4/7-10/98 I went up to the property for 4 days: Tuesday through Friday.

After stopping for a cinnamon roll, I arrived at the property at about 12:30. I hadn't even unlocked the trailer yet when Russ Rise stopped by to look at the project. He lives over on the Chumstick and we found enough mutually interesting topics to keep us busy talking until about 5:00. It seemed like a waste of a beautiful sunny afternoon because I didn't get any work done, but on the other hand, I think I needed that kind of a relaxed break especially in my present circumstance.

Wednesday was another beautiful day, but I felt a considerable lack of enthusiasm, no doubt due to the problems at home. I went to work anyway and cut log #57 to length, treated it, lifted it up into place, and spiked it into the southeast wall. There was still some time left in the day, so I opened the winch to lube it, and lo and behold, I found a couple of loose wires that had been rubbed bare and had been shorting out. This was the cause of the popping GFI breaker, and it was due to my wiring error when I installed the remote control. Needless to say, I was happy to have diagnosed the problem, and happy that it was something I could fix. I fixed the wiring, lubed the winch, put it back together, and quit for the day.

On Thursday, I woke up with a pretty bad headache and a sort of mild nausea. In spite of another nice day and having made a lot of progress the day before, I felt very down.

I measured log #68 that I had previously gwizzed and found to my delight that there was enough good log to make three pieces necessary for the southwest wall. I cut it into the three pieces, feeling sort of like I was in a dream and having a low energy level. Before the day was out, I treated the three pieces, lifted them, and spiked them into the southwest wall.

On Friday morning, it was raining cats and dogs. I got my full rainsuit on, including rubber boots and gloves, and went to work getting another log. After rolling a couple logs to get access to #51, I exposed some bark. I spent about a half hour spudding this bark off and then I cut about 8 feet off the butt end of log #51. This is an enormous log, and it looked like it would be too heavy for me to get up the cliff. It was 41 feet long and I only needed 31 feet, so I could afford to shorten it quite a bit.

When I went to rig up to pull the log, I discovered that someone had cut and stolen the rope I had attached to the cable. It wasn't a very good rope and I only used it to pull the loose cable back out of the woods, but it made me very angry that someone had come onto my property and stolen something. I felt lucky that they didn't take the cable because I can't pull logs up without that. It looked like they had pulled on it, probably with the intent of taking it also, but fortunately it was hung up deep in the bushes and instead of fighting with it, the thieves simply cut the rope. The incident made me happy that I have been locking up my chainsaws, and it makes me think that I should be even more careful in the future. Maybe I should install a door with a lock on it in the crawl space. I think I will put this high up somewhere on the project list.

I got log #51 pulled halfway up the cliff; I got it far enough so that I could get the pickup back down the driveway. In the process, I broke a chain. This was the first time I have broken a chain and it gives me a new respect for the strength of the winch, and the dangers of having the rigging break. Fortunately there was no danger to me when this chain broke, and the only problem was that the hook that was on the end of the chain disappeared. I hope I find it some day so that I will know how far it was flung when the chain broke. I am sure glad no one was in the way when it happened.

By this time, the rain had turned to a heavy snow and was starting to stick on the ground. I decided to leave for home to get over the pass before it got too bad. I left about 2:00 and had no trouble getting over the pass.

4/13-17/98 I went up to the property for 5 days: Monday through Friday.

I stopped for peach cobbler instead of the usual cinnamon roll because I wasn't all that hungry. I got to the property about noon and finished pulling log #51 all the way up on deck and got about a third of it gwizzed before I quit for the day. Shortly after dinner, a guy whose first name is Ross drove up. He is an expert on owls and works as a consultant to the Forest Service and the Fish and Game Department. He had heard from Russ Rise that there may be a spotted owl behind our property and he wanted to find it and catch it. It was amazing to me to hear that he routinely catches and attaches radios to owls in the wild. He says that he puts a mouse on the a tree limb and then uses a snare loop on the end of a pole to catch the owl when it comes down after the mouse. Amazing.

We heard some owls hooting in the back woods, but Ross said they were horned owls. He demonstrated the different in hoots of a barred owl and a spotted owl, but I still don't think I could distinguish the two if I heard them. Ross said he would stop by from time to time to see if a spotted owl shows up.

On Tuesday, I finished gwizzing log #51, cut it to length, and treated it. Then when I tried to lift it, I found that it was too heavy for my crane boom. Since the purlins and the ridgepole will be even heavier than this log, I decided I had to bite the bullet and replace the boom with a stronger one. The boom is the weakest link in my lifting rigging.

I selected a tree in the woods for the new boom, felled it, limbed it and peeled it and finished, exhausted, at about 7:00 PM.

On Wednesday, I rigged up to pull the new boom out of the woods. I left the winch where it was and used every cable and chain I had, plus two stretched out come-alongs and a length of rope in order to reach the log. After pulling the log the first 50 feet, the winch blew the GFI breaker. I took the winch apart and couldn't see any evidence of a problem.

After putting the winch back together, I pulled the log another 50 feet and the breaker blew again. This was getting exasperating. I took the winch apart again and examined it more closely. This time, in better light, I could see a new problem. I could also see that all the problems I have had were due to what I consider to be a bad design of the winch; the plastic cover fits so snugly over the mechanism that it crowds the wires down onto the gears and other metal parts. In fact, the cover actually touches one of the gears which had almost worn a hole all the way through the plastic cover. I decided to dispense with the cover altogether. Not only would this solve the electrical problems, but it would allow me to lube the gears without going through the non-trivial hassle of taking the cover off and replacing it again. All the wiring and connections are well insulated so there is no hazard having the wiring exposed. I attached the wires and the varistor solidly to the 4x4 that the winch is mounted on, and now I think I am done with all those problems.

I finished pulling the log to the site, and to my dismay, when I got it there, I determined that it was too big. It is hard to judge the size of a log when it is in a standing tree and even when it is lying, peeled, on the floor of the woods. I felt discouraged and a little stupid spending a whole day and all that energy pulling in a log that would be too heavy to serve as a boom. I wandered through the woods for a while scouting for a tree that would be just the right size.

On Thursday, I selected a new tree, very near where the previous one stood, and felled it. It fell over backward from what I wanted, but it landed in an OK place anyway. I just had to pull it an extra 60 feet. I limbed it, peeled it, rigged the winch, cables, etc. again, and pulled it to the site. When I got it there, it too, seemed too big. It was only a half inch smaller in diameter than the other one. After mulling it over for a while, I decided to go ahead and use it anyway.

Instead of holding the two blocks on the end of the boom by wrapping a chain around the boom, as I had done previously, I decided to use a 5/8" eye bolt that I had. I also made a part from a piece of angle iron. The top block and the two guy ropes attach to a hole in the angle iron which is bolted to the top of the boom with the eye bolt. The eye is under the boom and the lower, cable block attaches to it.

In the process of installing this, I discovered that the end of the log is rotten in the middle. The diameter of the log at the end is six inches and there is only an inch and a half of sound wood on the outside with a three inch core of rotten wood. Since a hollow tube is a pretty strong structural shape, I decided to go ahead and use this log anyway.

After mounting the above hardware and drilling a hole in the butt for the CBA attachment, I re-rigged the old boom and used it to lift the new boom up on top of the building. By that time it was about 6:30 and I quit for the day.

On Friday, I hung the new boom from two come-alongs, lowered the old boom onto the wall of the building, and disconnected it. Then I maneuvered the new boom into position using the come-alongs, attached it to the CBA and to the overhead block and tackle and attached the lower cable block.

In the process of attaching the boom to the CBA, I fell off a ladder. Actually I sort of jumped off because as I started to come down after finishing the job, the ladder started falling away from the wall. The ladder was standing on the edge of a lower scaffold plank and was so nearly vertical that I couldn't stand on the first three rungs without having the ladder pull away from the wall. I had been standing on higher rungs while I was working and I forgot that when I descended, I had to hold on to something attached to the wall. A split second after the ladder started to move, I remembered, and I reached out and grabbed a hanging cable. Another split second later I realized that this cable was running freely through a pulley and wasn't going to hold me. Then I decided to jump off but by then I was in a free fall anyway. I knew the landing site was an irregular rock ledge about two feet below the scaffold plank and I tried to align my feet with the rocks. After dropping the four feet, or so, I landed pretty well and didn't hurt myself very much. My left ankle hurt a little bit, although it wasn't sprained or even twisted, and my left heel feels like it might be bruised, but all in all, I was very lucky. It was another lesson for me to be extra careful. The new boom is heavy, but I judged that it isn't much heavier than the combination of my first boom and the old chain hoist which hung out on the end of it. The first test of the new boom was using it to lower the old boom down off the building. I slid it down the cliff because I think I might use it to rig up a crane to allow me to gwiz logs down at the log pile. That might be a good option for the purlins and ridgepole. At least I have that option now.

Next, I used the new boom to lift log #51 off the ground and locate its center of gravity. I have found it very useful to mark the center of gravity on each log that I lift. It helps me manipulate the log once I get it up onto the building. I found to my satisfaction that with the new boom, I had no problem lifting the log in spite of its weight. It is a BIG log.

By the time I finished, it was 4:00 and time to leave for home. I felt discouraged that I spent 5 days working and didn't get a single log up on the building. I am falling behind my schedule and I hope my target of getting the roof on this summer isn't in trouble.

4/18/98 Made the last two rough window frames. They are for the loft windows.

4/20-23/98 I went up to the property for 4 days: Monday through Thursday.

On the way, I stopped at Chainsaws+ to check out a rattle in the .031 saw. They told me that it was a broken baffle inside the muffler and that if the piece was too big to fit through the opening to get inside the engine, that it posed no problem. I borrowed some tools from them and went outside to take off the muffler and diagnose the problem. That is a very tricky operation. I couldn't have done it without their advice and tools. After getting the muffler off, I convinced myself that the piece couldn't get out and I put the saw back together again. The whole thing took me over an hour. I gave them a generous tip for their help.

I wasn't very hungry, it was late, and I had a half of a strawberry-rhubarb pie with me, so I skipped the cinnamon roll and arrived at about 12:30. It was a gorgeous day and I used the new crane boom to raise log #51 up onto the northwest wall. That was an extra heavy log so I double blocked the hook to relieve the winch. I anchored the cable to the boom so the boom still had to hold the entire weight, which it did with no problem.

Before I went in for the night, I noticed that the packrat, who lived in the compost pile, hadn't eaten last Friday's apple core. That wasn't like him, so I was afraid that something had happened to him.

On Tuesday morning, I spiked in log #51. Then I made three steel bands and clamped them around the end of the boom to keep it from splitting. In the afternoon, I pulled log #81 up so that it was teetering on the cliff edge.

On Wednesday morning, I pulled #81 up on deck. I had just rigged up to gwiz it when Larry Copenhaver and Ted Turner stopped by. We had a nice visit for over an hour, and by that time it was lunch time.

After lunch, I started gwizzing #81. I got about a third of it done when the .032 chainsaw broke. First it got awful hot and then wouldn't start. I got overzealous in trying to start it and I wore down a small nylon pawl in the starter mechanism. I called Chainsaws+ and fortunately, they had the part in stock. In the meantime, I changed the gwizzard bar over to the .031 saw and got about 2/3 of the log gwizzed before that saw got hot and wouldn't run. I discovered that the chain was so tight it wouldn't move. On closer inspection, I found that the bearings on the gwizzard had seized up and that had caused all the problems.

I called the Log Wizard manufacturer but they were closed for the day. I left a message for them to call me, and then I went back out and started cutting the notches for the two loft windows.

On Thursday morning, I talked to the Log Wizard manufacturer and got more good news: the bearings are a standard part that I can buy and replace myself. They aren't expected to last any longer than mine did. I have been giving that gwizzard a very stiff workout over the last year. I felt a great sense of relief that both of the mechanical problems could be fixed by me over the weekend.

I went back to work on the window notches and got the first one and about 90% of the second one done before I quit at about 1:00 PM. I had to pick up Andrew later and that was about as late as I dared work in order to make it in time. I was glad I quit, though, because as soon as I had the tools put away, it started raining cats and dogs. I left for home in a downpour at about 2:00.

None of the week's apple cores got eaten so I'm afraid my little packrat is either dead, or else he packed up and left. I'll miss the sound of him chewing plywood in the middle of the night.

4/24/98 Bought 2 bearings for the gwizard from Motion Industries from a very helpful guy named Gary. The bearing part number is 6201-2RS and Motion's phone number is 767-9119. I then put the new bearings into the gwizard and sharpened the blades.

4/27-30/98 I went up to the property for 4 days: Monday through Thursday.

On the way, I picked up the nylon pawl to replace the one I wore out in the .032 saw. After having a cinnamon roll, I arrived at noon. I discovered that the water hose had been cut in about 14 places in a 15 foot section about 30 feet from the spring. I called the sheriff's office and they said they would have a deputy call me back and come out and look at it. I decided not to fix the hose or disturb the scene until the deputy looked at it. I filled my water jugs up at the spring just like in the old days.

I fixed the .032 saw and finished gwizzing log #81. Both the saw and the gwizard worked great to my equally great relief. Before the end of the day, I had cut log #81 to length and treated it. When I went in for the night, I found a message on my recorder from the deputy. Then I discovered that the ringer had gotten turned off on my phone. I am sure it happened last week when I accidentally dropped the phone off a 20 foot scaffold. The phone worked OK and I didn't think it was damaged, but I didn't think to check the ringer switch. I called the sheriff's office again, and they told me the deputy would call back in the morning. I had planned to de-winterize the trailer this week and was looking forward to my first shower of the year, and I was a little disappointed that I would have to put it off for another day.

On Tuesday morning, Deputy Paul Rohrbach visited. I showed him the evidence of both the stolen rope and the cut hose. He was sure that it was cut by a person and not an animal and after looking closely at the hose, I agree with him. It looks to me like it was done with a pair of side cutting wire cutters.

After the deputy left, I raised and spiked log #81 into the southeast wall. Then I fixed the hose and de-winterized the trailer. I installed the two-way hose valve on the trailer water supply fitting so that I can run water through all the hoses under the trailer and then out into the creek, or supply the trailer, or both, or neither. This will be an improvement because when I leave, I can let the water run full force through the hose to keep organisms from growing and to keep it from freezing. When I am in the trailer, I can still let a trickle of water run through the hose into the creek and still have adequate pressure in the trailer. This also will help keep the water cold and fresh.

When this was done, I put the screens back in the trailer windows, and hauled 5 wheelbarrow loads of debris that came out of the gutters on our house from the pickup to the compost pile. After that, when the northeast wall was in the shade, I finished cutting the last window notch in the log wall.

Before I went in for the night I noticed that something was eating the apple cores again from the compost pile. When I went in, I had my long awaited shower and it felt GREAT!

On Wednesday, I installed the last two rough window frames, cut a remnant of log #68 to length, treated it, and raised it into place on the northeast wall. Then I cut a remnant of log #81 to length and treated it. Just as I finished, Earl Landin stopped by for a visit. After he left, I raised #81 into place on the northeast wall.

On Thursday, I moved the vertical crane pole into a more nearly vertical position so that it wouldn't interfere with the log wall. Then I spiked #68 and #81 into the northeast wall. As I was preparing to leave, I noticed that the water tank on the trailer was overflowing out the filler cap on the side of the trailer. This was a mystery because I had installed a cutoff valve in the line to prevent water from running backward through the water pump and into the tank. I checked and found that this valve was properly closed. Very mysterious.

I opened the drain valve for the tank and left it open and then I closed the supply valve to the trailer and opened the one to let water flow into the creek. After collecting a bunch of pine cones for Priscilla, I left for home about 1:30. I needed to be home in time to pick up Andrew from day care.

5/4-7/98 I went up to the property for 4 days: Monday through Thursday.

After getting a late start, and having a cinnamon roll, I arrived at about 1:30. Since I was going to start on the first purlin next, I figured out and drew up the detailed rafter layout. This was so that I know the exact length of the purlins and also the location of the scaffold anchor hooks I plan to place in each purlin.

These anchor hooks will be used not only during construction, but after the house is built. They can be used to hold up traveling scaffolds for use in maintaining the exterior walls, washing the outside of the windows, etc. There will be two hooks on each end of each purlin, making a total of 28 hooks. I have given a lot of thought over the past couple years as to whether to make or buy these hooks. None of the alternatives I thought of seemed right, until Larry Copenhaver pointed something out to me a couple weeks ago.

The cheapest and easiest alternative for the hooks that I could think of was to bend pieces of #4 rebar into a 'U' shape, push this up into two oversize holes in the purlin, and clinch the rebar over the top of the purlin. The only problem I saw with this technique would be that the clinched ends of the rebar would interfere with the rafters on top. Larry astutely pointed out that I could avoid this problem simply by placing the hooks between the rafters. This was the great insight, and the reason I needed to figure out the exact rafter layout before I made the purlins, since the hooks need to be installed in the purlins before I raised them up out of reach.

Over the weekend, I had made the first 4 of these hooks and had them with me just in case I got that far this week. They had been easy to make and will work out great.

Next, I examined all the logs over 42 feet long and noted their suitability for use as purlins. Then I decided to use log #116 to complete the 16th course. I pulled #116 up on deck and then whacked the ferns for the first time this year and then quit for the day.

On Tuesday, I gwizzed, cut to length, treated, lifted, and placed log #116 on the northeast wall.

When I woke up at 5:00 on Wednesday, I heard on the radio that it was going to be 89 degrees out. I got to thinking that I would rather work in the cool of the morning and take a siesta midday when it got beastly hot. As a result of this thought, I sprang out of bed, had breakfast, and went out to work by 6:00. In the rush, I completely forgot my normal morning routine of back exercises.

I spiked in log #116 while it was still nice and cool. Then I pulled the old crane boom down the cliff and rigged it up down at the log pile so it can be used to hold the gwizard. The boom is long enough so that the top of it can be positioned over any point in the entire log pile. I attached a block and tackle 25 feet up in a very bushy grand fir tree and the only problem is that all those branches get in the way of raising and swinging the boom. I could cut more of the branches away, but I don't want to cut any more than I have to. As a result, it takes a lot of extra time to change the boom's position.

Of the purlin candidate logs, there is one douglas fir, log #11, that would be the prime candidate if it weren't for some serious rotten spots. The log is perfectly straight and looks sound. I decided to gwiz this one first to see if it was going to work out. Unfortunately, this log was unusual in that it had dozens of stubby branches sticking out. Since the blades on the gwizard were getting pretty dull, I didn't want to use it to grind all these knots down. Instead I decided to chop them off with an ax.

I wasn't used to this chopping activity and before I had finished, I could tell that I had stressed my back more than I should have. It stiffened up and hurt pretty bad. I guess I paid for skipping my exercises and overdoing an activity that I wasn't used to.

I rigged up the gwizard on the new rig and gwizzed about a third of the butt of #11. It was about noon by then and starting to get really hot. I went in for lunch and a siesta.

When I came back out, I made a decision to abandon #11 because there was just too much rot. Too bad. There is still a lot of good wood in the log, but not enough for a purlin. My next choice was log #33 which was an excellent log. It is a nice straight lodgepole pine and I gwizzed about half of it before the end of the day. My back was plenty stiff, but it held out for the rest of the day.

On Thursday morning, I finished gwizzing log #33. I hid the ropes on the new rigging as best as I could because I was worried that now that I am working down below, there may be a higher chance of vandalism or theft if anything is visible from the road. The rope that was stolen before was no big loss, but there are some very good ropes in the rigging that would make me very angry if I lost.

I took a series of pictures of the building, and then inspected the overflowing water tank drain in the trailer. As near as I can tell, there is no other connection between the water supply and the tank except for the pipe going through the closed cutoff valve and the water pump, which isn't supposed to let water flow backwards through it. Still, somehow, water was getting into the tank and running out the open drain valve.

I experimented with the drain valve to make sure I would know in the future which way was open and which way was closed. The valve is open when the handle is pointing toward the rear of the trailer; the valve is closed when the handle is pointing toward the tongue end of the trailer.

This will be important to know when winterizing the trailer. During the summer, I will just leave this drain valve open so that the water that gets into the tank will just run out. Then when I winterize the trailer, I will close the valve so that I can use the tank in the usual way to hold the antifreeze that gets pumped into the plumbing. I left for home about 2:00 because I had to get Andrew from daycare. 5/11-14/98 I went up to the property for 4 days: Monday through Thursday.

I had a few errands to do plus I had a cinnamon roll so I didn't arrive until 2:00. I rigged log #33 up to scribe it in order to flatten it to make a bearing surface for the rafters. I also made a scriber out of a beeping electronic level I bought. I thought this would work better than the bubble level in the combination square that I used before. I scribed about a third of the log before the end of the day but I was disappointed with how the new scriber worked.

It rained during the night so the log was soaking wet on Tuesday morning. The pencil on the scriber wouldn't make a mark on the wet log so I decided to let the log dry out before I scribed it. It rained off and on all day so the log never did dry out. I spent the day gwizzing log #102 which I decided to use as the other wall purlin.

Before I went in for the night, I noticed deer tracks at the salt lick and evidence that the deer had been licking the salt block. These were the first deer tracks I have seen since the winter before last. All that deep snow took a toll on the deer population and there have hardly been any around. I'm glad at least one of them is back.

Wednesday was cold all day but it didn't rain. I scribed log #33 using the combination square, which works much better than the beeping level. Before I quit for the day, I turned log #33 90 degrees so that it lay across the ends of the other logs in the rack. This is because the log was laying wrong end to for use as a purlin and I intend to pull the log straight up from the pile to the building. This also left the log in a handy position to do the flattening.

Thursday was another cold but dry day and I flattened log #33 with the .031 saw and a ripping chain. It worked great. I called Marson and Marson and learned the details of how to build the gable end of the roof. With this information, I could figure out the exact length the purlins should be and then I cut log #33 to length. I left for home about 1:00.

5/18-20/98 I went up to the property for 3 days: Monday through Wednesday.

This was a short week due to the Memorial Day weekend. I skipped the cinnamon roll and arrived at about 11:30. I drilled 8 3/4" holes in log #33 and installed 4 rebar anchor hooks. Then I treated the log with Tim-bor and pulled it halfway up the cliff. Since I had prepared the purlin down below, the plan was to pull it directly up onto the building without first laying it down on the upper roadway. This is largely because I had found that a 36 foot log was about as long a log as I could easily turn and get up on the roadway without it hitting the building above and the cliff and trees below.

On Tuesday, I finished pulling log #33 up onto the top of the southeast wall. Larry Copenhaver stopped by for a visit when the log was on the way up. Once the log was on top of the wall, I discovered two mistakes that I had made. I had installed the anchor hooks on the wrong side of the flattened side of the purlin; I had mixed up left and right. I decided to live with this mistake because the consequence is that the hooks are off to the side of the purlin instead of being directly on the bottom. This won't interfere with their use at all.

The second mistake was that I didn't realize that one of the anchor hooks was right on top of the protruding end of the log directly below the purlin. This was not going to work. Using a hacksaw, I cut the rebar in two places and removed the hook. This is the penalty I pay for not making a detailed drawing of everything I do.

On Wednesday, I started the relatively complicated process of aligning the purlin. This is by far the most complicated alignment problem of any log in the building so far. There are six degrees of freedom that must be individually aligned before the purlin can be finally fastened in place. It took me a lot of thinking before I came up with a sequence and a plan for doing this.

First, the log needed to be aligned along its length. This is critical because all the purlins need to be sticking out exactly the same amount so that the gable end of the roof is straight, i.e., so that the end rafters rest exactly on the ends of each purlin. I used a come-along to pull the log into alignment but the problem was that the log moved in jumps of an inch or more. The first time I tried to move the log to the mark, it over shot by an inch. This meant that I had to re-rig the come-along to pull the log the other way. After this was done, I overshot the mark again the other way. After reversing the come-along rigging again, I hooked the crane cable back onto the log at the center of gravity and took most of the weight of the log off the wall. This significantly shortened the length of the jumps as I slid the log and I was able to draw it into exact alignment.

The second and third degrees of freedom were to get each end of the log aligned over the center of the wall. I used a plumb bob and took measurements from the pressure treated sill on the foundation. I had taken great pains to make sure that this sill was exactly square, level, and the correct dimensions and now those pains were paying off. All the way along, all alignment and positioning measurements for the walls, windows, and doors were based on the sill.

The fourth degree of freedom was the correct rotation of the log. I had previously made two gauges for the roof pitch which were just triangular pieces of wood. Placing one of these gauges on the flattened surface of the purlin and placing a level across the top of the gauge, I was able to roll the log into the correct position.

The last two degrees of freedom were the correct elevation of each end of the purlin. For this, I built batterboards at each end and a special gauge for each end that, when fitted to the proper spot on the batterboard and properly leveled, would locate a spot that needed to coincide with the flattened surface of the purlin. When these were all constructed, they showed that the east end of the log needed to be lowered 3/4 of an inch and the south end of the log needed to be raised about 2.5 inches.

I used the .031 chainsaw to take 3/4 inch off the end of the wall log below the purlin, and this brought the east end of the purlin into exact alignment. It gave me a real feeling of gratification to hear that beeping level go into a continuous beep (indicating that it was right on) at the same time I could see that the pointed end of my special gauge was just barely touching the flattened surface of the purlin.

At this point, I drove one rebar spike into the east end of the purlin to hold this end in place. This spike fixed the first, second, and fifth degrees of freedom, but it wasn't strong enough to hold the fourth; when I relaxed the rigging, the log rolled a little, bending the rebar spike slightly, and pulling the purlin out of rotational alignment. This is not a problem because I can hook a peavey onto the purlin and use a come-along on the handle of it to crank the log back into the correct rotation when I am ready to drive in more spikes.

That was all I had time for because I needed to pick Andrew up from day care. I secured the south end of the purlin with a come-along, put all the tools away, and left for home about 2:00.

5/26-29/98 I went up to the property for 4 days: Tuesday through Friday.

After having a cinnamon roll, I arrived at about 1:30 in a light rain. By the time I was moved in, it was raining cats and dogs. I rigged up a peavey and a come-along to roll the new purlin into alignment. Then I whacked ferns and weeds and went up and cleaned debris out of the spring.

On Wednesday, it rained lightly most of the day. I finished aligning the purlin and spiked it into place. During lunch, I thought of a new scribing method. After lunch, I cut log #102 to length for the second purlin and scribed it using the new method. It worked great. I nailed a 2 foot, or so, board to each end of the log so that the top edges of the boards were parallel and in the plane of the flat surface I wanted to make in the log. Then I fastened two tight strings to one end of the boards so that the strings were also in the plane of the flat spot. The string closest to the log was about a half inch away at the minimum. The other string was about 5 inches away from the first. Then to scribe the line, I simply sighted across the two strings and, keeping the pencil point in line with the strings, drew the line on the log. I did the same thing on both sides of the log to get two lines.

One side of the log was too wet to use a pencil, so I used a water color "Draws a Lot" marker. That worked even faster.

On Thursday morning, I sharpened my ripping chain and discovered that the depth gauges were even with the tops of the cutter teeth - way too high. I filed them down quite a bit and then touched up the cutters. I couldn't believe what a difference that made. I ripped the rafter bearing surface in #102 in nothing flat. I remember Skip Ellsworth telling us that he preferred an aggressive chain on his saws and now I can see why. I think I will do that for my standard chains as well.

I installed four anchor hooks on #102 and this time I deliberately misaligned them so that they would be symmetrical with the first purlin. It also allows the innermost one to miss the protruding log end under it. That way, I turned an error into a feature.

When I finished with the last hook, Earl Landin stopped by and offered to let me take anything I wanted from a bunch of stuff a client had left in his storage building. I went with him and he helped me load up a big 8 foot workbench, complete with a big vise, and a bunch of other stuff. I brought the stuff back and unloaded it by myself. I used the winch and the crane to get the workbench up the hill and into the building.

On Friday, I treated log #102 with Tim-bor and then pulled it up into place as the purlin on the northwest wall. It went up smoothly with no complications and after securing it in place, I packed up and left for home by 3:00.

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