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Build Your Own Log Cabin - How to Build a Log Cabin Yourself - excerpt from the book "The Scientific American Boy" by A. Russell Bond Our third expedition completed the number of logs we required for the log cabin. Two large 12-foot logs were chosen for the foundation logs at the front and rear of the building. The logs were flattened along the bottom so that they would have a firmer bearing on the ground, and particularly on the corners, where they rested on foundation stones. Each log was now notched about a foot from the ends. The notches were 8 inches long and about 2 inches deep. Care was taken to place those on one log squarely opposite the notches on the other. A pair of 14-foot logs were now laid across the foundation logs and rolled along them until another half-turn would have dropped them into the notches (shown in Fig. 266). Fig. 266. Foundation Logs Notched. Then notches were cut in the 14-foot logs to correspond, so that when the final half-turn was given...

How to Build a Cave - DIY Cave - excerpt from the book "The Scientific American Boy" by A. Russell Bond Bill had read somewhere that if you dig a cave under a tree the roots of the tree will support the ground on top and make a natural and substantial roof. It sounded very reasonable, we thought; in fact, we never questioned the truth of the statement, because we had somehow gotten the notion that books were never wrong, and that whatever was set up in type must surely be so. But events proved that the man who wrote that book had never attempted to build a cave in the manner he described, at least not in the loose,  sandy soil of south Jersey. A large spreading cedar was selected as the tree which should support the roof of our cave. It was situated on a mound at the edge of the woods. First a passageway, or ditch, was dug at the bottom, and then we begun tunneling in the side of the mound under the roots of the tree. For a while the ground above held, and our tunnel had reac...