Chinked Log Homes
While beautiful to look at and full of soul, this style of building mimics the shelters of the early North American settlers. The settlers where in a hurry to clear the land and find shelter before winter. They used whatever timber was available to build crude shelters.
Often these logs were squared with broad axes and dressed with adzes. The corners of these buildings were usually dovetails and the lengths of the logs (laterals) were open gaps stuffed with mortar (chinking).
These buildings were usually drafty and had notorious settling problems. They were built by people who were not master builders, but robust, resourceful people that needed immediate shelter. Today, modern polyurethane and silicone chinking does resolve most draft problems, but chinking style building is still structurally inferior to full scribe laterals. We would also argue that expensive chinking does not permit us to display our craftmanship as log fitters