8/8-10/18 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Wednesday through Friday.

My schedule was shifted a day because of the Night Out potluck on Tuesday. It was super-hot when I arrived at 12:54. Thankfully there were no mosquitos. I carried my gear up, hoisted the flag, went inside and had my lunch and a nap. The temperature inside the cabin was 80° when I got there but by the end of the day, it was 85°. Too hot for me.

When I got up from my nap, I went back down to the truck, unloaded a bunch of yard waste, and brought up the rest of my gear. Then I went up on the bluff to check on the cedar trees. Paul was looking pretty dry so I enlarged the hole in the irrigation hose so that it would drip more. Cedar tree #11 looks like it won't make it. It has turned all yellow, heading for brown. That is the tree we dug out of our front yard and I don't think we got enough of the root. The rest of the cedars were doing fine and looking healthy. All of them were getting irrigated.

Next I opened the valve to water cedar #12 and Brian, and went into the woods and gave a bucket of water to Dan and Andrew.

Back in the cabin I put away the cot and tables I had gotten out for the overnight guest last week. As soon as it cooled off in the evening, I opened all the windows and had a fan in the living room window blowing cool air into the cabin. I left it running all night.

On Thursday morning, the temperature in the cabin was 65° which was great. By about 9:30 AM, the temperature outside reached 65° so I shut all the windows and turned off the fan to try to keep the cabin as cool as possible. It worked pretty well. The temperature outside reached 100° but inside it didn't get hotter than 80°. The 20-degree difference made it feel almost chilly in the cabin after working on the porch in 100° heat.

I spent the day working on the porch rail. I started out by cleaning out all 38 holes in the deck that will hold the balusters. Then, with the rail in place in the mortise holes, I measured the required length for each of the 38 balusters. I found that they were all within an inch and a half of being the same length. I decided to deepen a few holes in the rail so that I could cut all the balusters to the same length: 39.5 inches. The minimum penetration would be 3/4" which I figured would be enough.

I placed a concrete block 39.5 inches from Dr. Dick's rebar cutter to use as a stop so I could quickly position the rebar for cutting, and then proceeded to cut all 38 balusters. I got three balusters from each 10-foot length of rebar with only a couple inches of scrap from each.

Just as I went in for my lunch and nap, Robert called and told me that next week he would give me a check for my share of the timber sales so far. When I got up from my nap, I went back out on the front porch and used the wire wheel on the bench grinder to remove all the rust spots from all the balusters. I also wire brushed a wrought iron bracket I got from Priscilla that I will use to hang a light fixture on the Grid C2 RPSL.

Then, in 100° heat, I primed and then painted 22 balusters and the bracket. It was 80° inside the cabin, but it felt cool when I went in for the night.

On Friday morning, I went into the woods and watered cedar #12 and Brian. Then I carried another bucket of water up to Andrew. I figured that since the weather had been so hot, I should give Andrew this extra water.

Back on the front porch, I carried the rack of painted balusters up to the porch and unloaded them onto a sawhorse. Then, with the rack empty, I loaded it back up with the balusters that didn't get painted, carried it back down to the roadway, and then sprayed on a coat of primer.

While they were drying, I stuck the dry balusters into the holes in the deck and began inserting them into the rail. That is tricky because when you stick one into a hole, another one pops out. I started at the Grid G1 end and after getting the first four or five inserted, I stuck the G1 tenon end of the rail into the mortise hole. I propped the other end of the rail up on a sawhorse with a concrete block and a stack of short boards on it so that the rail slanted up. As I inserted balusters, I would remove boards one at a time to lower the end of the rail. That helped keeping balusters from popping back out.

After struggling with the balusters for a while, the primer was dry enough so that I could paint the final coat on the last of the balusters. When they were almost dry, I brought them up and stuck them in the deck holes so that all the balusters were in the deck. Then I went back to the struggle to get them all inserted into the rail.

I found that I couldn't do it without holding down the middle of the rail once the first half of the balusters were seated. To do that, I ran a tire chain around a deck plank and cinched it around the rail. That held it fast. Then I could lift up on the free end of the rail, slightly bending it, which allowed me to continue seating balusters without popping out the ones already seated.

I had to deepen a few holes in the rail, but eventually, after a lot more struggle, I got all 38 balusters seated in the holes in the rail and deck. Then I removed the tire chain and the job was done. Hooray! I took a few pictures of the finished railing.

I left for home at 12:50 happy to have made significant progress on the railings.