Construction Journal Entry Week of 10/16/16

10/18-20/16 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

It rained most of the drive over and it was still pretty wet, but not raining, when I arrived at 11:50. I hoisted the flag and started a fire in the wood stove before I went back down to the truck to unload a bunch of yard waste and bring the rest of my gear up to the cabin.

After having my lunch and a nap, I went out on the porch and folded up a big tarp that had been hung up to dry for the past two weeks. When that was done, I went into the woods and checked on the giant sequoia trees. They were plenty damp and they all looked healthy. I think they are ready for winter.

Next I went to work repairing a broken wire on the power cord for my blood pressure machine. One of the wires was broken right near the plug. The wires are tiny and very delicate so it was hard to get the plastic insulation off in order to bare the wires. It took me a long time and I think I did a pretty good job of mending the wire. But when I plugged it into the machine, it didn't work. I got my voltmeter out and couldn't measure any voltage. I also couldn't measure any continuity between the plug poles with my ohmmeter. I was very disheartened – and puzzled. Later I learned that the wire was broken at the other end too.

Then, as if to add insult to injury, my tablet, which I use to play my music, went black and I couldn't get it to respond at all. So I got out some CDs and played my music on the DVD player.

In the evening when I told Ellen about my troubles, she gave me the secret method to revive my tablet. I held the power key down for 20 seconds, then let go of it, and then pressed it down again. The thing then booted up and came back to life. I think I'm getting to be a technological dinosaur.

On Wednesday Dave called before breakfast and we had a nice conversation. After breakfast, I worked on fitting the big vine maple as the inner staircase rail. It didn't fit perfectly and in fact it seemed to fit better on the outside of the staircase with the curved end going right down to the ground so that the same curved piece of wood could serve as a continuous newel post and rail. Dave had suggested that idea to me earlier and now I could see the possibility. But if I did that, I would have to find another vine maple for the inside rail.

I went into the woods and scouted out another curved vine maple that I thought would work. I found one, went back and got my sawzall, and then harvested the tree and dragged it back to the cabin. I discovered that it looked bigger in the woods than it actually was so when I pulled it up onto the staircase I found that it was about 5 feet too short. I dragged it back down and gave up on it. I went back to the original plan and worked on fitting the first big rail.

I tied the rail up to the upper newel post, to the Grid F.5 porch beam, and to a floor joist further down the staircase. By adjusting the ropes, I got the rail close to where it should be. It is too tight against the porch beam, but that beam is so big that it will be no problem to cut a four or five-inch channel into the side of it so that the rail can be mounted nearly flush with the beam and still allow your hand to grip the rail and slide it through the channel in the beam. The rail will also need to be bent some amount at the top so that it can be fastened to the newel post on top which will be no problem.

At the bottom, the rail doesn't quite reach the Grid F3 column, which will serve as the lower newel post. It is about 6 or 8 inches short. I think I will cut a short section of a 6 or 8-inch diameter log and bolt it to the column and then lag screw the rail into it. I think that will work.

At one point, I went into the cabin and decided to start another fire in the wood stove. While I was at it, I decided to make a video of the process, so I did. Then I had my lunch and a nap.

In the afternoon, I pulled the vine maple rail up onto the porch and set it across the big sawhorses. Then I proceeded to try several tools to see what worked best to smooth the rail. It had been drawknifed, but there were still big lumps where the branches had been and the surface was not altogether smooth. I tried the power planer, a hand block plane, a wood shaper tool that I had never found a good use for, a couple different rasps, and a scraper. The combination of a big rasp and a scraper turned out to work the best.

Since I was going through the firewood pretty fast that I had split in anticipation of my surgery recovery, I decided that I should harvest some firewood without having to split it with the big maul. So I took the sawzall out to some 3-4 inch diameter maple branches that were lying out from the back porch and cut a bunch of firewood. It worked very well and didn't over-strain my surgery wound.

Toward the end of the day, the clouds cleared away and I could see that there was snow on Nason Ridge. That is the first snow I have seen up there this season.

On Thursday morning it rained cats and dogs. It had rained cats and dogs all night too. I checked the crawl space and there was a river about 2 inches deep flowing across the floor in the channel that I had dug and I could clearly see that some of the water was coming right out of cracks in the bedrock. I have a better idea now about what kind of drainage system I will have to build down there.

I spent the rest of the morning scraping and smoothing the vine maple rail. I didn't work too hard on it though because I was getting some pain in the surgery site. I left for home at 12:30 glad to have gotten at least a little work done.



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