2/11-13/03 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived a little past noon. It was a beautiful sunny, still, 34-degree day. There was no new snow on the ground and the old snow had shrunk down quite a bit. The building looked so nice in the sunshine that I took a couple pictures of it.

After moving in and having lunch, I scribed the log for the second slab. Then I ripped the slab. The saw worked great and I made a nice cut. Of course, the slab is probably only a foot wide so I could easily see the line and the bar coming out the other side. I also switched to cutting the normal way using the bottom of the bar and cutting from right to left. This method aggravates my right elbow and gives me tennis elbow if I do it too much. But my elbow is in good shape and I don't have much ripping left to do. My back is what is hurting me now and this method is a little easier on my back. I can saw with one hand and use the other one to lean on.

I skidded the plank down to the gwiz station and used my new scribing tool to scribe for the next and final cut. My back was really hurting but I got a start making the cut anyway before I quit for the day. The weather was absolutely gorgeous.

Wednesday was another beautiful, still, sunny day. It got up to about 35 degrees. I ripped the last cut and got two planks. It felt great having the entire log harvested and cut up into planks. The total was over 210 lineal feet of ripping for these planks. It is really gratifying to look over where that log has been lying for the past few years and realize that it is now all cut up into planks.

I took a set of panoramic pictures starting with the stump end of the log, following the trail in the snow made by skidding the logs to the ripping station, the ripping station piled high with sawdust, the sawdust-stained trail in the snow leading to the gwiz station, and the log house at the end of that trail.

After lunch, I skidded the last two planks to the gwiz station. Then I put the gwizard back on the .032 saw. My back was still pretty stiff. Larry came by and took a look at what I had done. While he was there, we rigged up my home-made scale and weighed the biggest plank. I had cut it an extra half-inch in thickness in order to make up for the bad cut I had made on one side. The plank weighed in at 140 lb. before gwizzing.

After Larry left, I gwizzed the last four planks, which left only three slabs to do. My shoulder that has been hurting for so long is getting a lot better, but my back is now hurting instead. I expect that everything will heal up now that the ripping and gwizzing job is almost done.

On Thursday morning, I gwizzed the last three slabs. They were pretty easy and the work went pretty fast. The three jays came around for peanuts a couple times. I took some pictures of the gwiz station and the stockpiled planks. I left for home at about 1:00.