Advantages of Log Furniture Kits

There is something beautifully rustic about log furniture. The roughness of the material, inexact finish, basic design and implied strength in the piece does something to us. It’s reassuring, calming, and it’s home. Ever since the pioneers crafted their homes from the materials around them we have held a fascination with rustic furniture, and log construction is no different. So much so, that some online retailers sell log furniture kits so we can make our own, without the sweat involved in building them from scratch.

Originally, the pioneers used whatever wood was at hand, cutting them down with hatchets and using a drawknife to skin the wood, and saws to cut them to length. The drawknife needed particular skill, otherwise it had a tendency to cut away some of the character of the wood. Fortunately, the newer log furniture kits come with the wood ready peeled, so the furniture will retain as much character as possible. The use of pine wood also leans itself to rustic pieces as the softwood ages over time adding an extra element of character as it’s used.

Wood selection and preparation takes time. To make the best pieces, dry wood is needed. That means either finding dry, standing dead wood or taking green wood and drying it out, which could take up to a year to do properly. Green wood did have an advantage though in that it enabled the maker to sap peel, rather than use the drawknife. This was where the bark can be peeled off in strips while it’s still damp and malleable.

Once the materials are selected, the wood prepared and cut to length, it’s time to make the mortise and tenon joints. These are what joins everything together and it’s essential to get them right if the furniture is to last any length of time. The tenon is the “tongue” which fits into the mortise hole. Originally this would have been carved by hand, but again, technology come to the rescue. With many log furniture kits, this will already be done, if not, there are tenon machines that make short work of it. The same with the mortise. A tool can be fitted to a drill, or a specialist machine can drill the hole.

To make a tenon joint using a machine, drill a hole in one end of the wood aiming carefully at the other end. Attach the spit over the saw blade. Position the pole onto it and rotate the wood over the saw blade. This trims off the wood until the tenon is the right size. Use a drill press to cut mortise holes to match the size.

Rustic log furniture adds character to a room, and offers much more personality than flat-pack. Built right, it should also outlast manufactured furniture many times over. The advent of log furniture kits have made this type of furniture accessible to all of us, regardless of woodworking skill. That alone is the main advantage of these kinds of manufactured kits.