6/19-21/12 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way I stopped at Maddy's and arranged to deliver my truck next Friday and get the growl in the driveline fixed. Then I proceeded on to Woodinville where I had a nice visit with Claude McVey.

I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 1:00. Bert and Ernie were nowhere to be seen. I had a lot of stuff with me so I drove up as far as I could on the upper roadway. The scaffold tower kept me from going all the way. I unloaded a vacuum cleaner, a bunch of pots and pans we had bought for the cabin, a bunch of groceries, and my usual gear. I fed a chipmunk a handful of peanuts while I was unloading the stuff. When I finished, I backed the truck down and parked it. Then I installed the rodent repeller under the hood.

After lunch and a nap, I went into the woods and watered all the giant sequoia trees. They all look to be doing fine.

When I finished that, I rearranged some of the scaffolding on the porch so that I could reach above the Grid F purlin. Then I removed the two third-course ceiling boards I had installed because I have decided to cut them narrower so as to straighten up the tongue edge of that course.

Starting with a 4-footer, I ripped the groove edge down to the proper width and then cut a new groove in it. I used Jack, the rip saw, a block plane, and a 1/4" chisel. It was an experiment that went well and represented 10% of the total run. It let me know that I would be able to make new grooves across the entire 42-foot run.

On Wednesday I started the day on calls to the warrantee company discussing the work to be done on my truck. The good news was that the work would be covered by the warranty.

I went to work on the porch and re-made the groove edge of an 8-foot ceiling board. That went well also. I decided to make a video showing how I make the new grooves so I set the camera up and started shooting. I stained the two boards that I had removed and re-made and nailed them back up. They looked good.

Next, I installed the last little section of the first course above the Grid F purlin. That took some more chiseling away of the top of the purlin so the board would fit. Then I measured for the next of the second course boards. A chipmunk interrupted my work all throughout the morning and I stopped each time to feed him peanuts. He is a cute little guy (or gal).

After lunch and a nap, I cut the groove in a third board and made a video of the process. I was a little disappointed. I had been smart enough to select a board that didn't have knots on the groove edge, but I made the mistake of selecting a very dense board that was full of resin. That made it almost too gummy to be able to cut a kerf with Jack, the rip saw, and it was a lot harder to chisel through than the drier boards had been.

I had to resort to using a hammer with the chisel to make the first cuts, and then run the chisel by hand to cut away chips from there. It was very slow work and took me a couple hours. The chipmunk slowed down the work even further by his frequent interruptions.

When I finally finished cutting the groove, I stained the board and nailed it to the ceiling. It was fairly late in the day, but too early to quit. I was really eager to know how much faster it would be if I had selected a light, dry board instead of the remaining half of the resinous one. I decided to give it a try.

I selected out another board that was fairly light in weight and didn't have knots on the groove edge. I cut an 8-footer from it and went through the process of marking it for ripping, ripping it with the Skilsaw, planing off the chamfer, and then cutting the groove.

This time I decided not to use the rip saw at all and simply make the groove using only the 1/4" chisel by hand, not using a hammer. Unfortunately I didn't set the camera back up and record any of it.

I was pleasantly surprised that cutting the groove that way was easy and fast. I cut the entire 8-foot groove in less than an hour. Now I wondered what to do about the video. Should I show the long hard job of cutting that dense board? Or should I throw that away and make a video of the next board that I do? I wasn't sure.

I was extra tired and sore by the end of the day so I treated myself with a long soak in a fairly hot bathtub.

On Thursday morning, I swept the chip mess off the porch, and then went to stain the chamfer on the last board I had made. The problem was that I couldn't find the brush I had been using. It was a small artist's brush and it had simply disappeared. I looked where it should have been. I looked where I might have put it away, I looked everywhere I could think of but I just couldn't find it.

In exasperation, I got a second brush which I was lucky to have. The good news was that this second brush worked much better than the other one so I was glad to switch.

After I had stained the board, I took it up on the scaffolding and nailed it to the rafters. It fit perfectly and looked nice. Unfortunately, after I had driven in the last nail, I dropped the nail set. It fell down onto the porch but I didn't see where it landed.

I climbed down off the scaffolding and went to get the nail set but I couldn't find it. The porch had been swept so there were no chips or debris for it to hide under. The nail set has a hex shank so it couldn't have rolled very far and there just wasn't any place for it to go. Yet it had disappeared.

There is a crack between the deck planks right about where it fell that is wide enough for the nail set to fall through. I figured that had to be where it went. I stuck a saw down the crack so that I could locate the correct spot under the porch. I got a light and went down under the porch to look for the nail set.

There were some rocks under that spot, but I moved them out of the way and I still couldn't find the nail set. Things were now seeming to get spooky. I figured the nail set was probably with my paintbrush, but where that was is a complete mystery.

After looking above and below some more, I finally decided to give up. I got out the next bigger nail set from my set of three and checked to see if it would work with my nails. I am using 7d galvanized siding nails with a medium size head so the middle size nail set should work just fine. I am baffled, though, where those two items went.

The chipmunk came by for peanuts, but I don't think he could have carried either of the items away. I put away the rest of the tools and left for home at about 1:00. I won't be back to Camp Serendipity next week because my truck will be in the shop all week.

6/23/12 (Saturday) The video I had taken was way too long so I edited out all the portions of the extra work I had to do because of the resinous wood and left in a good representation of what it takes to cut a groove in a nice light-weight board. I posted the video on YouTube.