Wood Joinery (Part 2):

I was actually able to finish the axes 20 minutes before 9 AM, so I decided to go back to the fireplace and start my workout, to my surprise though, Omar, Daniel, and Gabriel were already awake and seemed to be waiting for me to come over. I suppose it would be normal for them to know where I was, after all, it was just a couple of steps away.

I for one saw this as a great opportunity, as it meant that I had an extra twenty minutes to get things going. After handing them their newly made axes I made them follow me to a tree far enough away from the settlement that it would not change the aesthetic for where the fireplace was.

I did this because I wanted to switch from hunting to farming as soon as possible after the settlement was constructed, so de-foresting what was to eventually turn into farmland while using the wood to build the settlement felt like it would be the best way to use resources, plus I still wanted the settlement itself to have vegetation within it, just that not as much as right now, so having the trees and plants already grown would just save time.

Once we arrived all I did was the point at the wide side of the axe and showed myself chopping the tree. The tree wasn't actually that thick as was fairly easy to cut, all I had to do was face the part of the tree that was facing the river and chop halfway through the log, afterward moving to the other side and chopping the part of the log that was facing the jungle until the tree gave in to gravity and fell towards the river.

At first Omar, Daniel, and Gabriel were not as amazed as before since they had already 'chopped' a tree before, still, they decided to try it out. Of course, I did supervise them the entire way through and told them when to switch to the other side to make sure nobody got hurt. In the end, it was a complete success.

Not only were they able to chop down the trees much faster than they were able to beforehand, but they were also able to do so without using as much energy as before. They began staring at the axes blankly, my guess was that they assumed that the axes were able to increase their strength, which to an extent was correct, as although it did not improve their physical capabilities, it did improve how much damage they could deal.

Once they were done, all of us began to move the trees over to the ground from the river. Before I could start carving the wood though, I could see that everyone else had already woken up and had to also teach them how to chop trees down, thankfully though, since half of them already knew how to chop a tree down correctly, they helped those who didn't know.

After that I just left them to their own devices, after all, it didn't take them much time to cut down a tree, and I didn't really know how much wood we needed. As for how the wooden houses were to be built they would basically be modeled after a one-person bedroom, as that was all that everyone here needed in order to live a happy life.

Back home my bedroom used to be a 12 by 11 and it was able to hold my bed and my desk plus a closet, which was honestly already more room than any of us were going to use, so I decided to make that that the measurement of every 'house' made here. Plus it would also make it easier for me to make the houses since they would require less support than larger structures.

Although I had done research into carpentry, I had never really gotten too much into house building, so I decided to just make the support beam's base 1ft by 1ft, from there I would just use as many as I needed. With that, the new base for every house would take up 15ft by 13ft including the support beams.

I had always worked best when following a blueprint so I chopped off a piece of the log off one of the trees like it was a slice of bread. Although it was still small, it was large enough for me to carve a rough sketch using my axe. The base itself would be easy enough as it would only be an empty square connected by using Hako-aikaki-shachi-sen-shikuchi for the corners (Look it up, it's just a technique used to connect two pieces of wood to create a corner).

Of course, with there being a slight modification of adding a triangle on the sides of the two pieces of wood that connect, that way also creating a square almost the size of the newly created edge that could then be used to connect a support beam on top of. Before I could continue though, I realized that I had to actually build the base, that way I would know how many support beams would be used and be able to plan out the roof accordingly.

The tree logs themselves were already 16 ft long, so I had a tiny bit of leeway if I messed up, which I knew I would. First, I had to use my foot to mark the width of the base of the support beam, leaving the height as it already was, once that was done, all that was left was to begin carving the wood into the right shape.

As I did I also began to notice that while I had been doing my own things everyone else had started to toss a rock around. Although it wasn't much it was still interesting to see them adapt so well to such a great change in their daily lives, after all, they had probably never had any free time of their own.

'I should probably make them a ball as soon as I'm free, hopefully, they'll like it'