10/15/09 Finally, after many years of piecemeal work, the entire chinking job, inside and out, was completed on 7/9/09 Here you see a view of the Grid E1 corner of the loft with the new chinking.
10/15/09 Here is a view of the Grid A1 corner of the loft so you can see the chinking on the gable wall.
10/15/09 This is the jig for scribing the bottom end of the loft staircase stringer. You can see the bench I made out of the old stringer in the background.
10/15/09 This is a closeup view of the scribed stringer. The red scribe line is where I will cut the end off with a chainsaw. This surface needs to be exactly flat so that it will bear on the floor evenly. The jig is made of 1x2s which are screwed to the stringer so that the edges of two of them are exactly in the plane of the cut. Then four strings are stretched between these edges so that I can sight across a pair of strings (one pair on each side) and use a magic marker to scribe the line. I made a video that demonstrates how I scribed it.
10/15/09 Here is a picture of the left end of the bench I made from the old stringer that was too short. The hose in the background is draining in preparation for winter.
10/15/09 This is the right end of the bench. The stringer log is notched to fit over the projecting wall log. That is what keeps the bench from tipping forward or backward.
10/15/09 This a view of the loft beam tread from below.
10/15/09 Another view of the loft beam tread from below. You can see the flattened notch that will receive the flat side of the stringer.
10/28/09 Here the stringer has been lifted up into position for the first time. You can see the rope choker connected to the come-along hanging from a rope over the ridgepole.
10/28/09 Here you see the first tread sitting on the stringer roughly where it will go. The wooden box on the table is my drilling jig.
11/11/09 Here you can see the second tread being installed with its jigs. The tread-holding jig consists of the four vertical cedar boards (three tall and one short). These boards are screwed to the two short horizontal 2x4s which you can see are clamped to the top surface of the tread. This jig keeps the tread level and at the proper height. The drilling jig sits on the top of the tread and is held tight up against the nose of the tread by the two 1x2s clamped together running off to the left and butted up against the wall. The four pieces of blue tape you see on the drilling jig cover up holes that I used to make mortise holes for the back porch but are not used on these treads. Even so, I made the mistake of drilling the first tread TWICE using these wrong holes. Hopefully the tape will keep me from doing that again. If you look closely at that first tread you can see the patched holes. The drill and augur are in one of the holes as a demonstration, and allthreads are screwed into the other two holes. I screw the allthread in as soon as I drill a hole and that keeps things in alignment as I drill the other holes. The holes at this point aren't all the way through the stringer yet, so the next step is to remove the drilling jig and drill the holes all the way through. That is followed by counterboring the holes under the stringer to accommodate nuts and washers.
11/25/09 Here are the first four treads installed.
12/1/09 The "Camp Serendipity" sign.
12/27/09 Paul and Ellen rounding out the year with an outing to Camp Serendipity.
2009 Pictures: Part 1 |Part 2 |Part 3 |Part 4
Pictures from other years: 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010