Mark just sent me an email asking about chinking, insulation, boric acid and preservatives for a log barn project he is working on.
Mark writes:
i have an old log open barn the logs are from 1-5 inches apart it is 18 by 20 by 10 feet high i would like your chinking recipe and your insulation idea and the purpose of using boric acid also what is a good sealer to use on the chink and logs to seal it after you are done
Hello Mark and thanks for the question!
I’m going to stick my neck out and assume that the logs on the barn are hand hewn. With that in mind you may want to check out the section on Hand Hewn Chinking for starters.
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Replacing a rotten log on a log home is no easy task. However it is an unfortunate task that sometimes may have to be tackled. Luckily there have been only a couple of logs that have needed to be replaced on this 100+ year old structure.
Here at the lodge a base log was in great need of repair. Being that the logs are all American Chestnut – which no longer grows to any size here in the U.S. since the blight that wiped them out in the 1920s and 
30s – a suitable replacement has to be located.
I choose Ash as a replacement. It has a similar grain as Chestnut and blends well. Ash also takes stain much the same and once stained its difficult to differ between the two. It provides very straight logs and is a nice hard wood with that I can easily obtain. Suffice it to say that I love getting my hands on a fine piece of Ash.
The log in question is a base log. A base log is the first log in contact with the foundation.
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