Not much progress, but not zero progress
Everything seemed to conspire against making progress this week. The weather was unusually wet, we swapped out the excavator for a telehandler (which took time), Sabrina arrived so Logan is taking some time off, my truck died (temporarily) in a highly inconvenient spot, and of course there was my ongoing stream of dumb-ass attacks. It took me three tries to get the bolts glued in for the plate boards…
But there was some success, as described and shown below.
As trivial as it sounds to get bolts installed, I pegged the incompetence meter by needing three tries to get it right, which required three trips down the mountain and to the hardware store. Sheesh…
We swapped out the excavator for a telehandler. The delivery was almost two hours late, which both cost time and allowed a thunderstorm to move in for the drive up the mountain. Logan just barely made it up. This, along with log-tongs, should make moving logs pretty easy and fast. However, with me behind the wheel, which will be the case for next week while Logan is on vacation, one might — and should — shudder.
We did have success with the Alaska mill getting the sill logs sawed. The left photo shows the system set up. The mill rides along the 2-by-4 rails and cuts the log length-wise along the black line drawn on the end of the log. This was a large log, about 2 feet across, and we got a nice cut (right image). It took around a hour of sawing. The video below gives an idea of how slow the cutting was.
Wylie and one of his friends came up for a night, and together they made some decent progress peeling logs. They were less successful catching chipmunks, although about equal time was devoted to both activities.
With rain and cool weather, the boys doubled up with sock-warming while I cooked ham and eggs for breakfast.
Lessons and what's next
It’s a good thing we’ve relaxed the schedule, because we certainly fell further behind last week. With the bad weather, mishaps, mistakes, and other time losses it’s just better to accept it rather than get wound up. So I’m actually pretty comfortable with where we are, but I’m not convinced we’ll get to where I hoped to.
Next week Logan will be on vacation, so Tom is coming over to help out. Hopefully we’ll get some logs up on the wall, learn what’s involved, and pick up on some chainsaw skill. It will be another interesting week!
Pretty cool.