6/2-5/98 I went up to the property for 4 days: Tuesday through Friday.

After a cinnamon roll, I arrived at about 12:30 and promptly discovered that my water hose had been cut again in the same place. The same tool had evidently been used but there were only two cuts. Neither cut severed the hose completely, but the holes were big enough to stop the water flow to the trailer.

After reporting it to the sheriff, we decided it wasn't necessary for a deputy to come out since there was no additional evidence. I then taped up the hose and restored the water flow.

After moving in, I made batterboards and measurements in order to align the grid A purlin.

On Wednesday, I aligned the purlin and spiked it into the northwest wall. In the process, I set up a pair of strings attached to a nail at what will be the roof peak on the southwest wall. This was no small feat because I had to climb up to the top of the RPSL which was about 12 feet above my high scaffold. I lashed a ladder against the RPSL and used a pole climber's belt in order to do the work.

When these strings are stretched tight and fastened to the purlins, they define where the rafters will go. It's kind of neat to look up at the strings outlining the end of the roof and imagine the roof finally being in place.

I spent some time at the end of the day whacking ferns and I noticed tons of blackberry blossoms, even up on the drainfield. I didn't expect any berries from up there yet this year but it looks like we will get some anyway. The wild roses are also blooming and the indian paintbrushes have been blooming for several weeks now.

On Thursday, I was scrounging wood to make frames to raise the scaffolds and I ended up leveling the new workbench and making a deck, or floor, in front of it. The bench is in a very uneven and rocky corner of the building and this not only makes the bench useful, but it makes that corner useful also.

By the time I finished with that, my back was hurting quite a bit. I think the spiking the day before stressed my back and then stooping over to nail on the deck boards was too much for it.

I spent the rest of the day raising the scaffold along the southwest wall. I will raise these gable-end scaffolds and leave the other two where they are so I can still walk on them after the roof is on. I moved slowly and deliberately while I was raising the scaffolding and by the time I finished, my back was pretty sore.

While I was climbing around, I stepped down on a beam that had a tarp draped over it and accidentally stepped on a little green frog that was under the tarp. I smashed the poor little thing and felt pretty bad about it. From now on, I will try not to step anywhere where I can't see what I am stepping on.

On Friday, I hooked power up to the workbench and hooked up a bench grinder which was among the things I got from Earl when I got the workbench. I used the grinder to sharpen the gwiz blades and it worked great.

With the sharp blades, I went down to the log pile and gwizzed log #78. About 2 feet of the butt was very rotten and infested with a huge colony of carpenter ants. As I tore the end of the log apart, I blasted the colony with ant killer spray and wiped them all out. I didn't want them out looking for a new place to move into. I finished gwizzing, cleaned up, packed up, and left for home by 3:20.

6/9-12/98 I went up to the property for 4 days: Tuesday through Friday.

After a cinnamon roll, I arrived at 11:30 to find that my water was still running but the power was off. The refrigerator had completely defrosted and soaked the carpet. After discovering that I had inadvertently left the power on up at the work site, I figured that the rain had gotten a dropcord wet and blown the GFI breaker. After resetting the breaker and restoring power, I added that item to my checklist for leaving so I won't do that again.

I spent the rest of the day hanging a door in the entryway to the crawlspace.

On Wednesday, I gwizzed most of log #69. The rest of it was behind some bushes and I only needed half of the log anyway. I'll gwiz the rest of it after I pull it out further. While I was trying to move the boom, I was pulling on a rope with all of my weight and the rope suddenly broke. I fell flat on my back across the log pile. I was able to break my fall with my hands and as a result I hurt both wrists but not too badly. Fortunately I wasn't hurt bad at all but my wrists were sore for a couple of days.

I spent the rest of the morning sharpening the cross cut chain on "Mother Sow" which is the name I have been calling My Other Saw (M'other saw) - the .031. It started raining lightly at 1:00 so I stopped for lunch.

The rain stopped by the time I finished lunch. I cut log #69 in half and pulled the butt half up onto the roadway. Then I cut it into 3 pieces. The log got pretty dirty on the way up so I made the decision to do the gwizzing back up on top again except for the purlins since they don't make the intermediate stop on the roadway on the way up onto the building.

On Thursday, I treated the 3 pieces and raised them up and spiked them into the southwest wall. The first two pieces went up in the shade with no problem. The third piece went up in the blazing hot sun and I made a long series of errors before it was finally spiked in place.

The first error was that I didn't choke the log short enough. This meant that when the log was still 2 inches from being as high as it needed to be, the winch ran out of cable and couldn't go further. Rather than lower the log back to the ground and start over, I attached a come-along to the boom rope and raised the boom enough to get the log up the two inches. At that point I discovered that the log was a little too long and wouldn't fit into its place. I used a hammer and chisel to trim the corner of the log but then discovered that I needed to cut more of the log than I wanted to with the chisel. All of this extra work, of course, is making me sweat like a pig in the blazing sun.

I went down and got Mother Sow and used it to trim the corner of the log so that it fit, and it took me a couple passes to get that to work. Once the log was in place, the vertical spikes went in with no problem except for the heat and the sweat. The last spike had to go horizontally in from the outside of the purlin and into the end of the new log. In order to drill the hole for this spike, I had to sit on the purlin hanging over the outside of the building and reach out into space holding the half inch drill with the 18 inch bit with one hand and do the drilling.

After drilling halfway through the log, the bit struck a vertical spike that was inside the purlin. There was nothing to do but extract the bit and drill a second hole. I had forgotten that I had put two spikes down at this point of the purlin because that point was the fulcrum of the 6 foot cantilever that sticks out to hold the eaves of the roof. Of course, this second attempt to drill a hole hit the second spike.

The bit didn't seem to have hit the spike squarely, though, and sure enough, I was able to continue drilling past the spike and I thought that I was lucky and would be able to use the hole anyway. Still sitting out on the overhanging purlin, I pounded on the spike with my 8 lb. hammer using only one hand. I was hanging on for dear life with the other. When the spike was about halfway in, it hit the other spike and refused to go any further.

I pounded and pounded on the spike in the heat but it refused to go around the other spike. At this point there was nothing to do but go down and get a hacksaw and cut the spike off flush with the purlin. After sweating through this, I drilled a third hole in the purlin and was careful to miss all the spikes in that log. I was happy that I got a nice clean hole going right where I wanted it.

When I started pounding a spike into this hole, it didn't seem to be going in the right direction. I thought it would straighten out, but it didn't. Somehow, the spike had left the hole and started its way through the log without a pilot hole. This meant that instead of moving the spike a quarter inch or so with each blow of the hammer, I was getting less than a tenth of an inch. It probably took over a hundred blows to get the spike all the way through the log and when it finally came through, it completely missed the log on the other side. The spike was useless.

Of course this meant that I needed to drill a fourth hole and try to get a spike in that would do some good. Fortunately, this was the end of my errors. The fourth hole went in exactly where I wanted it, and the spike went into the hole and into the other log without any problem. Needless to say, I was very relieved to finally put the tools away and get down off the scaffolds and out of the heat.

Shirley Tutino and her mother-in-law, Veronica Tutino, stopped by for a visit during the afternoon. After they left, I rigged up to pull the other half of log #69 up the hill. Just as I started pulling, Earl Landin stopped by for a visit. We were having a chat up on the high scaffolds when a band of Gray Jays came by. I held out some peanuts in my hand and one of the jays landed on my hand and took all the peanuts. These birds are more commonly known as camp robbers and they seem to be tame by nature.

While Earl and I were still up on the scaffolds, I got a call from the Department of Ecology returning my call to them. I had some questions about submitting another water right application in order to increase the allowable amount of water that I could draw. The power failed in the middle of the conversation and we went down to the power pole to see if it was my GFI breaker that popped again. It wasn't, but by the time we walked back to the trailer, the power came back on. I called back and left a message that the power failure had interrupted our call and then Earl and I continued visiting in the trailer. In a few minutes, the department of Ecology called back, answered my questions, and then answered a question that Earl happened to have for them also.

After Earl left, I pulled the top half of log #69 the rest of the way up the hill.

On Friday, I finished gwizzing #69, then made 3 more pieces from it, treated them, and lifted and placed them into position on the southwest wall. I didn't have time to spike them in before I left for home at about 3:00.

6/16-19/98 I went up to the property for 4 days: Tuesday through Friday.

I got a late start so I skipped the cinnamon roll and arrived at 1:30. I installed a steel cover for the deadbolt lock that I had made over the weekend. The cover prevents one from unlocking the deadbolt from the inside. That way, even if an intruder climbed into the crawlspace over the top of the foundation, they wouldn't be able to get out through the door without going to quite a bit of work breaking the cover or the door. I now feel it will be safe to leave the chainsaws up at the site, although I will still lock them inside the big toolbox.

I also installed door stops on the jamb and stained them. Then I spiked in the two new logs on the southwest wall.

On Wednesday, I beveled the two new logs to form the roof line at the bottom of the gable. To scribe the lines, I stretched the string tight from the nail at the peak to the purlin next to the wall log. Then I tied a second string to this one as high up as I could reach and stretched it tight to the purlin a few inches away from the first string. Then sighting across these two strings, I scribed the line on one side of the wall log. I then did the same thing on the other side to get a line completely around the part of the log I needed to cut off. I used Mother Sow to cut the logs and it worked like a charm. I have decided to bevel each gable log in this way as I put them up.

I decided to work on the porch structure next because I won't be able to reach that area with the crane after the grid D purlin is in place, and also because the log I selected for the main porch beam was already gwizzed and sort of in the way on the roadway. I spent most of the rest of Wednesday excavating and moving rocks to make way for this main porch beam. I also spent a good part of the day, after the excavation was done, making careful measurements of the footings and then designing the porch beam.

On Thursday, I cut log #79 to length and cut 5 bearing notches in it in order to make the main porch beam. I used Mother Sow with a cross cutting chain in order to cut the notches. I held the saw bar perpendicular to the log and just lightly swept it back and forth to cut the notches. This worked very well for making the notches, but it took a toll on my back. I spent too much time leaning over the log holding most of the weight of the saw with my arms. I couldn't let the saw rest on the log as you normally would when cutting. I was using the saw more as a plane than as a saw. I was concentrating so much on the work that I didn't notice the strain I was putting on my back. It caught up with me, though, for the next few days.

When the cuts were made, I strung a tight string over the top of the log and carefully measured the depths of the top cuts and the thickness of the log at each bearing surface. These measurements were necessary in order to determine the length of the posts.

Larry and Roberta Copenhaver stopped by just as I finished measuring and we had a nice chat while they inspected the progress.

During lunch, I calculated the lengths of the 3 support posts for the main porch beam. Then I went out and made the 3 posts. The outer two were made from a remnant of log #57 and the middle one from a remnant of log #68. Then I treated the 3 posts and the beam and erected the posts onto their respective CB88s. By that time my back was definitely hurting.

On Friday morning, my back was so stiff I could hardly walk, but after being up and around for a while it loosened up. I raised log #79 up and set it onto the three support posts. I was relieved that the crane was just barely able to reach over that far. I set the log down into its exact position without touching it but simply by pushing the 'down' button on the remote control for the winch. I got the usual feeling of exhilaration that I get when something so complex works out so well.

I had just finished driving the center rebar spike into the beam and was drilling a pilot hole for the second when Larry Copenhaver and a friend from England, Chris Yapp, stopped by for a visit. Chris seemed very interested in all aspects of the project so we did a grand tour of the property and had a very interesting visit.

After they left, I had lunch, finished spiking the beam in place and then I went into the woods and rigged up a camera and a trip wire in order to get a picture of the vandals if they return to the scene of the crime and try to damage my water hose again. I left for home about 3:00 and after sitting in the pickup for the long ride home, I could hardly walk when I finally got home. I am going to make sure that when I use Mother Sow to make future beam bearing surfaces, I will use the rope sling that I use on the gwizzard to take the weight off the saw and thus spare my back.

6/22/98 I made a plan for the remaining 50 logs in the building. The plan is a spreadsheet listing the 50 logs in the sequence that I plan to install them. 47 of these logs need to be installed before the roof goes on so the last 3 will go on after the roof. The plan calls for doing 4 logs per week with the roof going on starting around the middle of September.

6/23-26/98 I went up to the property for 4 days: Tuesday through Friday.

I had diarrhea and nausea in the morning because I had eaten some too-old leftover chinese food on Sunday. I figured that the worst was over so I left for the property more or less on schedule. On the way, I stopped at Wood Care Systems in Kirkland to pick up some Tim-bor. They were out but I paid them and they said they would ship it to me at the property via UPS.

I arrived at the property at 12:45 without incidence. I had no appetite so I skipped the cinnamon roll. I also had no energy and my back hurt pretty bad from the long drive so I took a 1 hour nap. I figured that I was dehydrated so I drank a couple glasses of Hydra-fuel. Then I plodded up the hill and excavated the ground and made measurements for the Grid G beam.

On Wednesday it was raining lightly but I felt better. I pulled log #78 up the hill, whacked some ferns, and then the rain stopped. I made the Grid G beam and one post from log #78, and a second post from a remnant of log #21. Just as I finished, Mike Tutino stopped by for a visit and a tour of the project. He told me that a couple of different bears had been seen recently in the neighborhood.

After Mike left, I treated the posts and beam with the last of the Tim-bor that I had. Then I installed the two posts into the CB88s at G1 and G2. It rained off and on during the afternoon but never very hard. I was feeling a lot better and kept working until 7:00.

On Thursday morning, I woke up at 4:30 feeling a LOT better. I was so eager to get out and finish placing that beam that I couldn't get back to sleep. I did my back exercises, got up, had breakfast and was out working by 6:15.

The crane couldn't reach Grid G so I hooked a rope onto the crane hook and with a tautline hitch around a tree, I was able to pull the beam into position over the posts and lower it into place. Then I spiked it into place. I felt very pleased when it was finished.

According to the "Final 50" plan, the next log to go up is the purlin support log at Grid G1. But in order to make this post, I need to know its length. In order to determine that, I need to know the thickness of the purlin it will hold up at the bearing point. That means that I need to select the purlin log and at least make that bearing surface and part of the rafter bearing surface above it.

I selected log #94 for this purlin. I had done an inventory of logs earlier and #94 was the best candidate for a purlin in the lower log pile. I gwizzed #94 and got more disappointed as I went. The log is nice and sound; the heartwood is completely unblemished. But the sapwood is all discolored and even has a few rotten spots. I gwizzed these rotten spots down to the pure white heartwood and ended up with a rather lumpy grayish log with gouges revealing the white wood. I had just decided that I would use this log for a purlin after all, but I also concluded that there wasn't another log in this pile suitable for use as a purlin. Just then, Earl Landin stopped. I told him my predicament and asked if he was up to felling a tree for me. He was, and we went up and felled a tree that was doomed to die of root rot anyway.

Just as Earl made the back cut, a gust of wind came up and blew the tree backward and it got hung up against neighboring trees. Fortunately it was still nearly vertical. We strung chains and a come-along from it to another tree and cranked it back to vertical and then over the way it was supposed to fall. It went down exactly where we wanted it to. This is a nice pretty straight Douglas Fir and might even be long enough to get two 42 foot purlins out of it. I haven't measured it yet. I thanked Earl and felt better about having enough good long logs for purlins.

Just after Earl left, the UPS truck delivered my Tim-bor. We had heard the truck and the driver seemed to be looking for an address, so on his way out, Earl stopped and talked to him and told him how to find me.

I decided that I would still use #94 for the Grid G purlin so I cut it to length. Then I rigged strings hanging off the two purlins on the building to figure out where the Grid G purlin should go. One of these strings held a plumb bob and it was too windy to get an accurate measurement since the plumb bob wouldn't stay still. I decided to call it a day and hope that the air would be calm in the morning.

The air was dead calm on Friday morning, but unfortunately by the time I got out to work, the breeze had picked back up. I set up log #94 to scribe it for cutting the rafter bearing surface, but whenever the wind seemed to die down, I would rush back up the hill and try to adjust my strings in calm air to get an accurate measurement. Invariably, the wind would come back up about the time I got there. Little by little, though, I settled on what I figured was pretty close to the mark.

After making the measurements, I did the calculations and then went out and marked the purlin. Just to make sure, I did a cross check and lo and behold I was a foot off. I couldn't figure it out. I went back over the figures and checked them. I went back and re-did the measurements and then re-did the cross check and the one-foot error was still there. I was exasperated and it was about noon.

I decided that I needed to resolve that error in a better frame of mind so I turned my attention instead to the newly fallen tree. I limbed it and peeled about 85 feet of the trunk in about two hours. There were virtually no limbs on the first 50 or 60 feet, and the bark came off almost in one piece.

I made a single cut along the top of the trunk with the spud almost as fast as I could walk. This was almost like unzipping a jacket. Then, also using the spud, I peeled the bark back in a single sheet almost like taking a jacket off. It seems like that bark ought to be good for something. I laid the big pieces out on the ground and held them flat with rocks to see what they would be like after they dried. One of the pieces must be twenty feet long and as wide as the circumference of the tree. When that was done, I left for home about 3:00. 6/29-7/2/98 I went up to the property for 4 days: Monday through Thursday.

On the way up, I stopped for chainsaw gas, bar oil, propane, and a cinnamon roll. I arrived at 12:30 and was happy that there was no sign of vandalism. The weather was HOT! I measured the new fallen log hoping that it would be long enough for two purlins, but alas, it was not; it was about 10 feet shorter than I had estimated that it was. That meant that I would be using old lumpy log #94 as a purlin after all. Oh well, it will be right at home with all the other lumpy logs in the building.

On the weekend, during a walk with Ellen, I figured out where the one foot error came from. The footing at G1 contains two CB88s about a foot apart. One is for the PSL and the other is for the porch beam support. My previous measurements had considered these two to be one and the same and as a result, introduced the one foot error.

After calculating the correct position of the G1 PSL bearing notch, I cut the notch in log #94 and then scribed the end of it for the rafter bearing surface opposite the notch. With this done, I measured the thickness of the purlin at the G1 notch. I needed to know this in order to calculate the length of the G1 PSL.

I also needed to know the height of the rafters above the G1 CB88. To measure this, I strung a tight string from the nail at the southwest peak down to a batterboard behind the G1 CB88. I adjusted the batterboard until the string just touched the rafter bearing surface on the Grid E purlin. Then using a string and a plumb bob, I located the point on the string directly above the center of the CB88 and marked the point on the string with a pencil. Then I used a tape to measure from the CB88 to this mark.

With these two measurements, I calculated the length of the PSL. Then I made the PSL out of log #121 which I had gwizzed and rejected long ago because it had a lot of rot. It had enough good wood in it, however, to make the PSL. I had time to treat it with Tim-bor before I quit for the day at 7:00.

On Tuesday, I erected log #121 at G1. Then I scribed the entire log #94 on both sides for the rafter bearing surface. I was just about finished when Bob and Pat Burton showed up. They brought a picnic lunch so after climbing the scaffolds and inspecting the site, we went into the trailer and had our picnic. It was 10 degrees cooler inside and there were no mosquitoes so I think it was more pleasant than if we had eaten outside somewhere. We had a real nice visit, which was too short for the amount of conversation we were engaged in. They left about 2:30 and I no sooner got back out to work than Russ Christensen, the building inspector stopped by.

I didn't recognize him at first and just thought he was an interested neighbor. He was very interested in what I had done and we had quite a long conversation up on the scaffolds before it dawned on me who he was. He said that my permit had expired a long time ago and that I should write the building department and request an extension. He said that he was confident that they would issue me an extension since I was making steady progress on the building, and he thought they might even waive the $40 fee.

After Russ left, I made the last two bearing notches in #94, and the corresponding sections of the rafter bearing so that I could measure the thickness of the purlin at those spots. Then I made a PSL for G2 out of a remnant of log #64, treated it, and erected it at G2. It was HOT and I was sweating like a pig.

On Wednesday I measured for, and calculated the length of the G3 PSL. Then I pulled log #12 up on deck, gwizzed it, made the PSL from it, treated it, and erected it at G3.

On Thursday, I went up by the spring and reset the camera. I had accidentally gotten tangled up in the trip string and broken it a couple days earlier and hadn't gotten around to fixing it. I figured I better fix it before the 4th of July weekend.

Then I flattened log #94 to make the rafter bearing surface. I used Mother Sow with the ripping chain and had to sharpen the chain twice before I was finished. Then I pulled the log half way up on deck before lunch. After lunch I resumed pulling and Larry Copenhaver stopped by and helped me. The crane couldn't reach where the log had to go, so I rigged a snatch block high in a tree and ran the cable from the crane boom through the block. We left the log lying just east of the Grid G PSLs and I left for home about 3:00.

7/6/98 Fixed the 12-volt winch motor. I redesigned it so that it was no longer reversible. This was because the parts involved in the reversing mechanism were badly worn and broken. I repaired these parts with superglue and 4 wooden parts that I designed and whittled. The motor will still run in reverse, however, by reversing the polarity of the power supply. Later I may use the extra reversing switch, left over from the new winch when I installed the remote control switch, to give me remote forward and reverse control of the 12-volt winch.

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

It was HOT when I arrived at 12:40 after having a cinnamon roll. I rigged up the newly repaired 12-volt winch to help lift the grid G purlin into place. I chained the winch to a tree and ran the cable up through a block high in a tree to the east of the building. By connecting the 12-volt winch and the crane hook to the log, I was able to control the log further out than the crane could reach.

After pulling log #94, the grid G purlin, up the bank another 8 feet or so, I was able to reach the end of the log so I could drill the holes to install the anchor hooks. I also drilled the holes for the rebar spikes to fasten it to the PSLs.

Next, I treated the log with Tim-bor and then, using the two winches, I lifted log #94 up and set it atop the 3 PSLs. It worked remarkably well, considering that, by myself, I lifted a 42 foot log and set it on top of 3 posts, one of which was 17 feet tall. It was 8:00 by the time I finished, but I felt really good about the accomplishment.

On Wednesday morning, I drove in the 3 rebar spikes that fasten the purlin to the PSLs. Then I cut log #123 to length for a purlin. That log is the one Earl felled for me a couple weeks ago. As it started to get really hot, I measured the heights of the grid F PSLs by using a string stretched between the grid E and the grid G purlins. By the time I finished, it was blazing hot and I was soaking in sweat. I took a lunch break and a one hour siesta to avoid working in the hottest part of the day.

I keep the windows in the trailer open all night and try to keep it as cold in there as I can. Then about 9:00 in the morning, I shut the door and windows and by midday, the trailer is 10 degrees cooler than outside. It is a real pleasure to have a cool place to escape the heat.

After my siesta, I scribed and flattened log #123 and cut the PSL bearing notches.

On Thursday, I measured for the bearing notches in the purlin and made the notches. Then I measured the thickness of the purlin at the bearings so I could calculate the PSL lengths. Then I made the F1 and F2 PSLs from log #123 and then took another lunch/siesta break.

Afterward, I treated the two PSLs and then erected them. It was hot work and I finished about 7:00.

On Friday it rained and thundered off and on. I managed to pull log #53 up on deck, but I didn't want to gwiz it in the rain. I whacked ferns, picked 6 blackberries that were ripe, and left for home about 1:30.

7/18-20/98 Made 4 rebar anchor hangers for the next purlin, and also made a remote control cable for the 12-volt winch.

7/21-24/98 I went up to the property for 4 days: Tuesday through Friday.

I didn't go up at all the previous week because of a lot of things going on at home. I skipped the cinnamon roll and arrived at about 12:30. It was about 84 degrees out and after I moved into the trailer, I took a little nap to escape the midday heat. After that, I picked a bunch of blackberries. A lot of them had ripened since the last time I was up there. By that time, the upper roadway was somewhat shaded so I gwizzed log #53 and finished around 8:00 PM.

On Wednesday, I got up at 5:15 to take advantage of the coolness of the morning.I made the F3 PSL from log #53, treated it with Tim-bor, and erected it. Since the crane couldn't reach the F3 location, I used the crane in conjunction with the 12-volt winch which I chained to a tree. The new remote control switch worked great except that the connectors that attach the cable to the motor broke off when the motor jumped around and hit the ground. To get around the broken connectors, I used the jumper cables from the pickup to make the connections. That worked great. I may just use them as a permanent solution.

During lunch I escaped the heat of the day by sewing up a hole in the toe of one of my work boots and then took a little nap. Then I went out and worked on log #123. This was the log from the tree that Earl helped me fall. The log was a flawlessly beautiful white log after I peeled the bark off, but it had sticky sap all over it. In the three weeks it had been lying there, it turned an ugly greenish black. I think it was a combination of dirt, fungus, and stuff that fell from the trees. It came off pretty well if I scrubbed it with a stiff brush and lots of water, but that was an awful hard job in the heat. I tried a number of different tools and methods and finally settled on a combination of a block plane and a Red Devil floor scraper. I used the plane first and took off most of the black stuff where the log surface was pretty straight. Then, around the knots or wherever the surface was irregular, I scraped the remaining black stuff off with the floor scraper. For the most part, I was able to stay in the shade for most of this work. I got about half of the log done by the time I quit at 7:30.

On Thursday I got up at 5:15 and in the cool of the morning, I finished planing the log. It was now a beautiful clean white log again. Larry Copenhaver stopped by and chatted for a while just before I finished the job.

Next, I rigged the crane to pull log #123 over toward the building. It was a fairly complicated and time consuming rigging job but I got the log pulled along side the mixer where it was in the shade. The upper roadway was in direct sun and was beastly hot so at this point, I worked on the log where it was. I drilled pilot holes for the 3 rebar spikes that would hold it to the PSLs and I drilled the 8 holes for the anchor hooks. Then I installed the 4 anchor hooks. By then it was beastly hot and time for lunch.

After lunch and a nap, I moved the log out onto the upper roadway which was just starting to get a little shade. Then I treated the log and started moving it around the corner. Since this log is a green, very wet, 42 foot Douglas Fir, it is probably as heavy as any log I have handled and it takes a lot of time and rigging to move it. I quit work for the day about 6:30.

On Friday I got up at 5:15 again and started by picking the newly ripened blackberries. Then I went back to work moving log #123, the Grid F purlin, toward its final destination: atop the three PSLs some 20 feet off the ground.

I had a lot of rigging problems that slowed me down, partly because the log was so heavy and partly because Grid F is just out of reach for the crane. I also had my long ladder outside instead of inside going up to the scaffolds. As a result, I had to climb up the outside of the building any time I needed to get up on the high scaffolds to manipulate the crane, which turned out to be pretty frequent.

At one point I thought something broke while I was lifting the log, but fortunately it was just that a knot on a guy rope for the crane pole had slipped about 5 feet. This let the pole tip slant 5 feet away from vertical, but it didn't cause any problem. It took me quit a bit of hassle to get the pole back up straight and the knot tightened up.

In the process of moving the log around the corner of the building and alongside the PSLs, I found the center of gravity of the log, which is crucial to know. I also discovered that the log would be too heavy for the winch to lift once the cable drum got a few layers of cable on it. It was almost maxed out on the very first layer. I decided to double block the hook but the only snatch block I had that wasn't in use was a home made one I had built from junk parts and had never tested or used. I put this one on the winch cable, which has the lightest load, and used the one that had been there out on the hook where the load is heaviest. This doubled my lifting power, but of course halved my maximum travel. The log had to be lifted about 20 feet and now the hook could travel only about 8 feet. That meant I have to lift it in stages and somehow hold the log suspended part way up in order to empty the cable drum and re-rig for another lift. After a few abortive attempts and much rigging and re-rigging, I ended up with the log chained to the wall of the building about 12 or 15 feet above the ground and I was out of time. I left it hanging up there and left for home about 2:30 PM. Just before I got to the Cougar Inn, a cinnamon colored bear crossed the road about a hundred yards in front of me. I knew there were bears up there but this was the first one I had seen.

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