9/20-22/16 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived exactly at noon. The temperature outside was 52° and everything was damp. It had evidently rained recently. After moving in and hoisting the flag, I built a fire in the wood stove, had my lunch, and took my usual nap.

After my nap, I went to work on the newel post. The bottom of the log was not cut square so I screwed a short board on the bottom of it so that it would stand up straight. It took a little effort to lower one end of the log down to the porch deck from the sawhorse and then lift the other end up off the other sawhorse to get the log standing upright. The idea was to move the log over toward its intended destination to see how it would look.

It didn't look good. The problem was that it was way too thick. Dave had pointed out to me that the top of the staircase was too narrow and that I should move the newel post and rail as far as I could toward the porch. He was exactly right. But with the post moved over, it narrowed the space between it and the Grid F2 column to less than 3 feet. That was unacceptable. I decided I needed a narrower post, more like 7 inches in diameter.

I checked the logs I had stored by the back porch and found one that was exactly the right size. It was 7 inches in diameter and a little over 5 feet long. It was wet and totally gray from UV. I wasn't sure how sound it was but I dragged it up onto the front porch to check it out.

I used the hand power planer to plane off the UV damaged wood and to see whether the log would work. The planer left the surface fuzzy, partly because the planer wasn't exactly sharp and partly because the wood was wet. The lighting was also dim so I couldn't tell whether the log was any good or not. It looked like it might be OK but I figured I'd wait until morning to decide. The light would be better and the log might be a little dryer in the morning.

On Wednesday morning, Dave called first thing. He told me that his boat had won the Miami to Ft. Lauderdale race over the weekend and he let me in on all the details. Pretty interesting. We had a nice long conversation about that and other things.

When we hung up, I split one big round of firewood and started a fire in the wood stove. The temperature outside was about 34°.

After breakfast I went out to look at the new newel post candidate. It was a little drier and it seemed sound enough, but it was still questionable. It was gouged from the planer and fuzzy. I tried scraping the fuzz off with a scraper but it would have taken a lot of work to scrape away the gouges. I decided to use a drawknife instead.

Before I started drawknifing the log, I decided to check out another candidate. The loggers had left a long log down on the lower roadway for an eventual gate across the driveway. It was plenty long so I could cut five feet off the butt end and still have enough for the gate. I took a spud down with me to see how tight the bark was on the log and I took a tape to measure it.

The log was bigger than I had thought, it was 10 inches in diameter at the butt, so I gave up on it and went back up on the porch to work on the 7-incher. The drawknife smoothed the log down real nicely, removing the fuzz and the gouges. I was happy with how it looked and decided to use it for the newel post.

After lunch and a nap, I took a picture of the rejected newel log and the new log, which I tied to the old 4x4 post pretty close to its final position. Then I used the porch crane to lift the big rejected log up and over the rope rail and then to lower the log to the ground. I will buck it up for firewood later.

After winding the crane cable back up and disconnecting the power, I swept up all the drawknife and planer chips. Then I put the newel log back up on the sawhorses and dismantled the temporary 4x4 newel post that had been in place for so many years. It was fastened with two hurricane ties, one steel strap with joist hanger nails, and one huge lag screw. It took a while to take it apart.

Next, I went inside the cabin and updated the 9/7/16 drawing of the deck and supporting beam and joist structure so that I could place the 7-inch log correctly. The drawing still showed the 12-inch log.

After studying the drawing, I decided on attaching the post to the deck by making a 5x5 inch tenon on the bottom of the log and cutting a 5x5 inch mortise hole through the deck and down partway into the log joist below and into the Grid F.5 log beam below that. It will be very strong.

Back on the porch, I marked the butt of the log for the tenon cuts and I marked the porch deck for the mortise hole. I went in for the night happy with the plan, but a little uncomfortable as a result of a hernia that I had recently developed. I'm due to go in next week to schedule the surgery to fix it. I probably stressed it a little more than I should have.

On Thursday morning it was again 34° outside and about 62° inside. I built another fire in the wood stove before breakfast.

By the time I finished breakfast I was uncomfortable enough that I decided not to do any more work on the newel post this week. Instead I worked on the bedding in the cabin. I took down the cot that Andi had slept on when she and Dave visited, and I carried the inflatable bed down to the truck.

Ellen wanted me to bring the inflatable bed home so she could see if she could fix the leak. She also had asked me what bedding we had up at the cabin, so I set all the bedding out and took pictures of it so that she could see exactly what's up there. After putting all the bedding away, I spent the rest of the morning relaxing and working on the big jigsaw puzzle. I left for home happy but a little achy at 12:50.