Disclaimer
This post was written by Benjamin Kleber and I did some minor editing. Post discusses the way in which a building class gave new ideas about log building and slightly changed Benjamin’s approach to building log homes.

Skip Ellsworth’s building class
Skip’s class gives a basic overview of Canadian chinkless as well as
Scandanavian Chinkless and Butt & Pass, but the one that class goes in depth about is Butt & Pass. Obviously there is no “One
Best Method”, but there are pros and cons to every way of doing
things, and the folks who teach the course try go do two things:
First, give you enough of a general education that you can make
well-informed decisions about your log home, however you choose to go, and Second, teach the Butt & Pass construction method, which is the easiest one for a do-it-yourself first-time builder to succeed at.

Personal experience
Given these two focuses, i’ve never really understood why so many
people have such a negative view of Skip’s classes - it sounds like
they have some broad misconceptions about what is taught. Just like any engineer might be expected to, I had some ideas walking into the class about how I wanted to do things - and I walked away from the class having learned enough to know that my ideas were pretty standard ones, but not necessarily the best ideas for working with logs.

Benjamin Kleber’s blog caught my attention, he has very interesting offer over there. He is willing to build you a log home at very affordable cost. The reason why he is doing this is because he already had all the basic preparations ready for building one, but then the plans changed. He still has everything ready to go, just that person needing a log home is now missing - you could be that person. You could very well benefit from this opportunity and get your log home in very affordable price.

What happened?
I asked and Benjamin agreed to do a short interview, a while back already, but surely I had to have some complications and didn’t have time to act on this earlier. For this reason, I just try to push this out as quickly as possible and you can make your own mind whether this something for you. Go to his blog where you can find contact information. My communication with Benjamin has been very natural and I would judge him to be reliable person.

Some basic information
Something you might want to know. Benjamin has completed Skip Ellsworth log home building class so that is his closely related background. Now Skip’s course has somewhat edgy reputation, not least because of strong anti mortgage attitude the course emphasizes. On the course, they also teach solely butt and pass building method so the log home by Benjamin is probably going to follow that, just another thing to keep in mind.

My reservations
I myself have always had trouble with such strong one sided opinions (not to mention supporters, whom occasionally claim to be believers of the system) as e.g. Skip’s course has, but naturally that has nothing to do with Benjamin’s offer. Oh yes, one more thing, to my knowledge, Benjamin is not a professional builder so make a note of that. Anyway, check his blog out, do contact him and make your own decision on this, you could be positively surprised.