10/10-12/06 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 12:15. There was no frog in the gate can.

After moving in and having lunch, I went up and dismantled the easel and took the doors back down and stored them in the crawl space. Then I went back to work on notching the tread for the staircase. I used the chainsaw and a hammer and chisel and made some progress. It is a pretty complicated cut and I had to make tradeoff decisions as to which member to cut. The shape I decided on ended up being a fairly complicated faceted shape. I wasn't really happy with it and I didn't get it to fit completely.

I took a walk on the trails to admire the chips that the scouts had spread on them. They look nice. I fed the jays quite a few times, and I watered the potted sequoia trees by running the water from the hose up at the drip line of the cabin and making a ditch to divert the water to the trees.

On Wednesday I continued working on fitting the tread. I would sort of guess at where the two members were touching, and then mostly with a hammer and chisel I would take off a thin layer of wood and try the fit again. By repeating this process a dozen or so times, the tread ended up fitting pretty well. I had the sinking feeling, though, that it was too deep and that I wouldn't be able to continue notching that deep for the rest of the treads. I'll have to do some careful measuring to be sure whether I have a problem or not.

After lunch, Earl stopped by and we had a nice visit. The jays came around so Earl and I gave them some treats. After he left, I worked on the tread some more but I decided to wait with any more cutting until I bring some modeling clay up with me. I can put a lump of clay between the two members, press it down, and then see where more wood needs to be taken off. Otherwise I really don't know for sure where the wood is touching and if not, how far apart they are.

On Thursday morning I decided to stain the tread. It was already starting to discolor from the UV so I used a scraper to brighten the thing up. The tread had a chainsaw finish on it so the scraper also did a nice job of smoothing it.

Mary Jackson stopped by for a visit with her two dogs. She had a look at the place and we had a nice chat. She also got a chance to feed the jays and she told me that that made her day. When she left I stained the tread. I left for home at 1:15.