Timber polishing. Grinding a log house - how to make a wooden house truly beautiful? Abrasive jet grinding of a log house with a riked - differences from the traditional method

The construction of a wooden house involves several stages, and the final stage is the grinding of rounded logs, which is carried out before applying the finish coat. This procedure must be carried out in without fail and only after the wood dries a little. You should not wait until the log house settles and shrinks, because it will take about 10-12 months, the wood will darken and lose its natural qualities and attractiveness.

There are several reasons for polishing a residential building from logs, and all of them are significant enough to refuse to perform such work:

Firstly, a beautiful appearance is given to the walls from the inside and outside, and the operational period is extended to the structure.
Secondly, defects and irregularities, rot and moldy areas present on the surface of the logs are removed.
Thirdly, after removing the upper bast layer, the wood restores its natural properties and quality improves.
Fourthly, good adhesion of the treated coating is created, which means that antiseptic compounds and paints and varnishes will not only be easier to apply, but their consumption will also decrease, and the impregnation will lie down evenly.

There is one more required condition- after machining an antiseptic or paint must be applied to the surface within four days. If this is not done, then the wood will begin to darken and the rounded logs will have to be polished again. At first glance, the work may not seem difficult, but it requires a lot of attention, patience and takes a lot of time. Despite the fact that grinding is a painstaking and time-consuming process, but if you want, then everyone can do it with their own hands.

Important! Grind a log with it natural humidity not recommended, and since the time to perform mechanical processing depends on the season, you can start in the warm period in a month.

Is it possible to do the sanding of the log house yourself?

The mere desire to polish rounded logs with your own hands is not enough, you need to know the nuances of this procedure so that later you do not have to redo it or start all over again. mechanical cleaning exterior and interior walls log house should be carried out when the construction is fully completed and the roof is equipped. Otherwise, good intentions to do important work with your own hands will be futile, inefficient and costly.

In order to properly carry out the grinding of a log house with your own hands, you need to purchase a working tool in advance and pick it up Consumables(discs, emery wheels). It does not hurt to get the initial skills, and you can practice on a piece of wood.

Preparatory process

The work involving the removal of the upper (bast) layer is very dusty, so you need to stock up on personal protective equipment in advance:

mask or respirator;
special anti-fog goggles.

Tool Selection Criteria

Considering that the wall treatment area is quite large, a mid-range power tool with a sufficient power resource is suitable for sanding a log house. Ideally, professional or semi-professional expensive models angle grinder (grinder) and eccentric grinder.

The optimal power range is from 700 to 1000 W, and the speed varies from 10,000 to 12,000 rpm. Such tools are lightweight and easier to manage, which is very important when performing this type of work. Thanks to the use of grinders, the work process is facilitated and accelerated, the surface of the logs becomes smooth and even. For beginners who do not have the necessary skills, it is better to use eccentric sanders for work. And although the process is slower, the quality will be guaranteed.

Important! The grinder will clog less often and last longer if the air mass is taken from behind, and not in the side.

Power tools are not always possible to process the surface of the log, there are areas where the grinder is not needed - these are the corners of the log house. To sand wood hard-to-reach places(at the joints of logs in the corners of the house) you will need a chisel with a cutting element 2 cm wide.

Consumable Selection Criteria

Grinding power tools are equipped with different nozzles, but the most convenient to use discs with a diameter of 125 mm. Therefore, under this size it is recommended to select a grinder.

For the initial (rough) processing, you should buy coarse-grained petal-type discs, but you can also stock up on abrasive wheels with glued sandpaper the same graininess. The amount of consumable material depends entirely on how even the surface of the tree will be. Rounded logs will require fewer discs than regular logs or planer finishes. In order for the process to progress faster and the tool to be less stressed, it is recommended to change discs more often. Save on consumables is not worth it.

For fine (finishing) grinding of a log, abrasive wheels of a fine fraction (for polishing) are suitable. Their consumption will completely depend on how carefully the primary surface treatment is carried out.

Grinding a log house with your own hands: stages

Removing the bast layer from the log provides for the phased implementation of work:

Removed first upper layer wood using a nozzle with glued sandpaper coarse 35-40. After rough processing, a small pile appears on the surface.
The second pass of the grinder is carried out using nozzles with a fraction of 60, so that the surface becomes smooth.
Finishing (polishing) is performed before surface treatment with an antiseptic and application paintwork materials. Abrasive discs size 100-120.

Important! Sanding the log house should be done with smooth movements and in a certain direction - along the wood fibers.

Do-it-yourself grinding of a rounded log from the outside begins after an assessment of the entire surface of the house. This is done in order to determine the thickness of the removal of the bast layer, and only then the tool is selected. Particular attention should be paid to the ends, because these structural elements are most susceptible to atmospheric influences, and therefore require careful processing. Gradual grinding with nozzles of different fractions (from large to small) allows you to bring the ends to the desired state, and subsequently they are covered with paint or varnish.

The internal processing of the walls is identical to the external one; the same tools and consumables are used for its implementation. The quality of processing depends on what will be used sheathing material or not. Finishing is done with fine sandpaper.

The cost of polishing a log house for 1 m2

In order to understand how profitable it is to use your labor, and not hired, the price of grinding work is presented in the table.

The price for polishing a log house varies depending on the nature of the work performed. For example, the processing of logs must be carried out:

The whole log house or a separate part of the house.
Gables or ends.
At different heights.
What building material.
Outside or inside.
One or more times.

It is not necessary to develop a high speed of rotation of the grinding disk when removing the bast layer, as it will be difficult to avoid the formation of deep scars and grooves on the log cover.
If, after coating with varnish or paint, the pile rises, then a second grinding procedure will be required.
The presence of resin on the surface of the log does not allow processing with a disc, as it will spread over the surface and will be difficult to remove. You must first remove the resin, and then proceed to grinding.
If there is such a defect as radial wood, it is necessary to process such areas adhesive composition and start working after it is completely dry.
Grinding work should be carried out before windows and doors are installed.

After reading the article, the following question will not arise: “Is it necessary to grind a rounded log?” and “How to sand a wooden frame with your own hands?”.

When the construction of a wooden house is completed, the next stage begins: the building must be prepared for further operation. One of the main works in this process is grinding, which can only be done after the house has completely shrunk. With the help of grinding, knots, roughness and other wood defects are removed, irregularities are smoothed out, and the exterior walls of the house are prepared for further painting. Unpolished log house it does not look aesthetically pleasing, it cannot be painted and varnished. Grinding is a labor-intensive job that requires certain skills. In the article we will tell you how to grind a log cabin from the outside, and what technologies and materials are used to grind wood.

Traditionally, sanding log or log house outside it is made after its shrinkage has passed, and the wood has completely dried up. This process usually takes less than a year, and in some cases it lasts longer. It all depends on the quality of the lumber, the species and the moisture content of the wood. The climatic features of the area also play an important role.

A house made of profiled timber, which, as a rule, is made from freshly sawn wood, shrinks and dries out in about ten to twelve months. Glued beam has low level humidity, so grinding can be done immediately after construction.

External grinding of a log house in winter at sub-zero temperatures is not recommended. The sanded wood must be treated with antiseptics to protect it from the sun and precipitation, and this can only be done in the warm season. At the same time, sanding from the inside of the house can be done in winter, provided that during indoor areas positive temperature is maintained.

During shrinkage, the log house, being on the street, is exposed to rain, snow, wind, and solar radiation. As a result, the wooden house loses its attractive appearance, the logs darken, become covered with a blue coating, the wood begins to rot due to excess moisture, and mold appears.

Grinding stops the development of negative processes and allows you to restore the original appearance of wood. In addition, grinding performs the following tasks:

removes irregularities and gives the surface smoothness, which contributes to a more attractive appearance of the walls and less consumption of paintwork materials;
improves the absorption of protective agents, thereby increasing the life of the wood;
relieves the surface of small knots and other defects;
removes blue, as well as areas damaged by fungus and mold;
helps to increase the life of a wooden structure.

Often, home craftsmen, wondering why sand a log house before painting, start painting logs, skipping the sanding step. As a result, after a while, the coating begins to crack and peel off, which in principle is not surprising. Grinding ensures good adhesion of the paintwork material to the wood and deep penetration of the paint into the wood structure. Thereby wooden surface receives the necessary level of protection and increases the service life of the coating.

Before you start grinding, you need to stock up on the necessary tools. The following tools are suitable for grinding a wooden house and a bath:

A belt sander processes the surface with an abrasive belt of different grain sizes, which is mounted on two rotating rollers.
The brush machine is a kind of tape CMM. Her working tool is a brush, with which it is convenient to perform rough surface treatment. It is also used to remove the old paintwork from an old log house.
The vibration grinder has a flat sole, on which abrasive material is fixed with clips or Velcro. Some models are equipped with a sole in the shape of a triangle, they are convenient to grind grooves, chamfers and corner connections logs.
The eccentric sander is equipped with a round sole, where an abrasive of the desired grit is attached with Velcro. The machine can perform fine processing and polishing of the beams, and also does an excellent job of grinding the curved surface.
An angle grinder or grinder is the most common tool for grinding wood. Wood processing is carried out with grinding discs with sandpaper of different grain sizes.
The drill is the base for a different kind grinding tools. Grinding wood with a drill is carried out using two types of nozzles: flat circles with sanding paper and nozzles in the form of petals made of abrasive material.

During grinding, chips fly and a large amount of harmful dust is released, which poses a serious danger to the respiratory system. Therefore, in addition to the tool, for grinding wood you will need:

vacuum cleaner to remove dust;
respirator for respiratory protection;
protective glasses.

As you can see, grinding devices are very diverse, and it is not always easy to make the right choice, the better it is to grind a log or timber house. Professional craftsmen recommend choosing a tool depending on the type of lumber from which the building is built, as well as on the existing skills in using a particular tool.

It is most convenient to grind hand-cut logs with an angle grinder or a drill with special nozzles.

Rough surface treatment is carried out with grinding wheels No. 30-60 with coarse grain.
For the main and final grinding, nozzles No. 80-120 are used, which have a fine grain size.
To clean the surface, remove dark spots and blue spots, and clean off the old coating, a cup brush with a large abrasive is well suited.
It is possible to perform basic sanding of the log with a nylon brush, which during operation creates much less dust than sanding nozzles, and in addition, it allows you to achieve a brushing effect.

How to grind a rounded log, which, unlike hand-cut logs, has a smooth and flat surface?

You can use USM. But if there are no skills in using this tool, then any careless movement can lead to the appearance of depressions or grooves in the log.
Better grinding is obtained by processing rounded logs with an eccentric grinder. Despite the fact that it has a lower productivity, but it allows you to achieve the perfect smoothness of the log. The machine has a special lock that turns off the tool when pressed hard.

Glued and profiled timber have a flat surface that is easier to work with. Before grinding the timber, you need to choose one of three options beam processing:

With processing glued laminated timber and imitation of a beam, an angle grinder will do well, but with inept handling of the tool, the surface can be easily damaged.
Sanding of timber can be done with a vibration grinder with a rectangular platform. The machine is equipped with a dust bag and provides very high quality grinding.
With the help of a belt grinder, you can perform roughing, eliminate wood defects, and level the surface. However, a belt machine cannot provide perfect smoothness, so they are not used for finishing grinding.

Treatment of hard-to-reach areas is especially hard work for non-professional craftsmen. Grinding the grooves and ends of a log and lumber house is carried out using a grinder. For grooves, a smaller nozzle is used than the disc itself. The same size of the tip and disc can cause the tool to jam. The ends are ground with an abrasive wheel No. 40.

Grinding of hard-to-reach places can also be done using a vibrating machine with a triangular sole. The most problematic are the corners of the log house. They are usually sanded by hand using a chisel, which removes the top thin layer of wood. Manual grinding in the corners is performed both before and after cleaning the entire surface of the log.

Grinding technology

Grinding a log house with your own hands is carried out in three stages.

Originally produced rough handling logs using nozzles with large grains. The upper part of the bark is removed, all protruding parts, knots and other defects are removed. If an old log house is being sanded, then before sanding the wood, the old coating that paints the walls is removed.
Next is the main polishing. The sanded walls of the house are sanded with medium grit sandpaper. At the second stage, the surface is leveled and the pile remaining on the wood after the primary treatment is removed.
At the final stage, the final grinding of the logs is carried out using a power tool with a fine abrasive or manually with the finest sandpaper. It is necessary to polish the surface to perfect smoothness.

First, the main surface is polished, and then proceed to hard-to-reach areas. When sanding logs, you need to leave a strip at a distance of 2 to 10 cm to the corners of the log house, which are then processed manually.

After grinding, it is necessary to remove the dust with a vacuum cleaner and be sure to process the polished surface within a week protective compounds, after which the outer walls can be painted. If sanded wood is left untreated, it will begin to darken again.

Do-it-yourself sanding mistakes at home

Performing grinding at home, it is not always possible to achieve the expected effect. Many craftsmen, believing that grinding is an easy job, take on it without calculating their strength.

Most often, errors occur due to wrong choice tool and lack of skills to use it. Often, grinding is performed at high speeds, due to which grooves and irregularities remain on the surface, strong pressure on the tool leads to the formation of depressions.

It should be noted that a lot of dust is released during operation. Nozzles are very quickly erased, clogged with dust and resin, and they have to be constantly changed.

In general, grinding is a rather complicated and laborious work, which takes a lot of time. Especially in cases where you have to process a large area or a surface that has an old paintwork that must first be removed.

Services of professional craftsmen

Proper sanding ensures a beautiful and durable finish. top coat and guarantees a long service life of the house. The specialists of the company "Master Srubov" have extensive experience, have the necessary work skills, know the nuances and subtleties of grinding work. We will polish your wooden house strictly according to the technology, taking into account the individual features of the structure and within the specified time frame. When inspecting your home, the master will select best way grinding and the necessary tool for surface treatment. You can call a specialist and contact us using the coordinates in the section.

We hope that you have already read the section on the construction of a bath, about this in detail (or you can go to the first photo in the left menu). But, in addition to the installation of the bathhouse and the erection of a roof over it, in 2011 we managed to hold a number of events in the house itself. Completing the set-up process new apartment, we will devote the whole next 2012 year to bringing to mind a log house and, if possible, then a bathhouse. This article will talk about the features of grinding the walls of a log house (in this case wooden walls right at home).

When you communicate with construction companies at the stage of designing and manufacturing a log house, somehow you can’t even imagine all the burden of problems for the further construction of a house or a bath that you will have to take on your shoulders in the future. And this situation is certainly true not only for log houses and baths, but also for any suburban construction.

But when all these problems begin to arise, you begin to appreciate the beauty of human relationships, because in one company they will simply turn away from you as soon as you have paid the last payment, while in others they will be willing to help and answer questions even several years after completion construction of a log house. I am very pleased that the Rus Log Company belongs to the second category, in fact, that is why I ordered a bathhouse from them this year, and for the same reason I am writing these lines.

Having filled the "bumps" in the construction of the house, and now also the baths, I understand that other developers will also face these problems. Therefore, let our experience and the advice that we received from the specialists of "Rus ..." become available to other clients of this company, and simply to connoisseurs of wooden chopped houses and baths.

So, our today's story is devoted to grinding the walls of the house. Well, to be more precise, this year we sanded and painted internal walls in the house, as well as internal and external walls in the log cabin of the bath. We will talk about the polishing of the bath and its coloring in separate articles (see links), there we will briefly dwell on the features relating specifically to the work on the bath. We will also talk about painting the walls of the house in a separate article, this issue was also not as simple as we thought before.

Photo of the living room in 2011 after sanding the walls.

How our walls look after grinding can be seen in the previous photo. Of course, the house began to be perceived in a completely different way. The only thing, my main mistake is that it was necessary to engage in grinding before installing floors and ceilings, but we will dwell on this in more detail a little later. And now let's go through all that difficult path together, which led to such beauty.

Note from autumn 2013. It is always interesting to look ahead a little in order to understand, but in fact for the sake of what all this was started. On the next photo You can see what the living room looked like after sanding and painting the walls. Well, at the same time, and after a number of other events (from the fireplace and underfloor heating, to tiles and doors).

Photo of the same living room, but taken in the fall of 2013.

The initiative is punishable or how I sanded the walls in a log house

At first glance, you can’t say that sanding the walls of a log house is a hard job that requires skill, strength and endurance. When about two years ago I found out approximately how much it would cost me to polish the house from the inside, I said: yes, what kind of nonsense is this, I can do it myself. Just think - drive and drive a grinder. I was also motivated by my good friend and senior comrade, let's call him Yu.V., since I did not ask for his consent to this publication. He at one time (being a teacher, having two higher educations, a PhD and an associate professor) built country house for your father in law. In short, in addition to a refined mind and a rather sharp tongue, which many were afraid of, he also had golden hands.

Of course, at work we often discussed the construction of my and his dachas. And once he asked me, what did I actually do in the country with my own hands, because you need to put your soul and heart into the house. So, I say, my wife and I seem to have developed the project in agony, I myself planned and bred the electrician, perhaps that’s all. And he told me - well, can't you yourself be able to sand the walls, and indeed, I thought, why not. By the way, Yu.V. he was very unlucky with the builders, he also built a log house, but he ordered it through mutual friends, and they let him down.

Hard men's work - grinding the walls of the log house

No sooner said than done. At that time, I already knew that they grind log walls with an angle grinder, in the common people - with a grinder. Going to a large hardware store, I asked to show me all the attachments for the grinder. Having chosen two, in my opinion, the most suitable ones, I asked them to choose disks for them. I also already knew that wheels with a grain size of 80 are used for grinding. I especially liked the German attachment with Velcro, it was, of course, a little expensive (about 1000 rubles), but, in my opinion, very convenient.

Arriving at the dacha, I dropped everything and rushed to try my acquisitions in action. I had the good sense to start from an "invisible" place. In the bathroom on the first floor, I chose the wall where the shower cabin will stand. The very first attempt at polishing showed that it was far from being so simple. The grinder was simply pulled out of my hands and thrown from side to side, from under the circle on a new skin, sparks began to fly in all directions, because of this, bullies arose, I could not make a smooth strip, everything turned out in some kind of waves.

But the most unpleasant surprise was waiting for me when I tried to grind the log at the horizontal junction between the crowns. My vaunted German bait with its upper (i.e., back to the skin) part left a thick black stripe on a nearby log. Another thing that struck me unpleasantly was that the 80s disks wore out at a very incredible rate. Brought packaging discs melted before our eyes. I tried the second nozzle in the case, where the grinding disc was fixed with a bolt. As it turned out later, this was already closer to the truth, but even here it was very difficult to grind logs in cuts and at joints. I reinstalled the German Velcro attachment, but in my disappointment I forgot to attach the sanding disc itself. When I began to guide the grinder along the log, I immediately felt that something was wrong. And then it dawned on me that “it was not about the reel ...” and I myself ditched the nozzle for almost a thousand rubles. This was the last "dot over i" and I finally realized that everyone should mind their own business.

Later, watching the work of the guys and talking with them, I realized some of my mistakes. First, you need another (second) nozzle. Secondly, the new disk must first be grinded off a little on the auxiliary section of the log (usually in the openings under interior doors, what will be covered with casing boxes in the future) - at the same time, the largest grains fly off and the disk will not “cut” the log and spark. Thirdly, I realized that the grinder should be moved not with the movement of the hands, but with the shoulders and forearms, then the smoothness and parallelism of the movement will be achieved, respectively, the log will turn out to be even and without “waves”. Last recommendation will be clear to volleyball and tennis players. In volleyball, when receiving the ball with two hands from below, you also need to “work” with your shoulders and torso, and not bend your arms at the elbows, otherwise the ball will fly in an unpredictable direction. Similarly, in tennis, when receiving the ball with a racket held with two hands, similar work of the whole body is also required, and not just the hands.

We digress a little. In short, even if I knew all this in theory, it would still be hard work in practice. But it was still necessary to scrape the top layer of wood in the corners with a chisel. In short, then I clearly decided for myself that I needed to do something around the house or the bathhouse, but I needed to do what I was good at.

By the way, to be objective, I was not the only one who had such a “crazy” thought. WITH light hand employees of "Rus" I met and maintain friendly relations with Maxim Marinin, our famous figure skater and just wonderful person(editor's note, more details about the bathhouse built by Maxim Marinin are described).

Since we are in approximately the same state with him, in the sense of being dragged into the construction process, we periodically exchange interesting and useful information on various aspects of construction. So, once Maxim wrote that he had acquired a good grinder(not a grinder, but a specialized grinder) and plans to grind the log cabin of the bath on his own. He, like me, was alarmed by the cost of this work - at first glance, it seems overpriced. I told him my above-described story and recommended nevertheless to give it at the mercy of specialists, and to do something more familiar myself. But Maxim, as determined as I am, decided to try everything on his own experience. The result turned out to be similar, we both realized that “Caesar is Caesar’s”, and it’s better to earn money in the usual way for yourself – it will be more efficient.

Tools and consumables for grinding

Before bringing the builders to the country, I took care of buying grinding discs. The question turned out to be rather non-trivial. But first, a few words about the process itself. The main plane of the chopped walls is cleaned with a grinder with a nozzle on which a grinding disk is bolted. But there are places where the grinder does not reach - these are the corners of cuts, walls near the ceiling or near the floor (if you, like me, have already installed the floor). There you have to work manually - with a chisel. The photo below shows two such corners of the cuts. The upper corner has already been cleaned with a chisel, but the lower one has not, circles are clearly visible where the disk could get.

Work with a chisel in the corners of cuts. A layer of wood has been manually removed in the upper corner, but not yet in the lower corner.

It is clear that grinders, nozzles and chisels are the concern of builders, but I advise you to take care of grinding discs separately so that unpleasant incidents do not happen.

Grinding discs went in batches. The photo on the left shows in blue a mark on the grain size of the disc (60)

The best option is if the builders take over the "extraction" of grinding discs, it is more difficult if you have to do this (for example, buy more). The fact is that these disks require a very large number. Offhand, it took us about two and a half boxes for the house and the bathhouse. Each box contains 8 packs, each pack contains 25 discs. In total, there are 200 discs in a box, in total it took about 500-600 discs. As the builders told me, square meter walls goes from 1 to 3 discs, so count. By the way, you need to calculate the area, and hence the amount of work, and therefore your costs, correctly. Masters use the so-called height factor. The fact is that your walls are uneven, but with rounded crowns. Therefore, several control measurements are made, a tape measure is taken, and all the bends of the crowns are wrapped around the tape. It turns out that with a ceiling height of, say, 2.5 meters, the actual height of the wall is about 3 meters. This was news to me, but not to you now.

Let's get back to disks. If you go to a hardware hypermarket and try to buy that many discs there, you'll find it cheaper to cover the walls with gold leaf. Of course, I had to buy several dozens of discs on the fly, especially with an increased diameter (150 mm), to be honest, this is not a cheap deal.

So what to do? There is a way out: contact the "domestic manufacturer"! The matter is that the supermarkets mostly sell imported products, and the specialists of “Rus Log” recommended purchasing disks from the Luga Abrasive Plant – they are several times cheaper, and the quality is not much inferior to imports. It is clear that not everyone will be able to “hit the road” to Luga, look for this plant, etc. It will be optimal here if the builders organize it. I am grateful to the leadership of "Rus ..." that I had no problems with this. Moreover, usually large construction companies, how Log Rus buys these discs in bulk (wholesale means several dozen boxes, i.e. thousands of discs), which costs them much less than if you came to the factory yourself. Unfortunately, more precisely to my sincere amazement, the Luga plant has neither a representative office nor even a sales outlet in St. Petersburg, which is a pity.

And one more aspect concerning disks is their grain. For the final sanding, 80 or 60 grit discs are used (see the circled numbers in the photo above). Of course, the result of using sandpaper 80 is more pleasant to the touch, but most likely it will have to be sanded already in the second layer, and the first time you will go through a coarser sandpaper. In the house we made the 80th, and in the bathhouse the 60th, but already in one layer. In principle, it feels almost imperceptible, especially after painting. By the way, looking ahead, I’ll say that after the first layer of water-based varnish, you will have to sand the walls again, this time just by hand, without a grinder, because. exactly water varnish lifts all the pile formed on the surface. But we will talk about this in more detail in a separate article.

In addition to 60 and 80, builders use grinding discs with a grain of 40 - for grinding the ends of logs, of course, this skin will take much less. I repeat - that ideally, all these problems should be taken over by the builders so that you do not have to leave your work and business to rush around St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region in search of certain grinding discs.

So, by the middle of summer, I had a paradoxical situation, that there seems to be money for construction and there are builders for individual work, but I can’t start work. The fact is that at that time I was kept by grinding the walls in the house. I could not install casings and internal architraves on windows (the specifics of our windows are described) without grinding the walls. For the same reason, I could not lay plumbing communications around the house, make warm floors, etc., respectively. But the most important thing is the fireplace. The fireplace is a “separate song”. It was designed for us according to the author's project based on the Swedish Keddy fireplace cassette. We decided to make the lining of the fireplace from soapstone, it was ordered in the winter and by the summer it was finally ready. The installation of the fireplace, as you understand, was also held by grinding. And the fireplace itself held the insulation of the roof of the house (by the way, we did not have time to make the roof this year and postponed it to 2012).

I called Denis Migachev, Gen. director of "Rus" and asked if his "fighters" could polish my house, and at the same time a bathhouse. He replied that, unfortunately, all the brigades were busy and were on the road, that at best the nearest brigade would be free in 3-4 weeks. I did not want to wait so long, the summer is passing. We called a call among our acquaintances and one distant friend of a friend said that he has in mind people who have experience in grinding walls wooden houses. At that time, I did not yet know all the intricacies of grinding and considered that this team would cope with this laborious, but in principle simple matter.

The following Friday, I went and picked up two "specialists" from the previous facility and brought them to my dacha. The guys were from Ukraine, I organized their whole life, we walked around the house and examined all the walls. Andrei, who was their eldest, said that to grind the logs adjacent to the floor and ceiling, I would need larger diameter discs (150 mm), which I should have bought.

Half a Saturday I ran around the shops in search of these discs - all to no avail, with Velcro - please, but there were simply no such clamps. Desperate, I again called my "magic wand" Denis Migachev. He immediately said - you need to go to the Castorama store, and indeed, there I took all the available disks of the size I needed “at zero”, by the way, the price tag “bited”, each disk cost 50-70 rubles. Denis also scolded me that I did not wait for his guys, because here he unequivocally guaranteed the quality. I had to apologize and refer to the unacceptable, as it seemed to me then, delay in time.

Arriving home, I called my grinders, “reported” that their request had been fulfilled - the disks had been bought. And this Andrei answered me and said that, in fact, they had already moved out of the dacha, they were not interested in work and the conditions did not suit them. I was just taken aback by what I heard and slowly sat down on a chair. Wait, I say, I am inclined to dialogue, if there are problems - voice it, if this is really the case, I am ready to raise the price of the work. He answered me that the house is old (although the log house is only 3 years old), it is very difficult to skin, you have to first go through a coarse-grained skin, and then again - 80-coy. I hung up and began to come to my senses. In my 45 years, no one has ever done this to me. Well, find the courage in yourself and tell the customer that you are not interested, but say it to his face, and like this, leaving someone else's trusted house, to run away like a rat from a sinking ship - it was incomprehensible to me. When I came to my senses, I called this Andrey again and already calmly “put him in his place”, explaining that “adult boys” don’t do this, and that if I find even the slightest problem in my country house, then I will find him with a friend at throughout the Leningrad region. In fact, I was not disingenuous, if this became a matter of principle, then thanks to the connections of the wife, we could “ruin the life” of these guys, we just usually don’t want to waste time and get our hands dirty on such people. My principle is to draw conclusions, forget and move on. So we did. The next day we arrived at the dacha, found the keys to the gate and the house in the place indicated by the unfortunate builders, checked that everything was in order and in place. They began to think what to do next - time goes by.

Second attempt - with a guaranteed result

As you understand, my next call was again to Denis, I told him the story that had happened and asked him to reserve his builders for me, we had nowhere to go, so we were ready to wait. Denis promised to speed up the process, and indeed, after three days they removed a specialist named Adrian from the facility, called his cousin Ivan, a beginner true specialist, to help him, but Adrian promised to organize the learning process “in the course of the play” and guaranteed that everything would be on the the highest level. It was supposed that in a week or two a couple more guys would come, but later we refused this, because the pace of the builders' work, and most importantly the quality, satisfied me.

The main task that I set for the grinders was to quickly sand and paint the house, first of all, those rooms where there would be a fireplace and a chimney (on the second floor). In the second turn, I decided to polish the inside and the bathhouse in order to “close the topic”. Looking ahead, I note that later we decided to polish the bathhouse outside as well, “to walk, so walk”, although, of course, additional justifications appeared for this step.

Work has begun. The guys started from the second floor, so that the dust would not settle on the work already done. I will say right away - the dust, of course, was “unmeasured”. To clean the walls from dust, it is convenient to use ordinary brooms and a vacuum cleaner. Without a vacuum cleaner, of course, it is difficult, especially later - when you need to clean the corners and joints of logs before painting. I still had a “technical” vacuum cleaner, which we bought when renovating an apartment, here it served again.

Grinding is mountains of garbage... ... or fertilizer, depending on how you look :)

Based on the results of the work of the first “Uh brigade”, I realized that it is necessary to protect the mechanisms plastic windows and roof membrane. Therefore, I bought several packs of film (it is thin, but there is thicker - the second is better) - it is usually used to cover furniture and floors during repairs. I asked the guys to first of all close all the window openings with foil and staple the entire roof on the second floor (now from roofing cake we only have shingles and a waterproof membrane in the house), we planned to do the rest of the internal roofing after installing the fireplace, sanding and painting the walls.

And so the work began to boil. I will say right away that it was a long process, in total the guys worked for me for almost a month and a half. But during this time, the house was polished from the inside, the bathhouse was polished on both sides, all this was painted three times with varnish, and inside the premises - after the first layer of varnish, the pile that appeared was also manually cleaned with sandpaper.

Watching their work, I studied the technology of grinding for the sake of interest. Let's focus on the most important moments of this process. Grinding walls from a gun carriage can be divided into three components: processing the upper and lower edges of the log, as well as processing the flat part of the log. For round logs, everything is somewhat more complicated, where you have to smoothly go around all the roundness of the wood. The described steps are illustrated in the following three photos.

Particular problems were delivered by sections of the walls under the ceiling and near the floor. Therefore, once again I remind you of my recommendation: the log house should be sanded BEFORE installing windows, installing ceilings and floors. The main thing is that the log house was under the roof. Here, the presence of a lag is welcome, it is convenient to temporarily throw boards on them - this is what happened to me in the bath.

By the way, let's talk about one more recommendation that came to light in the course of work. Of course, it is better to grind a new frame than an already settled one. In addition to the mentioned windows and floors, the process of solidification of wood also comes into play here. Accordingly, the consumption of skins on such a log house will be slightly higher. True, belated grinding also showed advantages, we will talk about this in more detail in a future section on warming the log house after shrinkage.

Let's get back to the difficult areas. The floors were a little easier. We are planning to organize warm floors on both floors, heated by a heat pump, so the floor level will still be raised by 5-8 cm. This allowed us not to “fight” for the lower edges of the walls. But with the walls near the ceiling of the first floor, I really had to suffer. While we plan to do on the first floor stretch ceiling(they hide the unevenness of the logs of the walls well), they will stand apart from the existing draft ceiling from OSB by only 2-3 cm, so grinding the upper parts of the walls was fundamental. Several times my workers shrugged and said that they would not be able to sand this or that section of the wall. We understood that, of course, this can be done with a chisel, but this is absolutely hard labor.

I am an optimist and an engineer in my life, so every time I reassured Adrian and every time we found a solution. These solutions were born "in pain", therefore, given that they may be useful to you, we will give them briefly.

Grinding hard-to-reach places under the ceiling, in some places I had to modify the tool, be smart or just work with a chisel

"Know-how" that appeared as a result of brainstorming:

the guys cut off the rubber attachment holding the sanding disc and the grinding disc itself. Thus, from a disk with a diameter of 125 mm, we obtained a disk with a diameter of 70-80 mm, which made it possible to work in many hard-to-reach places;
somewhere I closed my eyes to the “waves” on the surface of the crowns, because I understood that this zone could be polished only with short vertical movements;
without hesitation, I allowed the guys to “scratch” the draft ceiling, because it didn’t work out otherwise;
where it was completely tight, I had to work only with a chisel, but there were only two such places left, and then small ones.

By the way, my experiments with the grinder came in handy. In one of these cases, the emotional Adrian said in his hearts that he couldn’t get in there. And I look and think, why do you need to make movements from top to bottom, and if you turn the grinder over and start working from the bottom up. Adrian in response tells me, yes, it’s impossible, the grinder will simply fly out of my hands. Let's try, I said. Do not believe me, in front of the "amazed public" I managed to carefully clean up the previously inaccessible area. Damn, "skill does not drink away," even I thought.

Of course, one cannot fail to mention one more rather laborious stage of work - cleaning the surface of the logs in the corners of the cuts with chisels. The photo below shows this operation close-up from various angles. In the photo - Adrian himself. His brother, Ivan, out of natural modesty, tried to avoid the lens, but I did not insist.

Time-consuming work of manually cleaning the corners of cuts where the grinding disc does not reach.

The same work in the corners of the cuts, but close-up.

On the right side of the photo above, it is clearly seen that the crowns were not completely polished - the guys then processed the veneers for window and door openings separately. This was due to the fact that most of the windows were covered with foil at that time.

The next photo shows a close-up of a round log wall. Disk marks are clearly visible. This is what the wall looked like after going through a coarse sandpaper with a grain of 40.

Polished wall - close-up. Disk marks are visible. This wall was sanded twice, first with 40 and then with 80. The photo shows the result of rough grinding.

As a result of the work done on polishing the house, the living room simply “played”. To be honest, my wife and I do not regret the money spent on grinding, because it essentially replaces the traditionally expensive final wall decoration. Once one of our friends, having visited our house, asked, what will you sheathe the walls from the inside with? My wife and I looked at him like “Lenin at the bourgeoisie” and said, what are you, for the sake of these wooden walls, everything, in fact, was started!

As a result of grinding, the house began to look like new.

At the end of this article, albeit looking ahead a little, we will show how the same room began to look, but with painted walls and with a fireplace installed. The upper decorative grate is still missing on the fireplace, so the air duct pipes are visible.

Photo of the living room after painting the walls with varnish on water based and installation of a fireplace with soapstone lining.

Do not be surprised that the podium of the fireplace is raised above the floor - this is intended, because on the subfloor from DSP boards insulation will be laid, and then in the underfloor heating pipe screed. According to our plans, the level tiles just should reach the level of the podium of the fireplace.

To take a closer look at the walls, here is a photo of the chimney against the background of the wall attic floor. In general, we were satisfied with the quality of grinding and painting.

Photo of the wall of the second floor, on the left - the chimney of the fireplace (finishing with artificial stone)

A neat frame made of round logs will probably always remain the most attractive option for building a country house.

It harmoniously merges with any natural landscape and has almost all the qualities that are important for life in it.

Why does a wooden frame need to be sanded?

Wood belongs to a building material that changes some of its properties over time. The construction of a log house itself does not mean that it is ready to receive its tenants.

Firstly, the log house should settle for almost a year. During this time, the house will shrink, and some changes in its geometry may occur.

Secondly, during shrinkage, the surface of the logs will be exposed to biological and natural phenomena. Logs, when wet, will swell, and shrink when hot, microbes of fungi and mold, as well as traces of insect activity, may appear on them. The texture of the tree loses its beauty, the wood becomes dark in color, and irregularities appear on the surface of the log house, in places where there were knots.

After shrinkage is completed, the log house almost completely loses its former beauty and turns into a rather unsightly structure. Therefore, a complete grinding of the entire log house is carried out before its further finishing. After sanding, the wood absorbs better protective equipment, and the surface vividly expresses its decorative properties.

Grinding returns to the logs their original beauty, smoothness and unique painting of their textured patterns, which are just the decoration of any chopped wood house. During grinding, the upper windward layer is removed from the logs and the damaged areas are cleaned, after which the wood absorbs antiseptic compounds better and lends itself perfectly to varnishing and painting, while the consumption of paintwork materials is reduced significantly. It is also much easier to insulate with sealants, which fill the intervention joints more efficiently and quickly.

Preparing for sanding

As soon as the shrinkage of the log house is over, window and door openings are cut in the walls, if they have not already been cut through during the assembly of the house. Sanding should be started only after the walls of the log house have been given their final shape.

Before starting work on polishing a log house, you need to inspect the surfaces that need to be processed, and first of all, assess the condition of the logs themselves for moisture. By evaluating this data, you can determine the required set of specific tools and all consumables.

In the case when the logs are not yet dry enough, polishing should be postponed until a more suitable moment, when they are dry enough, or special equipment should be used to speed up the drying.

The grinding procedure itself is quite time-consuming and expensive work, so you can compromise and process only the inside of the log house. A outside treat only with antibacterial agents.

But since unsanded wood is less susceptible to various protective impregnations, the processing of the outer side of the log house will need to be done quite often, naturally, the consumption of materials for wood processing will be much higher. This will eventually further increase the cost of purchasing antibacterial and other protective agents.

Therefore, if earlier it was decided to grind only from the inside, after some time it is recommended to grind the outside of the log house as well.

This is a rather time-consuming and lengthy process that requires certain skills and experience. The main tool for work is a manual grinder.

The main surface of the log house is polished with a special emery wheel designed for working with wood. The main problem of grinding mechanically are just emery circles, which in a fairly short time are completely clogged with small particles of wood. If the wheel is not replaced in a timely manner, the quality of the grinding will be quite low.

During the grinding work in large numbers dust and small chips are generated. Therefore, when working, you need to use individual protective equipment, which consists of a respirator and special glasses. When cleaning the waste generated during grinding work, it is recommended to use an industrial vacuum cleaner, in extreme cases, use a household tool.

After completion of all grinding work, it is necessary to immediately treat the wood with protective antiseptic compounds. In order for the wood to retain its fresh appearance better, protective treatment is recommended to be done immediately after sanding. Provided that the wood will not be in contact with moisture, a slight delay in the protective treatment of the cleaned logs can be made.

When starting to grind a log house, it should be remembered that when removing a thick layer of wood, its natural defense mechanism may suffer, and this will lead to the destruction of the log itself. But usually the thickness of the removed layer practically does not exceed even 1 mm.

Sanding a wooden frame is a rather laborious process that requires special endurance. To do a good job, you need to have good tool and certain building skills. Many experts argue that it is impossible for a person who does not have a construction specialty to perform wall grinding work on their own. However, the presence of the Internet in our life, where you can find almost any step-by-step instruction for a particular job, allows you to think differently. This material is no exception. Here you can find the complete technological process polishing the walls of the log house and decide for yourself whether you can do the same, only with your own hands.

Why you need to grind a log house

Many of you have probably noticed that some houses built of wood have a darkened, not quite natural appearance. All because throughout all year round, the tree has been exposed to natural influences such as: snow, rain, wind and frost.

It is because of this that the wood darkens, while losing its excellent original appearance.

Grinding the surface of the log house with the subsequent application of various protective layers on it, will help preserve the natural texture and color of the log on long years.

You can grind a log house, both made of round logs and made of glued beams. The whole process of work is almost mechanized, as it is carried out manually using various electric tools for this.

When to Sand

The opinion on whether to grind the walls of the log house immediately or wait for it to completely shrink and dry is divided. Some believe that waiting until the log house shrinks and the wood shrinks is too long, because the process is quite lengthy, depending on many external factors such as:

felling season;
log manufacturing technologies;
The type of wood, its density and humidity;
Type of insulation used between the crowns;
Climate data for the region.

In addition, during this period, the wood can become infected with a fungus and change its shade.

Others believe that it is impossible to hurry with this matter. The darkened color of the wood will disappear after grinding, and the fungus is easy to remove with the help of biological impregnation. All must be fully complied with the necessary conditions for efficient and high quality results.

To do this, the roof must be covered, the structure must completely shrink, but most importantly, the moisture content of the wood should not exceed 20% .

Despite the divergence of opinions, experts still recommend making their choice in favor of the second option. Premature processing and painting of damp walls can turn into big troubles for the owner.

Also, turn construction works, to wait for the log house to be ready for grinding, optional. During this period, you can engage in plumbing and electrical wiring, lay the floor, ceiling, insert windows and doors.

Necessary tool for work

The working tool must be selected based on what material the log house is built from (chopped log, rounded log, or is it a bar).

Only tools, or rather not even tools, but accessories for work, will be needed in all three cases - these are goggles and a respirator.

chopped log

For grinding the walls of a log house built from ordinary log, you need an ordinary grinder with special nozzles. When purchasing a grinder, make your choice better in favor of a professional, well, or at least a semi-professional tool.

Since the walls will have to be sanded from the outside and from the inside, and these are very large areas for work, a cheap and low-quality tool will fail after the first or second wall. Moreover, wall grinding loads the tool very heavily, in view of the long-term ongoing process of work.

The power of the grinder will be sufficient 800-1100 W. Of course, you can take a more powerful one, so to speak with a margin, but this one is more than enough for grinding. A grinder with great power will be much harder to work with. This is due to the fact that it has a considerable weight and fairly large rotational speeds. One wrong move and a hole appears on the log, which is then not so easy to smooth out. You should also pay attention to:

Length electric cable- too short, not very convenient to use;
Power adjustment - in places that are inconvenient for work, for safety, you should slightly reduce the speed;
The place of air intake into the engine - it is desirable that the air intake be from the back of the grinder, and not from its side walls, so it will be less clogged with dust, which will increase the life of the tool.

A special screw-on nozzle for a grinder, on which a grinding disc is attached, can be purchased at any building supermarket. Grinding wheels are used with different grain sizes. from 40 to 60- for initial processing and from 80 to 100- for the finish line.

rounded log

Since the rounded log has a semicircular, perfectly flat surface, the use of a grinder will not be appropriate. With careless movement, you can make a recess or groove on a log, greatly spoiling the appearance. The ideal way to sand a log cabin is to use an eccentric sander.

Despite the fact that its performance is much lower, the principle of operation of this tool will make the surface of the log perfectly smooth. The machine uses a specially blocking element that turns it off when pressed hard, which allows a person who does not have experience in this matter to perform work.

Using an eccentric sander

The power of an eccentric sander is only 300-400 W., the number of revolutions 8,000 to 12,000 rpm. More expensive models are equipped with a special dust bag. It is very convenient for interior work.

The tool is selected according to the principle “Comfortable in the hand”, which means we take it. For primary processing, circles with graininess are used. 40-60 , for finishing 80-100 .

Glued or profiled timber

Grinding a log house whose walls are made of timber is done in two ways.

First way- using a well-known grinder and grinding wheels. All work on giving the timber a perfectly even and smooth shape, in comparison with round log can be produced in a much shorter time frame.

This is due to the fact that the beam has a flat surface, which is much easier to work with. However, not everyone can cope with this task. This requires practice and good skill with the tool, as any error on the wall will be clearly visible. If there is no such practice, then it is better to resort to the second option.

Polished timber

There are two standard types of wooden beam:

Profiled timber - is a solid log passed through special equipment, betraying him a certain form (profile);
Glued laminated timber - a pre-prepared log, sawn into boards, which are then dried in special chambers to 10-14% humidity. Finished boards are tightly glued together in a pressing machine into a solid blank, from which the profile of the beam itself is then made.

Due to the fact that glued laminated timber is dried, practically does not shrink construction material, you can start grinding it immediately after the walls are erected.

With a profiled beam, everything is different, most often it is made from freshly cut wood, so you need to give the log house time to shrink and shrink, only after that start work.

Second way- use of a vibratory grinder. This method, though not as fast, but better. In addition, grinding the wooden walls of the house can be done by hand, without resorting to the help of an expensive team of specialists.

The machine should be purchased with a rectangular, not a round platform. It is easier to work with such a machine, a rectangular platform has a large coverage area, which will certainly affect the speed of work.

Grinding a log house with your own hands - process technology

The first thing to start with is to check all the walls of the log house for defects, such as "radial structure". What it is? Radial structure is the process of peeling the wood structure, as a result of poor-quality processing of the log in the machine.

If there are such places, the resulting cavities are filled with wood putty, which can be matched to the color of the wood. Allow time for the putty to dry completely. 10-24 hours., only then start work.

Existing wood putty colors

You can start grinding from the ends of the log house, any novice “specialist” can cope with them, besides, the first training will help you feel a little more confident when moving to the walls.

While this will be your training ground, end sanding is not to be taken lightly. The fact is that they are the weakest point of the log house, these places are more prone to getting wet and cracking.

Advice! To minimize damage, after processing the ends with coarse-grained sandpaper, they should definitely be smoothed out with a finer one. This will help get rid of the fibrous surface and make the so-called blockage of the ends, which protects them from moisture.

Proper grinding of the ends of the log house

Working with a grinder

When grinding a beam with a grinder, it is necessary to keep the tool strictly parallel to the plane of the wall. The pressure on it should be minimal, this will avoid surface drops, making the walls perfectly even.

The grooves are ground with uniform, consistent movements, while firmly holding the tool in their hands. Care must be taken to ensure that the corners of the grooves are even and sharp, they cannot be rounded.

Grinding grooves is a rather laborious and complex process, even for specialists. Therefore, if you do not have enough experience and skills, you can purchase a grinder with a triangular groove nozzle.

Important! Remember that you must definitely give the grinder time to rest, like any electric tool, she is afraid of overheating. Otherwise, the imminent failure of your reliable assistant is a matter of time.

Working with the machine

The use of an eccentric or vibratory grinder for grinding a log house makes the work process less complicated, but longer. Special skills in the possession of the instrument are not required, it will be enough just to familiarize yourself with the instructions and make a trial test on an unnecessary board.

After that, with smooth movements, we drive the tool along the surface of the beam or log, until a perfectly smooth surface. The grooves need to be ground, holding the machine at an angle, parallel to the surface, giving their lines a clear geometric shape.

Conclusion

As you can see, sanding a log house is quite inexpensive, but a painstaking and requiring special care process. You should think very carefully before abandoning this venture, because the above arguments once again prove the usefulness of this procedure.

In addition, the attractive, aesthetic appearance of your building for many years should finally tip the scales in favor of the right decision.