Construction Journal Entry Week of 7/8/07

7/10-12/07 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

It was a hot 85 degrees out when I arrived at 1:10. When I opened the gate, the gate post with the hinge finally fell apart. It had been inadvertently torn out by Mike once when he was scooping snow and it was pretty rotten. I had hit it once with the pickup, so it was only a matter of time when it would crumble completely. Today was the day.

When I opened the cabin, I found one mouse in a trap upstairs, but no other signs of mice. All the peanuts were still intact. I think there is a hole somewhere, but it is hard for mice to find. They will be looking more earnestly in the fall so I will probably have to do something about it by then.

There were a pair of bicycle tracks on the upper roadway, so someone had been up there looking around.

I went to work scraping the two columns to clean them up. I started scraping by hand but there were so many concavities in the surface of the wood that I could tell that the job would be too hard to do in that heat. It would be worth the effort to set up the gwizard and gwiz the columns.

I found a suitable rock, tied it to a long rope, and on my second try, flung the rock up over a branch in the double tree about 30 feet off the ground. The rock was heavy enough to pull the end of the rope to the ground, with a little coaxing, so I had my gwiz sling. I replaced the chainsaw bar with the gwizard and proceeded to gwiz both columns. It went pretty fast. I didn't want to grind all the knots off, which would have made the job easier, so I left them and used a hand scraper to clean up around them. This took a little time, but I think the logs will look better with the knots sticking out.

On Wednesday morning, there were no mice in the traps and the peanuts were undisturbed. I sprayed the mortise holes in the sill log, the two columns and the two beams with clear water from the hose in preparation for treating them with Board Defense. The water soaks into whatever channels it can find in the wood, and then when the concentrated solution of borate is sprayed on the wet logs, the chemical follows the water that is already in the wood and penetrates deeper than it otherwise would in dry wood.

I brought some ant bait with me so I set two of the traps out in the hallway. I haven't seen much, if any, ant activity lately so I don't think there is much of a problem. I'll set more bait stations out if I begin to see signs of activity.

I mixed up one gallon of Board Defense and sprayed the logs and the mortise holes in the sill before lunch. The logs only need to be dry to the touch in order to stain them and I figured that in this heat the logs would be plenty dry after lunch.

During lunch, Brian Kelly, the County Assessor, drove up. I escorted him through the cabin so he could see what I had done. He is only interested in major improvements, so the staircase work and the varnishing I had done in the past year didn't count. He said he considered my project to be 75% completed and that the assessment for this year would be the same as last year. It will change when I complete something like rough plumbing or wiring.

After lunch, I stained all the mortise and tenon joints and the bases and tops of the columns. I also stained the top half of the tall column because it will be hard to reach once it is set up. I'll stain the rest of the logs once they are in place.

After cleaning out my brush, I erected the columns and beams hopefully for the last time, and tightened the CB66 bolts.

I had bought four lag screws that I intended to use to secure the mortise and tenon joints in the sill log. I want to be able to remove the screws so I did not want to drive pins in which I wouldn't be able to remove. These new screws were different from any lag screws I had seen before. The threads had a considerably bigger diameter than the shank. The claim on the tag was that you didn't have to drill a pilot hole. In my case, I want a tight shank crossing the interface between the mortise and tenon to hold it fast in shear. I did some experimenting using some scrap wood and found that using these lag screws, the shank would be loose in the hole in the tenon. I decided not to use them. I'll get some conventional lag screws and put them in later. I intend to pin the joint together on the columns using drift pins made of 3/8" rebar. That way, if I need to, I can drive the pins back out from the other side.

Next, I lifted the first log plank up onto the beams using the same rope and come-along rigging I used before. Then I scribed the logs for notches. I made a scribe by cutting a pencil to the scribe distance and sharpening both ends. I had to keep it vertical by eyeball as I scribed, but for chainsaw work, that is close enough. It worked slick. It was fast, it marked both logs, and the dried borate on the logs made the pencil marks easy to draw and very visible.

I decided to notch both the deck log and the beams about equally. That way neither had a very deep cut in it and they would mate on a more-or-less square flat surface. In the process of scribing, I marked the four corners of this square on both logs so I would know how deep to cut.

I took the gwizard off the chainsaw and mounted the cutting bar again. Then I cut three of the four notches. I would have done them all, but the saw kept acting up. It quit after I cut the first notch and after exhausting myself in the heat trying to start it, I gave up and started the second notch with hammer and chisel. That was hard work too in the heat. After the saw cooled down a little, it started again and I finished cutting two more notches before it quit. By that time I was ready to quit for the night. It was almost 7:00.

During the day, a chipmunk had come around periodically for peanuts.

On Thursday morning, there were no signs of mice. I measured the destroyed gate post and found it had been four feet long. I found a nice log to make a replacement. The saw started up fine and ran fine for me to cut the gate post log. Instead of shutting the saw off, I kept it running and went to work finishing up all four notches on the deck plank and beams. With just a little trimming, the log plank ended up fitting very nicely into the beams.

During this work, and for the rest of the morning, a flock of Gray Jays visited now and then for peanuts. I didn't get a good count, but it was around five birds including a couple of juveniles.

Next, I went to work to rebuild the gate. I rolled the new gate post down to the road, and then in three more trips, brought down a steel scaffold frame, a short chain, a come-along, a big hammer, a post hole digger, a cordless drill, and a 5/8"x18" augur bit.

The old post still had a sound chunk of wood coming up out of it, so I was able to pull it straight up out of the ground by wrapping the short chain around the wood and using the scaffold frame and a come-along to crank it out. It was like pulling a big tooth and took a little wiggling along with the pulling. The wood below ground level was still sound.

Then with the post hole digger, I enlarged the hole and cleaned it out so I could set the new post in it. Then using the scaffold frame, the come-along and a chain, I lifted the gate log so that I could engage the latch end of it with the rebar sticking up out of the latch post. That held the log in place so I could re-rig to lift the log near the new post. I lifted the log and rested it on the new post right where I wanted it.

That put the hole in the log right over the center of the post. I drilled a 5/8" hole down into the post through the hole in the gate log as deep as the bit would go. Then I moved the gate log aside and drilled directly into the post the full 18 inches of the bit. The rebar that goes through those holes and forms the hinge pin is #5 rebar, or 5/8" in diameter. This is a tight fit in a 5/8" hole so it takes some driving to get it in. I re-aligned the gate log over the hole and drove the rebar pin in.

The post was still loose in the hole in the ground, so I used the come-along to hold it in the right position so that the latch end was positioned just right so it could be easily latched and unlatched. With the post held in that position, I backfilled and tamped the dirt around the post to make it solid. I put the counterweights back on the overhanging end of the gate log and tried it out. It worked perfectly. I carried the tools back up to the cabin and was happy to have the gate repaired.

There was still time left to raise the second deck plank up onto the beams, feeding jays and chipmunks all the while. When that was done, I packed up and left for home at 2:00. I took the saw home with me so I could take it to the shop on the way.



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