11/3-5/09 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

There was a little snow on the ground going over the pass, but none on the road. I arrived at 12:45 and was promptly greeted by Bert all by himself. I built a fire in the wood stove and then had lunch. I unloaded some more yard waste and piled it on the compost pile. Then I used one of the new bolts I bought and did the final bolting of the top of the stringer to the loft beam.

Next, I made a plywood shim to make up for the error I made by notching the stringer for the first tread. I installed the first tread by mounting it on the shim, positioning it correctly, using the drilling jig to drill the holes, and then bolting it down through the floor. I was happy to discover that the bolts stuck through the floor enough to use nuts to fasten them underneath. It will work out perfectly to use couplers instead of nuts and then extend the bolts with allthread to go down through one of the 3x12-inch blocking headers that I will install between the joists. The holes in the header only need be counterbored at the top to receive the couplers. It will work great.

After I went in for the night, I went back up to the cabin to get a beer and I saw a rabbit on the roadway. Since the rabbits only come out at night this is the first time I had seen one, even though I see their tracks in the snow a lot during the winter.

On Wednesday, I measured the position of the first tread more carefully and decided that it was not close enough. I took it apart again. I designed and built a jig that would hold the tread in exactly the right position for drilling. Then I drove glued dowels up into the holes from under the floor to plug them up. I needed to drill new holes and I didn't want the augur following those old holes.

I needed to shim the tread a little more, but with the tread sitting in the correct position, I couldn't see or measure the gap between the tread and the plywood shim under it. So I got some modeling clay and rolled it into four small balls. I stuck these clay balls onto the corners of the plywood shim and then set the tread and its jig on top. I gently pressed the tread down into the correct position, thereby squeezing the clay balls down.

Then I removed the tread and recovered the clay balls. They were now flattened and were the thickness of the shims I needed. I was pleased to discover that the balls on the left side were both squished to the same thickness, about 3/16", and those on the right were also squeezed to the same thickness, although different from those on the left. That meant that I could install shims that had parallel surfaces. That is easy to do. I simply took two shims pointing in opposite directions and overlapped them just right so that the pair of shims has exactly the same thickness as a pair of clay pads. I put one pair of shims running vertically on the left and the other pair on the right. That way, the tread will be supported on the extreme left and right of the stringer which will give maximum strength.

I screwed the shim combinations to the stringer, replaced the tread in its jig for the last time, drilled new holes, and bolted the tread to the stringer through the floor as before. This time when I measured the tread placement, it was as close as my eyes could tell to being right on. I was happy that I redid it.

Next I went to work installing the middle of three blocking headers between the joists under the stringer. I had made these headers a long time ago and now was the time to install at least the center one. As I described above, the two outside bolts from the tread go down through the center header and are fastened with nuts and washers on the bottom edge of the header. I drilled the header, counterbored it for the couplers and went down into the crawlspace to install it.

I installed the couplers and allthreads first by turning each coupler on all the way on one end of an allthread. Then by butting that end of the allthread against the bolt end peeking out under the floor, I turned the coupler so that it unscrewed from the allthread at the same time it screwed onto the bolt end. When the coupler hit the floor, it was threaded halfway onto the bolt and halfway onto the allthread.

The two allthreads were then sticking straight down from under the floor. I took the header and threaded the allthreads into the holes starting at the cournerbored ends. A half-inch allthread doesn't slip easily into a half-inch hole because of the wood fuzz inside the hole. So trying to get two of them through 12-inch holes wasn't all that easy.

I had prepared for it so I had a five pound hammer that I used to drive the header up the allthreads. This worked pretty well until the header reached the bottom of the joists. The fit was tight and I kept on pounding, but the hammer was less and less effective.

I switched methods and ran nuts and washers all the way up the allthreads so that they were up against the bottom of the header and I used a wrench to turn the nuts which pressed the header upwards. But the fit kept getting tighter and tighter. After some checking, I discovered that I had the allthreads in the wrong holes. The bolts weren't perfectly centered between the joists, so there was no way it was going to fit. I needed to take the header off again and start over.

I turned the nuts back down and all the way off the allthreads and then used the hammer to drive the header back down and off. Then I turned the header 180 degrees and started the process all over again.

This time the fit was nice so there was no problem getting the header bolted up into its final position. I was very happy to see it fit so well. Next I used a hacksaw to cut the allthreads off just below the nuts. This was a hard job because I was standing on a couple of rickety stacked concrete blocks and sawing up over my head. But eventually I got the job done.

What remains now is to install the other two headers on either side of this one and fasten all three of them together with steel strap. I looked at Tom's specification and I have the required steel strap. I'm just not sure at this point how to fasten the headers to the joists and exactly how to install the steel strap. I'll worry about that later. For now, the stinger was firmly anchored to the floor enough that I can build the rest of the staircase. It is a fairly major milestone. I was tired with sore shoulders from the sawing, but I was happy with the progress.

Before I went in for the night, I took down the big rope that I used to lift the stringer into position. That rope had been draped over the ridgepole and the Grid D purlin ever since those beams were put in place. It looks a lot different in the building now with the ropes gone. This staircase project is having a major effect on the looks of the interior of the cabin. I can't wait until I can take that temporary ladder away from the front door and use the new staircase to get up to the loft instead.

In the evening I was treated to another long loud chorus of coyotes yipping and dogs barking. It would be interesting to know exactly what was going on among them.

On Thursday morning I built another fire in the stove and decided to cut off one of the bolts at the top of the stringer. This one was the 12-inch bolt I had just installed, but I only needed an 11-inch one. I had decided earlier that that extra inch sticking out from the bottom wouldn't hurt anything. But looking at it I decided that it would always bug me until I trimmed it off, so I decided to do it now. I removed the bolt, took it down to the crawlspace to the vise, and hacksawed off an inch. Then I re-installed it and felt much better looking up at it.

With that first tread installed, I was eager to get on with mass production and install the rest of them. There were still some preliminaries left, though. I needed an exact center line marked on the stringer so that I could position the rest of the treads. I spent quite a bit of time with strings, plumb bobs, and yardsticks deciding exactly where that line should be and getting it drawn. I was happy with the positioning of the stringer. It is very accurately placed.

With the line drawn, the next step was to trim off both ends of that first tread. I realized that I will have to trim each tread I install in order to position the tread above it. I plan to mark the floor with the exact position of the nose of each tread and use a plumb bob hanging over the nose of the new tread to line it up with these marks. But the plumb bob would run into the lower tread if they are the same width.

The solution is to trim the lower tread to its final width, and since the tread blanks are a few inches wider than the final size, the plumb bob can hang off the ends of the tread without hitting the trimmed tread below. This is just one more example of serendipity that has accompanied this project.

I used the Skilsaw to cut the ends of the tread, but since it couldn't cut deep enough, I had to finish the cut with Henry, my trusted handsaw. I was a little dismayed to find that Henry is starting to get dull and I haven't found anyone who will file saws any more. I decided I'll bring a three-cornered file up with me next week and see if I can't touch the saw up so it will cut better. Those Doug fir treads are pretty hard to cut with a dull saw.

Finally, I went up to the woodshed and got the next tread blank. I set it on sawhorses on the porch and spent a lot of time brooming off its surface. The squirrels, chipmunks, packrats, and mice had spent a lot of time on the treads and they are filthy dirty. The main thing is that I wanted to get as much dirt off of them as possible before I used the planer on them. The dirt dulls the blades pretty fast so I wanted to get it off. I left for home at 1:45.