Full disclosure: I haven’t read this book, nor have I ever built or furnished a log cabin. I don’t even live in a log cabin! Now that those embarrassing revelations are out in the open let me tell you a bit about W Ben Hunt. He was born in Wisconsin in 1888 and grew up in a log cabin. So far so good, am I right? Instead of graduating high school he dropped out and became a lithographic engraver, what we’d likely call a graphic designer nowadays. By 1924 he was married and living a short jaunt from where he grew up and he started building a log cabin with the help of his brother and his father-in-law. It must have gone well because the cabin was the subject of his first official article. A few years later he started studying Native American artwork and meeting with artists and various leaders. After acquiring much knowledge from his Native American connections he then passed it on to Milwaukee’s Boy Scouts leaders and by 1942 was writing articles for Boy’s Life, which was the monthly magazine for the Boy Scouts. Soon enough he was a regular contributor and was writing three or four articles per issue, ultimately contributing over a thousand articles covering subjects such as woodworking, furniture building, cabin building, and other out-of-doors shenanigans. He died in 1970 and most of his life was spent learning, creating, teaching, and lecturing others on the topics he was an expert in. All this to say that while I can’t show you a log cabin I built as a result of reading this book, I wholeheartedly believe that if W Ben Hunt said you could build a cabin after finishing this book, it’s the truth. *See photo for slight damage at top of spine.

ISBN: 9780020016700