10/31-11/2/06 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

There was snow on the road above 2000 feet. I arrived at 12:30. The temperature was 35 degrees outside but 26 degrees inside the trailer. I'm glad the trailer is winterized.

I noticed that there was a bar or two on my cell phone while I was outside the trailer so I tried making a call. I was pleased and surprised that it worked. I don't know if the atmospheric conditions happened to be just right or if the phone company has increased their coverage or beefed up their signals. Anyway it's an indicator that we may have cell phone service up there after all.

After moving in and having lunch, I shimmed the tread for its final placement. I screwed the shims to the stringers. With the tread in its final place, I drilled the holes for the lag screws to fasten the tread to the stringers. The flock of gray jays came around for a treat during the work.

On Wednesday, it was only 16 degrees outside when I got up. After breakfast I burned up a bunch of cardboard and cement bags. It made a nice blaze that helped me warm up.

I stained the parts of the stringers, shims, and tread that would be covered when the whole thing is assembled. Then I put the tread and newel post together for what I hope is the final time and then lag screwed and bolted the thing together. I got the chainsaw and cut the ends off of both stringers below the tread so that there will be room for the stone steps below. Then I stained the newel post and all the parts of the stringers and tread that needed it. While I had the stain out, I put another coat of stain on the Grid G porch beam. For some reason, the stain on that log seemed to have disappeared and it looked like it needed more.

It was a nice still day and most of the leaves had fallen so I thought it would be a good time to walk the woods and check on the sequoia trees. I found all 20 of them but I lost count of how many looked dead. I think there were five or six that looked dead. We'll see how many survive the winter. I also cleaned out the leaf debris at the spring while I was up there.

I measured and marked the top of each stringer at the points directly below the noses of each tread. Since the bottom tread is in its final place, and the edge of the deck serves as the top tread, I could determine where the rest of the tread noses should be by stretching a measuring tape tightly between the edge of the deck and over the bottom tread. Then by dividing the distance between the top and the bottom by 13, I calculated the distance to each tread nose over each stringer. Using a combination square with the corner on the top of the tread, the upright scale on the correct distance along the tape, and the bubble level centered, the corner of the square was at the point on the stringer directly below the tread nose. I carefully marked each of these points. That will save me time later on because I won't have to measure each tread for position when I install them. Hopefully the installation of the rest of the treads will be a lot faster.

I re-installed the suspension jigs on the stringers so that I can suspend the next tread above where it goes. Then I selected the slab for the next tread and dragged it over to the stair site. It is another 10 footer so it is pretty big and heavy. I got out the warped 1x2 and used it to draw a nicely curved line on the tread for trimming the nose of it. I tried to draw it with a slightly longer radius than the first tread. The idea is that the curvature will be progressively less as you go up so that the top treads will be virtually straight. That should give the staircase a nice aesthetic appeal.

On Thursday morning it started snowing at 8:00. I got the Skilsaw out and trimmed the nose of the new tread. It looks really good. Then I suspended the tread in the jigs and aligned it so that it is level both ways and the nose is directly over the two points marked on the stringers. The jigs worked beautifully and made the alignment very fast and easy. The tread was then ready to scribe as long as I knew the exact scribe distance. That distance is the difference between the heights of the surfaces of the two treads minus the riser height.

In my calculations to this point, the riser height had turned out to be 7 3/32 inches. I wanted to make absolutely sure that this was correct before I scribed for the new tread so I decided to double check. I measured the distance from the deck surface to the surface of the first tread, which was now in its final and true position. I was puzzled to find out that this distance was longer than it should be by two inches or so. The new measurement gave a riser height of 7 3/8 inches. I didn't want to proceed until I understood the discrepancy better.

I did some more measurements, of things like the level of the deck and a re-measure of the deck to tread distance, and finally concluded that the discrepancy arose because the stone steps were not exactly aligned with the first wood tread. The earlier calculations were based on measurements of the stone steps, so I decided I had to use the 7 3/8 inch riser height. Since I still have to build two or three more stone steps, I can adjust them to transition between the existing stone steps and the wood steps. That should be no problem.

Now that the riser height was known, I set up the scribe calibration jig and set it for the 7 3/8 inch scribe distance. I barely caught an error in this setting. At first I set the distance to 7 3/8 inches, which is the riser height. But this is wrong. The scribe distance needs to be the difference between the riser height and the tread separation as it is suspended in the scribing position. Since that separation is 15 inches, the difference is 7 5/8 inches. If I hadn't caught the error, the tread would have been a quarter of an inch too high. I wouldn't have noticed it simply by installing the tread, but a quarter of an inch difference is not only noticeable when you walk on a staircase, but it is downright dangerous. I felt really lucky that I spotted the error when I did. It is a good lesson to continually check and re-check measurements and calculations before cutting anything.

By 11:00 there was about an inch of snow on the ground so I decided to leave early. I left for home at 12:30 and had no problem getting over the pass.