A pretty good week
The Alaskan mill is put away. The scribe is put away. The chainsaw work is almost done. All the logs are up. This week was all about getting the roof support system up. The purlins in particular were challenging, as they had some awkward bows that were hard to accommodate. Also, it became clear that the truss approach was going to be very difficult, plus it just wouldn’t fit very well, so upon Logan’s suggestion, we went with a straight post design — simple and it looks good. As usual, the progress is shown below.
We milled flat surfaces on both plate logs (the logs on top of the wall where the roof will sit). We took quite a lot of material off one log (left photo), a consequence of the log shape and my letting one side of the cabin get a little higher than the other. Overall, they came out good and should provide a nice flat surface for the SIP panels.
We were pleased with how the ridge pole looked when it was finally milled and set on four posts.
It was helpful to have three people when working with the large plate logs, purlins, and the ridge pole. Steve (left), Mike (center), and Scott (right) all came up and helped — much appreciated. Mike utilized his experience as a website designer to make short work of peeling some logs.
The plate logs, purlins, and ridge pole are all 36 feet long. We used the best log for the ridge pole, and the second and third best for the plate logs. The two purlins had some bows that went in more than one direction, so it took a lot of time to figure out how to best use them.
Logan’s mother Elaine commented that the job site would have been more safe if she had been there. To ease her worries, I thought I’d let her know that when Logan walks the logs, as shown above, he’s usually wearing his chainsaw chaps to be safe.
By the time we finished the last mill cut with the Alaskan mill we just about had it figured out how to do it well. Logan is taking apart the rails we fashioned after our last cut in the photo above. Note the chainsaw chaps.
The photo above shows the scribe board that we used to set the levels on the scribe. If you place the pencil and pointer from the scribe on the vertical line on the board, the tip of the pointer and the pencil are dead vertical to each other. Then you adjust the level bubbles on the scribe so you can maintain (mostly maintain anyway) this position as you scribe. It’s oddly satisfying to make a good scribe, but I’m also glad to be finished with the log work.
The clouds moved in and made everything wet on Sunday, so we lost a day of work. However, there are only a few details left before we will be putting up SIP panels. Tom is coming over for a few days so we’ll have three people as we sort this out. With a little luck, the roof will be largely in place by the end of next week!
I have been watching between posts: when the weather precludes your continuing, seems to me I might deserve a phone conversation. (An impressive summer activity, Rand.) More later I hope.