Construction Journal Entry Week of 10/25/15

10/28-30/15 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Wednesday through Friday.

On the way I had to stop at the bank and the post office before I proceeded on to visit with Uncle Charles. I found him folding napkins with the ladies. When he finished with his stack of napkins, we played a game of checkers. This time I beat him but only because he made a mistake near the end of the game.

Next I stopped at Marilyn’s where I had a nice lunch. After lunch, I dug out half of her big rhubarb plant and took it with me.

It started raining but not too hard. When I arrived at Camp Serendipity at about 1:30, it had almost stopped raining. I transplanted the rhubarb in the area where I had backfilled the water line trench. Then I carried my gear up to the cabin and started a fire in the wood stove. It was about 40° and raining outside.

I skipped my usual nap because I wanted to make sure I got my work done according to a plan suggested by Dave at our last breakfast. The plan is to complete one tread each week. Last week set the pattern. What I needed to get done before the end of the first day was to select the tread blank, plane both sides of it, and then treat it with Board Defense. That way the Board Defense treatment would have a chance to dry overnight. If it wasn’t dry, then it would probably make the scribing hard to do. It’s hard enough to see the lines scribed on a dry log so a wet one would be a problem.

For the second day, the plan calls for removing one temporary plank tread, mounting the new tread blank, scribing the three log members, cutting the notches, and begin working on the fit. That would take up the entire day.

On the third day, which is only half a day if I want to leave for home at the usual time, I would have to finalize the fit, stain the bottom of the tread and the stringer notches, lag screw the tread into its final position, stain the top surface of the tread, and then clean out my brush.

That plan keeps me busy the entire week and there isn’t much slack in the schedule. I hope I can stick with it for the remaining two dozen or so treads I have to install.

I got the prescribed day’s work done before I quit for the night, but it was a long hard day.

On Thursday morning I started a fire in the wood stove first thing. The temperature in the cabin was down to about 60° and it was raining cats and dogs outside. After breakfast I went to work on the staircase.

The first thing to do was to remove the lowest temporary plank tread to make room to hang the new tread above where it needed to go. The planks are fastened to the log stringers below by a long 3/8” lag screw on each side. These go through triangular gussets that keep the tread level.

The gussets are screwed to the stringer but when I extracted the screws, I found that two of them, one on each side, had broken off inside the stringer. The same thing had happened last week and I had marked the screw location so that I could dig the broken piece out later. But I forgot to do so and consequently when I was notching the stringer with the chainsaw, I hit the screw and dulled my chain instantly. I spent upwards of a half hour filing the chain to get it back in condition.

This time, I dug out the broken screws right away. I used a hammer, a ¾” chisel and a vice-grips to get them out. The screws had broken off an inch or so into the wood so it took some time to dig them out deep enough so that I could get ahold of them with the vice-grips and back them out.

Next I built the suspension structure just about exactly as I had two weeks before using almost the same materials. It went quicker this time since I knew what I was doing. After the tread was suspended, leveled, and positioned correctly, I calibrated and aligned my scriber just as I did last time except that the gap was wider so I changed the pivot bolt to different holes which I had built into the device when I made it. That way, even though the pen points were nearly a foot apart, the string plumb bob was about the same length as before.

The scribing went quicker this time because I had more clearance and more experience. I was done scribing by about noon which was about an hour and a half earlier than the previous week.

After lunch and a short nap, I went back out, sharpened the chainsaw, and cut the notches in the tread and on both stringers. Then I began the tedious work of rasping the notches with Rasputin making the fit better and better.

I figured out an easier way of flipping the tread over so that I could rasp it that involved less lifting and it allowed me to keep my back straight. Instead of working from the lower steps, I worked by standing on the ground next to the stairs. I could flip the tread both out and down as well as up and back in by standing in the same place. And when the tread was out, since I was working on the east end, I could slide the tread over so I could rasp it while standing in the same position. Even so, it was exhausting work and seemed to take forever.

To figure out where to rasp, I used only the narrow aluminum strip. Carbon paper was just too flimsy and hard to manipulate. The aluminum strip worked pretty well.

By the time I quit for the day, the tread almost fit but not quite. In spite of being exhausted, I split a round of firewood before I went in for my shower and dinner.

On Friday morning I was up at 5:00 eager and ready to get to work. It had rained hard all night and continued to rain cats and dogs all day. I was glad to be working under cover.

After a considerable amount of rasping and testing, the tread got to where it seated at the correct elevation and the surface was level. The problem was that the nose stuck out about a half inch too far. I decided to install it in that position and then simply use a Skilsaw to cut it back and make a new nose in the correct alignment.

I stained the bottom of the tread and the notches in the stringers. Then I flipped the tread up into its final position and drilled the holes for the lag screws. I started by drilling a 1” hole with a spade bit to a depth of a half inch or so. Just enough for the lag bolt head and a washer.

Then after adjusting the tread so that it was seated exactly level, I drilled down through those holes with a small bit the size of the inside shank of the lag screw. I made sure to hold the tread steady so it didn’t move during the drilling. Those holes went through the tread and into the stringers as deep as the bit would go.

Then I pulled the tread out of the way and drilled the holes in the stringers again as deep as the bit would go. With the tread out of the way, the holes ended up somewhat deeper than the length of the lag screws.

Finally, I switched to a bigger bit that was the size of the outside shank of the lag screws and enlarged the holes in the tread to this size.

With the holes all drilled, I started the lag screws with washers into the tread and with the screw points peeking out a little on the underside, I positioned the tread onto the stringers so that the screw points went into the pre-drilled holes. Then with a socket ratchet I torqued the screws down. Partway down, I forced the washers down into their counter bore holes with a hammer and a screwdriver. Then I torqued the screws all the way down and the tread was permanently fastened.

Next I used the two plumb bobs from the two reference 2x4s to mark the correct position of the nose of the tread. Then I drew a pencil line through those marks all the way across the front of the tread. I used the Skilsaw to cut the nose off on that mark and the Bosch power planer to shape the nose.

Then I applied a coat of stain to most of the top of the tread. The right end of it (as you look up the staircase) was wet with water because the wind was blowing and the rain coming off the roof blew over onto the last foot or so of the tread. I decided to wait until the tread was dried off to finish the staining job.

It was about noon when I cleaned my brush out, put away my tools, and quit for the week. I was happy that I was able to stick to my scheduled work plan. I hope that in the coming weeks I can somehow find some shortcuts or speed things up so that I can not just keep on schedule but maybe even get ahead of it. I left for home at 1:40 and drove home in pouring rain.



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