Fake Stacked Corners and First Bit of Cordwood

Fake Stacked Corners
I've been studying cord wood masonry construction for quite some time now. One of the design traits I really like is stacked corners, sometimes also known as Lomax corners - but they take a lot of time to build and require quite a few piece of the 4x4 or 4x6 size. I didn't have enough 4x4s to build the three required corners, and I really wanted to get the roof up soon so I had to forgo the stacked corners - but I still wanted the look of it.

Then along came the idea of the fake stacked corner method. I built a post and beam structure, but I moved the posts inwards by 1 1/2" inches to accommodate attaching 2x4 cutoffs in such a manner as to appear as if they were a stacked corner. I already had a large pile of 2x4 cutoffs I had obtained for free, some were 27-1/2" long, others were 24", so alternating them to create a simple pattern up the wall was easy - and cheap. It also greatly reduced the amount of cordwood needed for the structure. In the end, this method probably took as much time as if I had built regular stacked corners, but it was well suited for the materials I had on hand - and allowed me to get the roof up sooner.

The First Bits of Cordwood
After 2 months of construction I am just starting to lay cordwood. Over the next couple of days I hope to fill in the rest of the south wall and have the east wall in the back of the building tall enough to install the window buck. I also still have a small amount of stone masonry work to do on the outside walls near the forge - and then build up the forge itself of course.