Categories: Decorating & Design

How to Build Log Furniture

The first step may be to decide what kind of material to use. Lodgepole pine is a popular wood for log furniture because the log is usually straight and tapers slowly. Crooked logs are hard to work with.

The logs used in log furniture must be fairly dry or the wood will shrink with age. Furniture built with wet wood is not a good idea. For this reason, log furniture is often built using standing dead trees. These are trees that are dead but have not yet fallen. Using material from standing dead trees obviates the need to dry the logs for a year or two.

Planning the Design

If you do not have a design yet for the furniture item, now is the time to start. You’ll need a pencil, paper, and a bit of imagination.

If you use the tenon and mortise method for joining the pieces, you’ll need to account for the length of the tenons in your measurements. If you have need a piece of wood with a tenon on both ends, and the tenons fit 2 inches into the mortise, then you’ll need to add a total of 4 inches to your wood piece to account for the tenons.

Preparing the Pieces

After you have planned your furniture piece, and know exactly how many pieces of wood you need and of what length, you are ready to prepare the pieces.

Peeling: Many people like the hand-peeled look of log furniture. This is accomplished using a draw knife. There are two types of peeling. Skip-peel is when you leave some of the bark to add contrast to the furniture. Clean-peel is when you peel off all the bark.

Tenons: The tenon is sort of like the tip of a pencil in that it tapers at the end. The machine used to do this could be thought of as a high-tech pencil sharpener. If you’re a small-time operator, you can make the tenons using special drill bits that attach to a power drill. If you plan to do it big-time, you may want to get a bigger machine. Some log furniture makers use a Woofer. This is a machine that has been specially built to make log tenons.

Mortise: You’ll need a drill to make the holes into which the tenons fit. You may be able to do this with a handheld drill, although it will be much easier, faster, and better, to do it with a drill press.

Sanding: You may want to sand the pieces before you assemble the furniture. For this occasion, there’s the flap sander.

Assembling the Furniture

To assemble the furniture, you’ll want several things on hand; glue, rubber mallet, and pneumatic stapler. Before beginning assembly, you’ll want to add glue to the holes (mortises). Glue will ensure that the furniture becomes solid. When adding glue to the holes, don’t dump it into the bottom of the hole – apply it to the sides of the hole where it offers the greatest holding power.

Next, put the pieces together. You’ll want the rubber mallet on hand to strike the pieces to firmly set the tenons in the mortises. Be careful not to strike the pieces obliquely or the rubber mallet will leave a black streak of rubber on the wood. If this does happen, you can sand the mark off.

When your furniture is assembled and the mortise and tenon junctures are tight you’ll need to use the pneumatic stapler. A staple or two at each mortise and tenon juncture should suffice. Shoot a staple into the piece with the mortise in such a way that the staple enters into the tenon of the other piece of wood. The reason for stapling these junctures is so that the pieces are held firmly in place until the glue has time to fully set.

Finishing the Furniture

Sand the furniture before finishing it. Use successively finer grain of sandpaper to sand the surface of the wood to a smooth sheen.

After sanding the furniture, you are ready to finish it. Finish the piece with several coats of clear lacquer to retain the look of the original wood – or apply a stain to add color.

Click on the link for an example of quality log furniture.