Transcripts

RACHEL REABE: The main classroom is a clearing in the woods, where a half-finished log cabin is the focus of attention. Students wearing hard hats, safety glasses, and steel-toed boots watch carefully as their teacher shows how to use a chainsaw to notch logs for a perfect fit.

RON BRODIGAN: We're going to make one cut down the center of the notch. I've got a very specific edge. The notch needs to be very sharp. It needs to fit down the log board very, very, very tightly, very exacting. So it looks workmanlike, and so it's weatherproof.

RACHEL REABE: Confidently wielding his chainsaw, teacher Ron Brodigan slices a chunk out of the log. The four students follow his movements, seemingly oblivious to the hot summer sun and the swarm of biting insects. For most students at the Great Lakes School of Log Building 40 miles south of Ely, this isn't an abstract exercise in old time construction techniques. Each student in this course plans to build a log home sooner or later. John Farquhar says within the month, logs are being delivered to his land in the mountains of Southern Colorado.

JOHN FARQUHAR: The house we're building is a simple structure. It's 1,200 square feet on the bottom floor with two lofts. And my little wife and I are building it ourselves. She's just a little bitty lady. A 5'2" and 100 pounds. But she's already peeling bark.

RACHEL REABE: 50-year-old Farquhar, who abruptly retired last year after triple heart bypass surgery, says the Great Lakes School of Log Building has provided the skills he needs to build his dream home.

JOHN FARQUHAR: There's plenty of information here if you pay attention and take good notes and are really committed to what you're doing. With this information and any library, you can go do it.

RACHEL REABE: Farquhar says they should be living in their new log home by this time next year. He's among the nearly 3,000 students who have traveled to Northeastern Minnesota to the Great Lakes School in the last 20 years. The 300 acres of forest south of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area is dotted with class projects, all built from logs. A big two-story bunkhouse, an authentic Finnish sauna, a boathouse, a fancy two-seater outhouse, and a scattering of cabins. Ron Brodigan says his students, men and women from 18 to 80 years old, are serious and very motivated.

RON BRODIGAN: They take notes constantly. They work hard, and they pay attention to what we're doing. This group here has been working till dark every day. Very hard to stop. And I've had courses which went over the 10 days. I've had courses where I had to practically pry people out of here the last afternoon.

RACHEL REABE: Brodigan, a former sculptor and teacher, says he learned how to build with logs 25 years ago and got hooked. At the suggestion of a friend, he created the Great Lakes School. Brodigan says they average a dozen students for each course, although he runs classes with even a single student.

The 10-day program costs $825. Required tools could run another $1,000. Almost all of the graduates go on to build a log structure, a cabin, or a sauna, or a house. David and Cynthia Munson took Brodigan's course 10 years ago. They returned home and started building on 30 acres of land on the Mississippi River north of Brainerd.

DAVID MUNSON: We're looking at our popple log home that Cynthia and I built. And there are approximately 14 rows or courses of logs that comprise the lower portion. The roof is a 12/12 pitch roof with a loft for two bedrooms.

CYNTHIA MUNSON: It's imperfect, but it has an awful lot of character. In fact, if you look just to the right of the door, there's a recent addition to the look of the logs. We have a resident porcupine that likes to chew. It started with the dog house and one day decided to move up and gnaw on the outside of a few of the logs there. So that's a recent addition to the character of the home. If I see that porcupine, he's history. Right.

RACHEL REABE: It took the munsons three years to build the small two-story log home. They worked weekends, holidays, and vacations. Cynthia says it was all-consuming.

CYNTHIA MUNSON: You go through real feelings of frustration. You go through excitement of actually starting to see that you can do it. I have a lot of pride in having actually done it. Not many people can say that they've done something like this, and it's a good feeling.

RACHEL REABE: The Munsons say they always plan to build a log home. Brodigan School made their project much easier. They say they're not finished with the house. They would like to add on. According to Ron Brodigan, log building can be addictive.

RON BRODIGAN: I've seen a lot of people get the fever. People that thought they were just going to build a cabin on a Lake Shore property. And they built that cabin, and then they just couldn't stop. They had the tools. They had the skills. And they just kept going. It's a lifelong thing from what I've seen.

RACHEL REABE: Brodigan says log building is difficult, time-consuming, and frustrating. But in the end, well worth it.

RON BRODIGAN: You can't imagine what it's like to stand back and look at a place that you've built with your own hands with hand tools plus a power saw. All those months, or in some cases, years of hard work. You've really got something that no windstorm is ever going to blow away, no earthquake is going to shake down, and it's probably going to last a lot longer than you will.

RACHEL REABE: Ron Brodegan of the Great Lakes School of Log Building. I'm Rachel Reavey for Main Street radio.

SPEAKER: When you say that you want to split this halfway, Ron, between the two logs when you make that. Is that just an eyeball halfway?

RON BRODIGAN: It's just an eyeball, yes. Yeah. And that's-- I don't know. People have a hard time understanding that. But do you understand the differential thing, taking more or less?

SPEAKER: Yes. One way or the other. One's greater. One's less. So it evens out, huh?

RON BRODIGAN: Just halfway makes it a pretty average notch both ways.