8/5-7/09 I went up to the property for 3 days: Wednesday through Friday.

It was a hot 85 degrees when I arrived at 1:40. It was evidently too hot for Bert and Ernie because they didn't show up as usual. There were only a few mosquitoes out which was a relief. After moving in and having lunch, I went to work and sanded the varnished portion of the log on the porch. Then I vacuumed it and applied the third coat of varnish.

After cleaning out my brush, I carried 6 buckets of water into the woods and watered each of the twelve sequoia trees. After that, I brought one set of steel scaffold frames and braces up from the crawl space and stored them in the bathroom.

On Thursday, I set up a single scaffold tower below the loft beam where I will cut a notch to make the second tread of the loft staircase. I used four rebar hooks to support two 2x6s which in turn supported a plank deck about 4 or 5 feet off the floor. This is about the right height for me to work on the beam.

Before I did any cutting, I measured carefully for the nth time, did the calculations again for the riser heights, and cross checked them with the drawings of the stairs to make sure I did it right. I remembered to allow an extra half-inch on both floors for the finished floors, and eventually gained the confidence in my numbers so I felt comfortable cutting into that beam.

I measured down 15 inches from the loft floor (the actual measurement was 14.98 inches, but I figured my pencil mark was more than the 2 hundreths of an inch. I used my coil of galvanized flashing to make the vertical marks around the beam and then drew the two horizontal pencil lines at the 15 inch level to mark the top surface of the tread. Then I started cutting.

I started on the right hand kerf since it was easiest to work on. I used Gus's fine tooth crosscut saw so as to get the smoothest surface in the kerf. This saw was nice and sharp but the last time it was filed, the filer set the pitch wrong so the teeth were messed up. It cut pretty well anyway because it was so sharp.

I also tried the big crosscut saw I have and I tried a brand new bow saw to make kerfs on the inside. The surfaces of these inside kerfs don't matter because all the wood around them will be removed. I chiseled out a couple chunks of wood between these kerfs to see what kind of surface the different saws left. It was clear that Gus's saw left a much better surface, so I used it for the cut on the left side of the notch too.

It was a lot of hard work but I got three kerfs cut down to the pencil lines before I quit for lunch and a nap.

After lunch I finished cutting five kerfs in total. I thought I was cutting into a clean log, but I discovered that the many checks had dirt in them. This really dulls a saw blade fast, so by the time I finished the left hand kerf, Gus's saw was so dull it would hardly cut any more.

When all the kerfs were cut, I used a big hammer and chisel to remove most of the wood between the kerfs. The grain of the log is spiraled, so I had to be careful to remove the wood in one direction on one side of the log and in the opposite direction on the other side. Otherwise the wood would split down below the level of the tread.

With most of the wood removed, I used the power planer to cut the surface down closer to the lines. Of course the planer couldn't get to within four inches or so of the ends so I had to cut that wood with chisels, scrapers, and a rasp to get right into the corners. By the end of the day, I had the tread roughly formed.

On Friday morning, I decided on the finish I would put on the treads. Rather than try to make a perfectly flat and flawless surface, I would make a hand-hewn scraper finish. This would be consistent with all of the other woodwork in the building, and I don't think I could achieve a perfectly flat finish anyway. As it turned out, one of my chisel cuts went too deep and two kerfs went too deep to scrape out. These will just have to serve as examples of flaws that will take their place among the many other flaws and imperfections in the rest of the building. I'll call it added charm.

When the tread surface was scraped to my satisfaction, I used a hammer and chisel to chamfer the outside corners of the log, consistent with how I finished all other outside log corners in the building, and I rounded the nose and back edge of the tread. I also scraped clean some surfaces on the Grid C2 RPSL that had been left rough and unfinished and which tie in with the tread.

When the wood was all ready, I vacuumed it off and applied the first coat of varnish.

When I finished, I went into the crawl space to get the paint thinner and buckets to clean out my brush. When I opened the crawl space door to go outside and clean the brush, I looked out and was staring right at a startled doe that was evidently walking down the trail from the privy. She was about 15 feet away when I opened the door. In a flash, she reeled around and headed down the trail to the concrete staircase. That was a fun moment even though it only lasted a few milliseconds. I see the deer tracks a lot but I don't see the deer very often.

After cleaning out my brush, I got half a bucket of water and watered Bill's sequoia tree. His is having the hardest time and I figured I would give it special treatment until it perks up. Dan had told me not to give up on the seedlings even if they turn almost completely brown. He said that a lot of times they will surprise you and come bouncing back. Bill's tree is all brown except for about 2 or 3 inches on the top, so I hope that is enough for it to make a full recovery. We'll see.

I left for home at 2:15 PM.