Near Disasters and Progress
This was a full week with Mark here, and following a tradition set last year, much progress was made and a (near) disaster occurred. The progress is described with the images below. The (near) disaster was that Logan cut himself with a chainsaw, which resulted in a trip to the Emergency Room and 10 stitches. I call this a (near) disaster because the cut turned out to be fairly superficial and nothing major was cut and recovery has been fast so far.
Mark spent a LOT of time with the angle grinder, a dusty, nasty job and this work was much appreciated. The temperatures were nice, but spending hours with a respirator on is not much fun.
For the plate logs (the logs the roof will sit on) we used lock notches, which provides better stability and also allows you to keep more wood in the log that is normally notched. These took a bit longer to make, and we had a little trouble getting the fit right on our first try, but overall they came out well and should make for a more robust structure.
With three of us working, progress went well… plus we got some pictures with more than one person in them. Working with the last logs meant doing a bunch of work up in the air.
The last logs on the wall are the plate logs, and they extend way over the front (East) side of the cabin to form a large porch. These were the most complicated logs in the cabin as: (1) They have four notches (two walls and two tie beams); (2) We used the more complicated lock notches (when possible); and (3) We had to get the heights and spacings just right so the roof will be square and even. At least so far, it looks like we succeeded.
We used steel pipe to pin the logs together (left photo). These are placed on every level and on either side of openings. We will also make sure the top plate log is well pinned to the lower logs. While Logan was laid up due to his chainsaw accident, we had to resort to me for some of the chainsaw work (right photo). Of course this was needed for the work that had to be done high on the wall instead of on the ground. My notches came out okay, but Logan was pretty anxious to take over after watching Mark and me with the chainsaw.
Mark did some scribe work while I was working in town, and something went wrong. Logan, diplomatically, made sure credit was given where credit was due. Fortunately, much of this gap will be cut out for a window.
The weather was excellent this week and we ate well. A bit used for drilling pin holes wore out, so Logan fashioned a handle and it works nicely as a fire poker.
By the end of the week we had all the walls up and the plate logs were measured out so they should provide a square and flat roofline. Measurements need to be confirmed, but it looks like we are ready to move on to the roof.
Boo-boos, Lessons Learned, and Successes
The obvious big boo-boo was Logan cutting himself with a chainsaw. This happened while cutting firewood after work, not while building the cabin, not that that matters. His major lesson learned is he should have been wearing chainsaw chaps — and he has been ever since.
Mark has moved up the learning curve quickly, but he learned its non-trivial to scribe well and cut within the scribe lines. Of course he’s doing this starting from scratch. The learning curve is more steep than one might guess.
We’ve all seen the benefit of another hand on the job. Even though there are times when one or more of us is standing around, we really had a productive week and we overcame one of the bigger hurdles that I have been worried about for weeks.
Next week we start on the roof proper!
good writing 🙂