Rustic Cedar Log Cabin Woods Chapel Podium Jill's House Special Needs Children Ministry Virginia

very nice…glad to see you working with some red cedar..its a favorite of mine…i made my head board from it and i will always love the cedar..good job, this will be quite attractive in its new home….grizz

Another beautiful piece- again Mexican/Southwestern influence here… especially in the cross. Love it…

I have enjoyed working with Cedar Logs. We have a lot of it around here, and my ranching neighbors treat it like a noxious weed. So, I get all the cedar that I want to cut and mess with. I don't have a lumber mill, so I have to slab out the planks with a chainsaw, then joint them flat and plane the other side. It's fun to think outside of the box, and not with square edges and angles. The half-lap Wall Cross took some real head scratching.

I asked the Wife after I did these pieces if I could build a "bed" out of the cedar logs. Her response, "Do you have a customer for that?" That's my girl, always thinking of the bottom line. I was actually thinking of keeping it in my bedroom, and taking out the walnut contemporary platform bed I made a few years ago.

The podium has to ship by UPS, so I made it in pieces that would fit in a box, and that affects the overall design to some extent.

thanks for the comments.

there could always be the unknown customer ya know…hhmmm they never got back to me and they really wanted it…but…im sure you cant slip that one on her…lol…nice to know you have a lot of it available…if you get other orders that require it…you could get someone to mill a bunch for you if needed…nice pieces..

I say build the bed between orders. Sell the one you currently have.

Grizz: she's caught on to anything that I say, even the true stuff.
The between orders thing is a good idea, but I already have a bunch of stuff going as a hobby right now, a bedroom addition on the house, and four guitars I've started. Then, I could always mow the weeds down, or pick the three apple trees and pear tree, or paint the other end of the house, or fix the toilet, cut firewood, ......... And, I'm way behind on order filling with the Christmas rush not even started yet.

So, the bed will just have to wait…I was asked about a quote for a bed a couple of years ago, and just didn't have time to pursue it, maybe I should contact them and see if they are still interested. It involved carving a horse on the headboard and foot board, that sounds like fun now.

I'm sort of beyond building things that I want to keep, I just enjoy building them, and then I'm glad to see it leave, and we don't have much room for stuff to pile up here anyway.

thanks for the comments,
Mark

The podium goes with the cross really well. Great work. Glad to hear chain saw slabbing works. I have collected quite a bit of wood and have started the process but none of it is down to planing yet. Around here, the tree farms treat alder and maple like weeds )

Mark: A great looking podium. Nice job. Sorry I couldn't make it over to your home last week.

Beautiful piece Mark. Wonderful design, superb craftsmanship, stunning wood… a DeCou for sure!

Great podium I'm sure it will be talked about for many yrs in church. Woodworkers like us might miss the message while were drooling over this project at church.

I considered having a local guy do the lumber milling for me, I've been collecting Cedar Trees for several years. I had some oak trees slabbed up this summer, and walnut the two summers before. And, I have several more logs to have milled. The trouble is coming up with the equipment to move the logs, and the cash to pay for it. So, I counted up the time it would take to move the cedar to the mill, wait for their schedule, come back to tell them how to cut it up, and then haul it back. I decided that I could do it quicker with the chainsaw. This project also had a pretty tight budget, and a short schedule, and paying someone $200 for lumbermilling would have really hurt any profit taking.

There is a lot more waste wood when using the chainsaw, and it makes a big pile of shavings in the driveway, but it takes about as long to cut it with a chainsaw as it does to haul the wood to mill and back. I have a friend that has a small sized Alaskan Chainsaw Mill frame, and I thought about asking him if I could borrow it, but in the end, I just free handed it on a couple of saw horses.

The other thing I like about slabbing it with the chainsaw is that I can pick out ever part of the project and determine which log is best for what section. I found the prettiest log for the post and didn't cut it, then picked out the nicest shape for the front, and I had to figure out what diameter log would look the best for proportions in the major parts of the cross, etc. Working with a natural edge on both edges is a chore if you have a preference for the overall width of the final board and how it looks. I found the brain-puzzle quite fun to work through, and it all justified an extra soda pop each afternoon.

I also like to leave the cedar logs limbs a little longer than normal, as they look pretty cool when they are shaped and sanded like bumps. If I cut them too close to the log, they split when drying. It does make it difficult to stack them up in the barn neatly when I leave the limbs sticking out about 6" though, but I think the bumps are worth it.

Hey Ken, I have built quite a few pieces for churches, even another podium that I didn't get photos of this summer. I have heard from woodworkers that have tried to focus on the sermon while sitting in front of my woodworking, and you are right, they tell me that they thought through the whole construction process in their mind, and found they didn't pay much attention to the message.

I had a time where a guy that does Trim Carpentry in Oregon was visiting the church I attend, and after the sermon he came up to the pastor and wanted to know who had built the communion table and sound equipment cabinet, since he couldn't think of anything else until he figured that out. He said that it was very easy to see that they were custom made. The pastor just pointed his finger at me, and the guy came over. We had a great time talking wood and God, and when the church was locked up we moved out into the parking lot and talked until my wife wouldn't wait anymore, about 45 minutes. It's great running into other woodworkers.

Beautiful work Mark.

I use a chalk line or square to mark out the logs on both sides. It works a lot better than I thought it would ;-))

truly beautiful!

great work, looks amazing…