago from a village several kilometers away. As the story goes, it was moved in one piece ! As explained to me, they somehow rolled it on logs, with the use of a group going ahead and placing a stake in the ground and then using a block and tackle or winch to pull it along !!
> Quite an effort, which apparently took 2 weeks to complete.
> ...



Thanks for posting. Growing up remodeling old homes, I am still amazed at the craftsmanship that went into some of them. Seeing time and dedication put into a home is great. The builder can be proud, that what he built still stands, while many around him have fallen.


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