11/13-15/07 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 12:50. There was some snow on the road going over the pass and a trace of snow on the ground at the property. It had evidently snowed a little that morning because there was a small berm under the eaves. The temperature was a pleasant 40 degrees.

After moving in and having lunch, I went to work and planed and scraped the first tread. I planed the underside of the tread with the power planer, but I decided to use a scraper on the top. That will match the surface on the deck and it will also leave it quite rough to give a little more traction. I also chamfered the edges all around which really dresses up the tread. I used a hammer and a 3/4" chisel for that. The tread really looked sharp after that compared to how it looked before. I used the big crosscut saw to cut the end of one of the stringers which stuck out beyond the nose of the tread. Then I chamfered all the edges of both stringers with the hammer and chisel. Finally, I mixed up a batch of Board Defense and used the sprayer to treat the tread. I put the tread up on the porch so it would dry overnight.

On Wednesday, the tread was not quite dry to the touch, so I set it up inside the cabin with an electric heater on one side of it and a propane heater on the other side. Then I went down and stained the lower part of both stringers, in particular the notches that would hold the tread.

When the tread was dry, I bolted it to the stringers. I started by counterboring the holes that would take the washers for the 3/8" lag screws. Then, I made a mistake and used the wrong size bit to drill the hole for one of the screws. I used a 3/8" bit, which is the right size for the shank, but too big for the threads. That hole had gone all the way through the stringer so it wouldn't give the lag screw enough to hold on to. To fix the problem, I cut a piece of 3/8" allthread and used a nut and washer on the top and the bottom to bolt the tread on. I made the right size holes for the other side so I used a lag screw there. With the tread installed, I stained it, admired it, and went in for lunch and a nap.

After lunch, I got the next tread from the woodshed, where it had been stored for over twelve years. I used the skilsaw and a handsaw to cut the tread square on the end, and I used the power planer to true up and round off the nose of the tread. Next, I moved the tread suspension jigs up the stringers in position for the next tread. Then I could see that the newel post was going to be in the way for the installation of the next tread, so I got the big wrench out and took the newel post out of the CB66 and stored it in the crawlspace. I won't be needing that newel post until I get around to installing the handrail, which might not be for a long time yet.

By that time, it had gotten too dark to work outside so I went up in the loft to begin preparing for varnishing up there. I moved a bunch of lumber from the wall that needs varnishing to the opposite wall which was already varnished. I also moved an old dresser of my mother's which was stored up there. In the process I discovered that a mouse had built a nest of pink fiberglass in the bottom drawer. That was a revolting development.

Fortunately, my mother had covered the bottom of the drawer with waterproof contact paper. It looked like none of the wood on the sides had been soiled and the contact paper had protected the bottom. I used wide blue masking tape to cover the inside sides of the drawer before I started cleaning it out. Then I carefully transferred the mess from the drawer to a garbage bag without messing up the sides of the drawer. Finally, I carefully peeled away the contact paper making sure all the mess went into the garbage bag. I was able to remove it so that, as the doctors say, "the margins were clean".

When I put the drawer back in the dresser, and the dresser in its new storage location, I blocked the bottom of the dresser with boards so that if another mouse gets into the building, it won't be able to get back into that dresser. That's the plan anyway.

The lesson from this is that it would be a good idea to make all such furniture and cupboards mouse-proof just in case a mouse or two get in the cabin sometime in the future. I think I will pay special attention to the pantry and make it impervious to mice from the rest of the building.

On Thursday morning, there was about 2 inches of new snow on the ground. The snow turned to rain before I got out to go to work. I decided not to work outside on the tread because I would have to work right under the dripping eaves. Instead I decided to work on varnishing in the loft. When I got up there, I changed my mind again. I decided to work on the electrical wiring path from the loft floor to the ceiling. The loft floor provides easy wiring paths to rooms on the first floor, but the problem is getting the wires up into the vaulted ceiling without having exposed conduits in the loft. The route I have been thinking of is up through one or both of the corners inside the log walls.

I had looked at those corners many times thinking about how to route wires through them and now I would try. The basic strategy would be to drill holes through the logs such that both ends of the hole would be covered by the chinking in the corner. In some cases, where there was a gap between the butting log and the passing log, there was room to route a Romex cable without drilling. But in the case of the top log, a hole was required.

By using a short 1" spade bit, I was able to get the drill up in the space between the rafters so that the angle would take the bit down through the log and end up inside the corner, well inside of the outside chinking. It looked like the angle was going to work out OK; it's just that that short bit didn't even get halfway through the log. The next step was to use a longer 18" bit. By sticking the long bit into the hole first, it could be chucked to the drill afterward. The problem was that my 1" and even my 5/8" augurs were too big to fit into a 3/8" chuck. And the half-inch drill motor was way too big to fit into the space between the rafters without hitting the roof OSB.

So I took a 3/8" augur, stuck it down into the hole, and chucked the bit into the 3/8" drill. It was a very tight fit. I couldn't even get the bit into the chuck without bending the bit. Once the bit was in, there was still a little bend in the bit with the drill tight up against the roof and one rafter. But fortunately, the drill was able to turn the bit, so with a lot of squealing, the bit soon dug in deep enough to give the drill room to straighten up. Then it went all the way through the log.

I was very happy to see that it came out exactly where I wanted it to. There wasn't a lot of wiggle room. It came out right up against the mortar of the outside chinking and right in the center of the corner joint.

The next step was to do the same thing with a 1/2" bit. This was stiffer to bend, so I couldn't get it chucked without drilling it in by hand for a little ways first. I tried turning the bit by hand with gloves on and it cut in a little ways, but pretty soon it got too hard to turn. I got an open end wrench that fit the hex top end of the bit and used that to turn the bit while I put downward pressure on the bit. I only had to drill it in a half inch or so until I could get the drill chuck over the bit and chuck it in. Then, with a lot more squealing, the drill was able to turn the half inch bit and run it all the way down to the end of the hole.

Next I turned a 5/8" augur all the way through the hole turning it by hand with an open end wrench while applying pressure from the top with the handle of a crescent wrench in the palm of my other hand. It was a lot of work but I got it all the way through.

The next step was to try it with a 3/4" augur. This took a lot more pressure down on the bit to make it cut. So to apply the pressure, I got a 2x4 a couple feet long, drilled a shallow hole for a bearing for the top of the bit, and used it as a lever with the end of the 2x4 up against the roof while I pulled down on the other end. While the pressure was being applied, I used an open end wrench to turn the bit. Little by little, the bit drove on down through the hole and finally came out the bottom. I figured that I might be the only guy who has ever drilled a hole through a log in exactly that way. I was happy to have the hole done.

I drilled some more holes through other logs in the corner, none being as difficult as that first one. For the logs further down, there was room to use a long augur and still have room for the drill. I didn't completely finish the wiring path, but I had proved the concept by getting the hardest part done. Now I'll have to figure out how many cables I need to run through and then I may have to either enlarge the holes to accommodate them, or make another path through the other corner, or both. At least I am happy that I have a workable solution. There is still a small question of whether the electrical inspector will allow that kind of wiring run without having a conduit. In the worst case, I guess I could run conduit through the holes in the logs.

I left for home at about 1:45.