Bear of a hobby: 'Grizzy Adams' inspired love of log cabins
SHENANGO TWP. – A late 1970s TV series inspired a Lawrence County man's love for log cabin homes.
Chewton area native Randy Woloszyn said recently he got the log cabin bug from watching "Grizzly Adams," the popular series about a fictional character who fled to the mountains when he was accused of a crime he didn't commit and found himself raising a bear cub.
Woloszyn, who graduated from Lincoln High School in 1980, now lives in a Shenango Township log home he designed and built.
When he was in high school, Woloszyn and his cousin Earl Wallace built a log cabin in the woods in upper Chewton.
"We cut down the trees and built it mainly with axes and hatchets," he said. "A friend recently sent me a picture of it. It's amazing that it is still standing."
His interest in the craft led Woloszyn to build log homes from 2005-13. He moved on to welding and metal fabricating, but the hand-crafted log homes are still there and he still likes them.
"I enjoyed building them, but the market got soft and I went on to metal work. It was a natural since I had been welding since I was 13," he said.
Woloszyn said that the log homes he built were hand-crafted, not milled. Milled logs are lathed turned, milled or shaped to give a smooth uniform finish, and cut to uniform shape and size.
Hand-crafted logs are cut and shaped mainly by a chain saw and fit together. They are generally more expensive than milled log homes because of the labor involved.
"I've been interested in log homes since I was kid," Woloszyn said. "They do take some maintenance, but not so much if they are designed with larger overhangs and other features."
This article originally appeared on Ellwood City Ledger: Chewton native learned about log cabins from 'Grizzly Adams'
