3/15-17/05 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 12:45. It was sunny and breezy. There had been some new snow in the mountains, but none on the road. I was fighting a bout of bronchitis and wasn’t feeling too well.

After moving in and having lunch, I brought the new 10-foot section of rake metal up to the cabin and I sanded all the logs and the window frame in the bathroom. After vacuuming the bathroom wall, I cleared out a pile of old lumber in the utility room and piled it outside the back door. Then I strung a tarp diagonally across the utility room to enclose the two log walls and I strung some lights in there.

The bronchitis made me extra sensitive to dust and the logs in the utility room had been accumulating dust for many years. I figured that when I started planing the logs, I didn’t want that extra dust blowing around. So I vacuumed the walls of the utility room.

There was also another bolt, in the utility room, holding up the scaffold on the outside, so I made another brace and installed it outside, took the nut and washer off on the inside, and drove the bolt back out of the way so I could work on the log.

I felt pretty crummy when I went in for the night. I took some night-time cold and flu medicine when I went to bed.

On Wednesday I still felt crummy. It was about 38 degrees and raining. I was kind of relieved to see the rain because I was debating whether or not to go up on the roof and install the rake metal. I really didn’t feel like it and the rain gave me a good excuse to put it off.

I went to work and planed the top two and a half logs in the northeast utility room wall and I scraped the top one and a half logs. I tried a new scraper I had bought at Home Depot and it didn’t work at all. It had a replaceable carbide blade but the blade wasn’t sharp at all. I tried sharpening it on the bench grinder and with a carborundum stone and neither would even scratch the blade much less sharpen it. I got a little more life out of the blade in my old Montgomery Ward scraper by enlarging the slotted hole a little. I was able to get a chainsaw file in the slot and cut away nearly an eighth of an inch. This gave me quite a bit more blade area. I need to find some replacement blades for that scraper.

I was still feeling crummy so I took a nap after lunch. When I woke up I saw that the rain was now mixed with snow and a little slush was accumulating on the ground. I scraped and gouged the rest of the second log but in the process, I broke the blade on the old scraper. I got as much life out of it as you could reasonably expect. I swept up the chips and vacuumed the utility room walls and floor. In addition to feeling crummy from the bronchitis, my shoulder was really sore. I had accidentally run into a metal sign while walking the dog the previous weekend, and I had bruised the very muscles and tendons in my shoulder that I use for scraping. It’s nothing that won’t heal, though.

On Thursday morning I didn’t feel much better. I varnished the entire bathroom wall and the top two logs in the utility room. I left for home at 12:30. There was no snow accumulation on the ground or the road, but there was a nice fresh coat of snow on Nason Ridge.

3/18/05 Returned the scraper to Home Depot and got my money back.