hi there i'm noah bradley with handmadehouses.com welcome today i'm going to answer the question what is chinking stay tuned well okay today we're going to talk about chinking chinking being the the the filler this the stuff you see on the log cabin behind me that isn't log the gap in between the the logs is what we what we refer to today as chinking now historically what you're seeing would actually have been called dobbing and the logs when they erected in a traditional manner which is the way that you see here there was a gap left between the logs it varied anywhere between as little as an inch to as much as well six to eight inches in between the gaps on this cabin are are the logs are left rounded top and bottom so actually the gaps on this one was about one or two inches but the chinking looks wider than that because the chinking uh covers up a lot of that roundness of the logs this is the perfect way to build a log cabin this is the traditional manner and this is the way if you want to build a log cabin that's maintenance free that last you a couple hundred years or more then this is the method you want to do with chinking now historically how they would handle the chinking uh is that actually what they would come in after the logs were set and then they would cram either pieces of wood or chunks of rock in between the logs to act as as a holder for any of the dobbing that would next go on and dobbing is was a mixture back then of basically whatever the they had available in order to stop air and water infiltration from getting into their home frequently it was just a mixture of mud of sand of hair of grass of moss straw and if they had a little bit of extra money to actually purchase some lime to mix into all of it uh to make uh poor man's cement basically where they would they would smear it over the the over top of that chinking that was in there and it would it actually gave them a very tight house throughout the entire winter and actually it was generally almost an annual event for the family to reach ink or at least to re-dub excuse me correct get the right terminology here dobbing in place uh whereas today we've come up with better solutions for that and but still we've got the exact same look that they had then and i'll show you a couple of photographs here that will illustrate uh how i did it by the way i'm going to put together a series of videos that show me i will show you every consideration and exactly the process of properly checking a log log home today but today we we skipped the dobbing part and have just slid it into what is known as chinking now i realize that the a lot of people's first response in seeing historic log cabins as they they wonder what in the world is that between the logs and that's because in today's world our exposure to log cabins is frequently log cabin kits which are a hybrid off modern twist on log cabins compared to what log cabins have been for hundreds of years this is a true log cabin and anyone and everyone that i've ever met i'm not saying everyone in the world is this away but everybody i've ever met that spends a little bit of time getting to know the traditional way or does the hands-on work uh of doing trying both the modern way and historic way every one of them has eventually decided and their tastes have matured to the point where this is the look you want in a log cabin this is what works best this is most attractive and it's most enjoyable to build and so what we use for chinking is it's basically just a thin uh thin layer on the exterior of a kind of a metal lathing that we nail in place top and bottom that uh that allows us to have a surface that we can coat with the cement and so we will we will do that i use a special kind of cement any cement will do the job the only reason i use a special kind of cement is that it gives me a consistent dye color because i do not like the the standard gray that you see in every parking lot on every sidewalk uh to me it's it's it strikes of modernity of it looks too new it looks like an urban sidewalk it doesn't look like something that belongs on a log cabin so i choose to use the portland cement product i find it much more enjoyable attractive and durable than the synthetic products goes so we'd say you would trowel on this this dyed cement that that we use and and then we would come on the interior of the cabin and we would apply a spray foam insulation behind that trowel dawn cement and then we would do the same technique on the inside put again nail up a diamond mesh lathing and trowel cement back over it it gives a very durable attractive weather tight sealed permanent zero maintenance a finished effect for the log cabin so anyway i hope that answers the question for you today what is chinking and how to properly do it this is noah bradley with handmadehouses.com please thank you for joining us come see us over on the website consider joining us on facebook we've got close to 200 000 people now following it's a great thriving community with lots of wonderful photographs there as well and consider uh signing up for the handmade house academy where you can learn this and so much more so until next time we'll see you then do you