6/8-10/16 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Wednesday through Friday.

On the way I stopped in and had lunch with Marilyn and George and picked up the sledge hammer I had lent to them. Then I proceeded on and arrived at Camp Serendipity at 12:15.

I took a picture of Ruby and then whacked the weeds on the roadway up to the cabin. Then I carried my gear up, hoisted the flag, turned on the water for Brian and Paul, and had a nap.

When I got up, I went into the woods and checked on the trees. I had to adjust Paul's valve a little more to open it up a little. Then I went to work on the stair tread.

I moved the nail in the vertical gauge board, then checked to make sure the tread was still in alignment before I calibrated and aligned the scriber. When it was ready, I scribed the tread and the stringers. Then I re-thought my method of fixing the corner points on the flat cuts on the tread and stringer.

I had worked out a method on 5/11/16 that worked very well, but I had made four separate measurements and cut out four separate triangles. It dawned on me that they were all different because I had started by choosing arbitrary points on the stringers and used them as a base. Instead of doing that, I decided to choose a triangle first, then use that to find the corresponding points on the tread, and finally use the scriber to locate the points on the stringers. That way I could use the same triangle for all four points, and better yet, I simply chose one of the triangles I had already made for the pervious tread so it was ready to go.

I used the new method and it worked well and fast. Once all the points were marked, I took the tread down and then drew the connecting lines on the tread and stringers. I used plumb bobs hanging from the next tread nose position to scribe the lines on the stringers for the vertical back cuts. Since there was bright sunshine, I thought I could use a small mirror to reflect the sunlight across the two plumb bob strings and cast a shadow of the first string onto the stringers. If so, I could use that shadow for the scribing.

It didn't work out because I couldn't hold the mirror steady enough and the shadow was too hard to see on the log. So I resorted to simply sighting across the strings and reaching over and drawing the scribe lines by hand.

The next step was to cut those vertical kerfs in the stringers. Before, I had tried several different saws and had trouble with all of them. But the most effective saw was the big crosscut saw so I started out with that one and used it almost all the way down. It could reach across both stringers so I could make both kerfs at the same time. It worked well.

On Thursday I watered the sequoia trees again, and then went back to work on the stair tread. I finished making the vertical kerfs in the stringer with the big saw. Then I used the reciprocating saw to make small starter kerfs on the fronts of the stringer notches.

Next, I used a Skilsaw to make kerfs on the tread. I have learned to cut a little beyond the scribe lines because the fit is always too tight if I cut right on the lines. There is no need for a really tight fit so a looser fit will make the adjustments easier and it should fit better to start with.

With the kerfs all cut, I used the Bulldog with its wood chisel bit to remove the wood to form the notches between the kerfs. It worked very well and I made the notches quicker than I had before.

The first attempt at fitting was very close, but it was also very close to lunch time. So I mixed up a batch of Board Defense and treated the tread and stringers before I quit for lunch. That way they would be dry by the time I got back to work on them.

After lunch and a nap, I went back to work on adjusting the notches for a better fit. Just as I got started, Earl showed up and we had a nice visit. I told him that I was having trouble starting my chainsaw and he said he would take a look at it. When I got the saw out and tried starting it, it wouldn't start, as usual. But when Earl tried it, it started right up. He had locked the throttle open when he tried and that was a trick I had not tried before. I'm not sure whether that throttle was what did the trick, or whether it was just that the weather was warm. At any rate I was happy that the saw worked again.

After Earl left, I took the chainsaw up on the high rock and bucked up half of the 16-foot log from the tree that had crashed into the cabin, and I bucked up half a dozen smaller logs that were lying around up there. I had secured the big log, and the rounds I cut loose with chains and a rope so they wouldn't roll down over the cliff, and I left the 8-foot remainder of the log chained to a stump when I finished. I was happy to be getting that firewood supply under control.

On Friday morning, instead of working on the staircase, I decided to finish the firewood job I had started, at least to get the wood I cut down to the upper roadway and under the eaves. I used my firewood picker-upper to move the wood from where it had been cut, to a pile further east on the ridge. Then using the same technique of picking up the pieces with the picker-upper and throwing them downhill, I moved the pile a second time along the ridge out away from the cabin.

Then from that new position, I threw the wood down the steep part of the hill, ultimately aiming for the upper roadway halfway up the hill to the cabin. Some of the rounds ended up there, two of the rounds rolled all the way to the truck in the hairpin turn, but most of them ended up on the slope above the roadway.

So I walked down to the rounds that were on the slope and threw them further down until all the rounds were on the roadway. Then I got the wheelbarrow and wheeled a dozen or so loads of wood up and stacked it under the eaves in front of the cabin. I am really happy to be getting an early start in accumulating next winter's firewood. And I am happy to have found an efficient method of getting wood down from the high rock. I left for home at 12:40.