2/23-25/16 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

Robert called me before I left home and told me he was going to work on the big tree later in the morning. I told him I would be there to video it as soon as I could. So I left early, dropped off our income tax stuff in Woodinville, skipped my visit with Uncle Charles, went straight to Camp Serendipity to get my tripod, and got to North Shore Road by about 10:45.

Robert had already got somewhat of a start on the tree but he waited for me before he got into the main cutting. I shot video of his work falling the trunk in one piece leaving a stump about 5 feet above the porch deck. That is a very big stump and its removal will be the last act of the total job.

The log that Robert cut was about 25 feet long and it landed exactly where he wanted it to. The problem was that once it was on the ground, it started rolling down the hill toward the dock. It rolled slowly and haltingly because Robert had left stubs of branches on it and these slowed and almost stopped the log from rolling. It slowly jerked and rolled its way down the hill and stopped just inches from the dock causing no damage whatsoever. The top of the log ended up halfway submerged in the lake. It was amazing.

Robert finished by 11:45 and I returned to Camp Serendipity. I had my lunch and had just finished when Robert and Tim showed up to visit and to see what I had been doing. They gave me some good suggestions about what to do about my current quandary involving the stoop construction. One possibility that they suggested was to use the big half-log that Chris Foote had given me many years ago. It is a couple inches thicker than the slabs I had chosen so it definitely would work better.

We all went up on the high rock to look at the possibility of harvesting another, and bigger, section of the culprit log that crashed into the cabin. I assured them that I would have no trouble harvesting the log without their help, which they generously offered.

After they left, I got the chainsaw out and cut off a 4-foot section of the culprit log and then used a come-along and chains to drag it up over the high rock and lower it down onto the porch deck.

On Wednesday, I spread out the big tarp in preparation for the gwizzing of the log and mounted the gwizard on the chainsaw. Rather than rig up the rather complicated sling I had used last time, I rigged up a simpler, although somewhat inferior, sling from my overhead exercise rope instead.

I began gwizzing the log, but the saw started acting up. It would quit after a couple minutes of operation and then be hard to restart. I struggled with it long enough to get most of the log gwizzed, but finally in exasperation I switched to the power planer and finished the job. I don’t know what was wrong with the saw because it usually doesn’t act like that.

Next I scribed the log for flattening the bottom and then replaced the gwizard with the normal cutting bar on the chainsaw. I was worried that the saw would act up again, and it did, but not as bad as with the gwizard on it. It worked well enough to rip the slab off the log to make a nice flat bearing surface for the bottom. Then with the saw working pretty well, I squared up the ends of the log and cut it to length.

Finally, I cleaned up all the chips and sawdust. I have been storing the chips and sawdust in 5-gallon buckets and cardboard boxes so that when the snow has melted in the woods, I can spread the chips along the trails. The problem is that I was running out of buckets and boxes. By packing down the previous buckets and by scrounging more buckets and another box, I had a place to store all the chips I had just made.

On Thursday morning I folded up the tarp and put it away. Then I positioned the new log in place of the one that was too small and determined that it would work very well. I would not need to use the Foote log after all. I felt a lot better about my plan for the stoop.

Next I leveled the inner plank slab over its position on the base logs and proceeded to scribe it for cutting the notches. I decided to notch both the base logs and the slab plank, about half-way into each. That would provide a flat level bearing surface which would prevent any rocking of the slab, and it would leave plenty of meat on the slab for strength.

Since both notches would be rather shallow, I think I will use the wood chisel on the Bulldog to do the cutting. That will make less of a chip mess than using the chainsaw and would probably be easier. It is also more fun. I left for home at 12:30 feeling a lot better about the stoop.