First Rain

The first real rain of the season arrived this weekend, so I decided to make sure the stove pipe through the roof of the cabin was still weather proof. If you've read my earlier posts, you know that this had been quite a challenge, but it did seem to finally be fixed.

When I arrived at the gate, the rain was really pouring, and the road had several large rivulets eating away, so I decided to try a quick-fix diversion of the water. I managed to get it back under control, at least to a certain extent, but just ten minutes or so in that downpour, and I was soaked.

So I drove on down to the cabin, and after verifying the weather-worthiness of the roof -- not a drop coming in! -- I started a fire in the stove, stripped off my soggy clothes, wrung them out as best I could, and arrayed them around the stove to dry.

As I tended the fire, periodically flipping things over and around as they dried, I noticed that the rivulet coming down the road had increased in volume, sprouting a side branch that was flowing into the foundation of the cabin. This did not seem to be a good thing. So even though I was buck naked, I put on my water shoes that I keep for summertime swimming, and made a foray back into the downpour to divert the water away from the foundation.

Fortunately, it really wasn't that cold, maybe mid-50s, and with the exertion of digging wet gravel, I didn't feel cold at all. After about five minutes, things seemed to back under control, and I returned to my drying chores, giving my own backside its turn in front of the open stove door.

The creek was now a raging torrent, and quite a spectacular sight. Then I noticed my redwood lawn chairs bobbing around in the back-current in about a foot and a half of water, and it was clear they would soon be bobbing downstream. So I put my water shoes back on, and otherwise naked as nature, waded out and rescued my chairs. One way to keep your clothes dry in a downpour is don't wear any!

More chainsaw milling

Just had an opportunity for some more chainsaw milling at the cabin my siblings and I inherited from our dad. Several trees on the property died from bark beetles, and we hired a professional to fell them. So I decided to take a crack at cutting some timbers. I managed to cut a 16 foot 8x8 and a 12 foot 8x8, but there's still a lot of board feet untouched. I'll probably look into hiring someone with a portable bandsaw, although word is that the market for lumber is so depressed, nobody really wants to cut it. Oh, well. Anyway, here are a few shots of the project.

Loft Ladder wrap-up and Music Creekside

I managed to finish attaching the rungs/steps to the loft ladder one evening after work, so I took it up the next weekend to see how well it would fit. I also bought a couple of three inch wide milled oak moulding for the upper side of the rails, so the hand grip would be a bit smoother, and also to hide some of the gaps where I had cut the mortices for the steps on the inside walls of the rails.

Turned out pretty nice, and it set in place without any appreciable wobble or unevenness. Here's a shot.

Later that afternoon, my sister-in-law's boyfriend drove up for a little jam session with his guitar and my uke. He was in the area because his mother lives not too far away, and he thought it would be fun to check out the property and play a little music. He is a much better musician than I am, but when I'd lose the chord progression, I sometimes managed to noodle out some single note accompaniments. He seemed to know just about every classic rock song ever, including intro, verses, with clean endings. I was impressed. He also surprised my by playing an Irving Berlin tune from about 1915, after I mentioned that I liked jazz. It was a very fine and mellow time, as the creek provided backup orchestration. Maybe I should try recording it sometime.

Loft Ladder-Stairway

Because the warm weather is now finally upon us, I decided to delay the ceiling paneling project. The loft just gets much too stuffy and hot, especially when you're doing physical labor. Instead I decided to work on the loft stairway, which is really more of a ladder, but I'm planning on having rungs that are about 7 inches wide, so it will feel a bit more like a stairway, similar to what  you might find in a boat.

Of course, I want to use wood from the sinker log. I milled a couple of the 2 inch thick slabs into 7 inch wide pieces for the rails of the ladder, and then another that I could use for the steps.

The 8+ foot length was just about right to reach the loft floor. I first positioned one of the rails roughly where I envisioned the stairway, made some marks with a pencil at the angle where I thought it met the floor, and another at the loft end. I then cut the angles, and then re-positioned. This ended up being a bit of an iterative process, since the angle changed slightly once the rail had been cut. Anyway, I finally satisfied myself that the first rail looked pretty good. The second rail was easy, I just used the first as a template, and cut the same pattern on the other. The fit looks pretty good

The steps will probably be more of a challenge, since the rails are slightly warped in places. I took the pieces home, hoping to be able to work on them in the evening after work. Haven't really gotten to it yet, but tomorrow's another day.

Here are a few shots of the work:

More Panel Milling

I continued work on the panel milling project. I probably have enough to start nailing them to the ceiling. I still have plenty more that could be milled, but I'll wait until I start running low. Here are a couple of shots of the work.

Sinker Log Panel Milling (continued)

After futzing with the irrigation water, I headed down for more work on my sinker log panel project.

First order of business was actually to take a nap, but then I set up the mill to cut the slabs into consistent 12 inch width boards. This was necessary because the maximum width that the mill could cut was not much more than this. Here's a shot of the setup I used to accomplish this.

And here's a shot showing some of the boards ready for the next step.

And here's the final product, stacked and stickered.

My rough estimate is that I have about 200 square feet of paneling, and I think I'll need about 250 for the ceiling and gable ends, so just a couple more and I should be able to actually start nailing them up.

Irrigation Water and Re-sawing the Sinker Log

The irrigation district has turned on the canal water for the season, so I did some preliminary setup of my irrigation system. It's pretty rudimentary, mostly just a few hoses that I run to the various places where I've planted  my ponderosa seedings and apple trees. The apple trees just went in last year after the district informed me that they would cut off my water unless I planted an agricultural crop. I told them I had planted over a thousand conifer seedlings, but they wanted something more crop-like. So I put in a hundred Fuji apple trees. It was a lot of work digging in that rocky soil, and I lost about 25 trees before the summer was over. But I do like the idea of having the fruit trees, so we'll see if this little experiment works.

The water is measured by the miner's inch. I'm signed up for 1/2 miner's inch, which is about six gallons a minute, although I think the metering is not very precise. Here's a video showing the flow coming out of the water box.




Here's a shot of the canal.

After messing with the water and running a few hoses, I headed down to the cabin to start work on my next project, re-sawing the sinker log. I had cut it into slabs of about two inches thick, some about 12-14 inches wide, and the rest about 24 inches wide. My plan is to mill these two inch thick slabs into 1/2 inch thick boards that I can use for paneling on the ceiling of the cabin. To do this I bought another Alaska style chainsaw mill from Granberg International, the model G776-24, which has bar attachments at both ends, and allows better control over board width. Here's a shot of the mill on top of the sinker log slabs.

It took a while to get the mill attached to the chainsaw, with the adjustment at its lowest setting, 1/2 inch. But things went pretty smoothly after that, albeit slowly. The 1/2 inch setting seemed to work out pretty well, giving me three 1/2 think boards per 2 inch slab. There is quite a bit of wood wasted, due to the 1/4 inch kerf of the chainsaw, but I'll just have to accept that. I managed to mill three of the slabs in about an hour and a half. I think once I get my system down, it should go quicker.  Here's a shot of the 1/2 boards stacked and stickered.

The previous weekend my wife and I finished up the butyl tape flashing on the chimney pipe. Still pretty ugly, but not as bad as before, and its seems to be weather tight. Here's a shot.

Timber Frame Conference Day Two

Although the conference ran through the weekend, I had only signed up for the pre-conference workshop and Friday, the first full day of the conference. A full lineup of presentations and demonstrations was on the agenda. I started off with "Dumb Buildings, Smart Buildings, and Wise Buildings", presented by Lisa Sasser. I was expecting something along the lines of how to build new, "green" buildings, or maybe things like passive solar, etc. Although some of these topics were touched upon, the presentation mainly focused on the preservation of historic structures, but with a decidedly environmental slant. As Lisa wrote in the overview of her presentation, "It's time for the preservation movement to absorb some of the lessons of the environmental movement and broaden the focus from preservation to conservation--not just of buildings, but also of communities, livelihood, and a sense of place." 

After her lecture when she opened it up for questions, a woman sitting across the aisle from me asked something to the effect of "Why isn't there something like the CCC that can build these beautiful and durable public structures as they did in the depression?" It may have been more of a rhetorical question, and Lisa essentially talked about budget deficits,etc., and another person in the audience said you'd have to try to get funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. So I chimed in, "you know, we do have Americorps, which may not have building trades as its focus, but it does work on projects similar to those of the CCC such as trail restoration, along with things like working with inner city kids". I know this because my daughter decided to spend her first year out of high school as an Americorp volunteer instead of going immediately to college.  

The woman who asked the question shot me a look that seemed to say, "You just ruined the point I was trying to make", but Lisa said, "I'm glad you mentioned that because the same kind of community building that Americorp is trying to accomplish is very much in line with the timber frame tradition." It's nice to get that kind of vindication when you stick your neck out in public.

During the break I wandered out back where several demonstrations and hands-on activities were taking place. Some kids about 10-12 years old were working on a timber frame play structure under the guidance of seasoned timber frame experts. It looked like fun, and I was sorry I would miss the raising. Here are a few shots.

Another demonstration was the hewing and adzing, where a round log was turned into a square timber. The process was quite laborious and time consuming, but I like the look that hewing gives to the timber. Here are some shots of that.

And then Barr Quarton fired up his portable forge. The wind was giving him some problems, but he still managed to guide several people through forging a coat hook. I was fortunate enough to be one of them. Flattening the hot metal between the hammer and anvil felt unexpectedly satisfying. I didn't get a good shot of the hook, but we basically flattened one end, tapered the other, twisted the middle, and then hooked the flattened end. The tapered end was bent 90 degrees so it could be driven into a beam. Here are some shots of the forge and anvil.

 


I spent most of the afternoon outside, even though there were several presentations I had wanted to attend. Oh well, maybe next time. Then there was a mixer with hors d'oeuvres and beer, and then dinner. Timber framers are pretty interesting people, and I enjoyed hearing the stories of how they came to be involved with this craft. I felt a bit of a poseur, having to admit several times that I wasn't even an amateur.


Saturday morning I took the hotel shuttle to the Spokane airport and caught my flight to Seattle, where I met my wife. My daughter, who is an Americorps volunteer, as I mentioned earlier, has to make a decision about which college she will attend in the fall by May 1, so we thought we would help with moral support.


After meeting my wife and renting the car and getting lost, we met up with our daughter working with about 20 other volunteers painting the hallways of a middle school in the Queen Anne neighborhood. She wasn't quite finished, so my wife and I walked around the nearby shopping district.

As we walked around, something kind of clicked in my brain about timber framing and Americorps. I guess seeing those kids working hard on a Saturday sprucing up a public building made me realize that a collaboration between timber framers and Americorps could work. And if twelve year old kids can build a frame, just about anybody can, at least with the supervision of experienced framers. And as Lisa Sasser had suggested, community building is an integral part of what timber framing is about.

Timber Frame Conference

The 24th Western Regional Conference of the Timber Framers Guild is being held April 23 through April 25 in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. One of the pre-conference workshops on April 22 is on how to use Google Sketchup for timber frame design. I had tried playing around with this a bit on my own, but found it quite challenging, so I decided to sign up for the workshop and get some hands-on experience.

So far, it's been a lot of fun. The workshop was a little overwhelming, but well worth it. Even though I make my living as a software engineer (or maybe because of it), I sometimes find learning new technology to be a pain in the brain. But the class was taught by Clark Bremer of Northern Lights Timber Framing, who has created a set of plugins for Sketchup specific to timber frame design, so he is the Sketchup for timber frame guru. Sketchup is a powerful 3-D CAD program that Google offers for free, and the plugins and "rubies" Clark has developed allow frames to be designed quickly, as well as the associated shop drawings and timber lists. It's pretty amazing what he has come up with, and he has made his work freely available.

And timber framers tend to be pretty interesting people. I met Barr Quarton of Barr Tools, who makes timber framing chisels and other tools specific to the trade. I'm looking forward to his forging demo tomorrow.
 I also talked to Mike of Montana Reclaimed Lumber, whose company salvages timbers from old barns and other structures. I had a great conversation with him about trees and timber, and we ended up talking about the importance of the remaining old growth forests. Here's a shot of his exhibit booth, built from some of his reclaimed timbers:

Here's a 2-D rendering of the frame we "designed" in class:

The Sinker Log

The next project on the agenda is to finish off the ceiling with insulation and paneling. I've been waiting on this until the stove pipe was in place. The wood that I plan to use for the paneling is from my "sinker log", so I thought I would give a little history on that particular episode.

Early last summer while walking along the creek, I noticed what looked like a plank or timber about 8 feet long under the water, embedded in the gravel. I'd read that wood that has been continuously submerged does not rot in the same way as wood that is exposed to air. I had also read about salvage logging operations in the Great Lakes and rivers of the Pacific Northwest that retrieve logs that sank while being floated to mills a hundred years or so ago.  So I thought I might be able to get some usable wood from this plank.

After digging in the gravel around the plank with my hands, it became clear this this was not a plank or timber at all, but a round log. It just looked like a plank because only a foot or so of its surface width was visible. From the curvature that I could expose easily, it seemed to be about 3 feet in diameter. I remembered that the neighbor who owns the property across the creek had said there used to be a log bridge across the creek, but it washed out about 50 years ago. This log must be a remnant of that bridge.

Even though digging out a log this size would be a much larger endeavor than the timber I took it for, I decided to go for it. Over the next three or four weeks I would spend about an hour of my time at the property digging the gravel away from the log.  A short handled hoe worked pretty well for moving the gravel out and away from the log, and I used an iron pry bar for loosening the larger rocks that were wedged tightly against the log. I also did a fair amount of digging with my hands, ruining at least one pair of gloves in the process.

As the log became more exposed, I would periodically try to move it with the pry bar, but for the most part this just proved to be a good way to bend the bar. After most of the upper half of the log was exposed, I tried prying with a steel channel beam. I had used this on other projects around the house that required levering heavy objects, such as the 3 foot diameter granite rock I moved from the front yard to the back.

But the log still did not budge. The channel beam easily slid under the log, so I was able to get a pretty short fulcrum length, but it would not move. I was ready to admit defeat.

But not just yet. The channel beam was about seven feet in length, so I thought of how I could make it longer. I puzzled for a while, and then remembered a piece of driftwood that had been kicking around down by the swimming hole. It was about a 2x12, about ten feet long.

So I inserted the channel beam under one end of the log, and wedged a good size rock under it for the fulcrum. I then slid the 2x12 along the top edge of the beam and wedged its lower end between the beam and the log. The other end of the board jutted at least two feet out of my reach, so I looped a rope around it, holding an end in each hand. I worked the rope up the board until it was near the top. Then I just pulled down.

The board moved down. I first it just seemed to be pushing the fulcrum deeper into the gravel at its base. But it kept coming, and before I realized what was happening, the end of the log just popped out of the water. I let out a whoop. Victory!

I repeated the procedure on the other end. The log was free! Here's a shot of the log just after it had been dislodged. It looks like it is floating up a bit, but I actually wedged some large rocks to prop it up, as my original plan for raising it was to just successively fill gravel back under it.

The gravel fill plan quickly proved unworkable. Getting the log to rise a couple of inches out of the water was easy, but the weight to lift increased geometrically with each successive inch.

The next method made used of some 4x8 beams left over from the cabin construction. These were between ten and sixteen feet in length, so they made very nice levers. I alternated between raising the log from one side, and then repeating from the other side. But this also encountered the phenomenon of increasing lift weight as the log was raised. I couldn't seem to get much more than about half of it out of the water before the other side would slide back down.

So now I brought out the big guns. After sliding two of the 4x8s under one side as deep as possible, I tied the rope over the end of each beam, then pulled the loop under the log and back over the top. I then attached another rope to this loop and hooked it up to my little come-along winch. The log and rope now acted as one end of a pulley. As I cranked the winch, the log slowly began to emerge from the water, until it eventually came to rest level on the 4x8's. Here's a shot after I had buttressed both sides.

The log could now be milled in place with my Alaska style chainsaw mill. Here's a shot after the first couple of cuts.

As I milled each slab, I stacked it back in reverse order. Here's a shot of the completed stack. The pink paint on the ends is to reduce checking.

 So what is the connection between the sinker log and the ukulele, as I mentioned in a previous post? Well, as I began researching on the internet whether this wood could be used for structural purposes, I came across some sites extolling the virtues of submerged wood for musical instruments. Apparently after years under water, wood develops micro cavities in its cellular structure that increases its resonance.  So I thought it would be cool if I could have an instrument built from this log I had discovered on my property. I had recently renewed my interest in the ukulele, having taken it backpacking and jamming with my brother-in-law on his daughter's child-sized guitar. He could really play that thing, so I was inspired to start increasing my repertoire and learning a bit more.

However, after the first few slabs had been cut, it was apparent that this was not the tight-grained old-growth that I had been hoping for. I counted about a hundred growth rings, with the inner rings being pretty widely spaced. In addition, I wasn't sure if the log was douglas-fir or ponderosa. Douglas-fir is a decent tone wood, not the best, but pine is not even worth considering.

But I contacted a luthier I found on the internet, and after confirming my assessment of the feasibility of using my own sinker wood, he told me he had just started work on a tenor ukulele using reclaimed sinker redwood from Mendocino, along with claro black walnut. My old uke was a little soprano, and even though it was a decent instrument, it was a little plinky, as sopranos tend to be. So I decided to just go for this custom tenor. I am so glad I did. It is a beautiful instrument, and it sounds great. Here's a link to the website:  Little River Ukuleles

Ok, so there it is, the ukulele connection, tenuous as it may be.

Leak is Fixed!

Looks like the last patch job did the trick, at least mostly. There may still be a micro leak, because some of the wood near the previous leak looked pretty wet, but I think once I apply the butyl flashing tape it should take care of it.

I built a fire in the stove and raised the temperature from about 48 degrees to 67, but it took a couple of hours. Here's a shot of the stove after it had burned down to coals. The boot is just to give you an idea of scale.

Leak Fix Attempt #3

My wife and I made the trip back to the cabin on Saturday to try again to fix the leak in the roof. I ripped up most of the patch job I had done last weekend. I decided that part of the problem was that I really couldn't get good access from the ladder angle I was using. I was having to lean over and reach around to the far side of the chimney, and it was awkward and precarious.

So I repositioned the ladder so I could get direct access to the chimney area. This proved to be a much more comfortable arrangement. The other problem was the black pipe cement I had used to try to fill the gaps between the chimney adapter and the roof. That stuff was clearly the wrong stuff. So I tried to clear it out as best as I could. Then I squeezed the silicone caulking directly into the gaps, and then filled copious amounts around the base of the chimney adapter. Still looks ugly, but I'll deal with that later.

A small irony in this saga is that when we arrived home, we found that the dishwasher had leaked out onto the kitchen floor. The garbage disposal went out a few days earlier, and it was the first time running the dishwasher since then. I had verified that the water from the sink was draining, but apparently the outlet from the dishwasher was clogged. It wouldn't have been that big a deal, except that we had installed a hardwood floor there a few years ago. In hindsight, probably not a great idea, but it did look great. While cleaning up the mess, I really had this feeling like the universe was trying to tell me something. Not sure what, but maybe something like I would have been a lousy plumber.

It is supposed to rain today, so I'm hoping I'll get a chance to drive up and see if my latest chimney patch worked.

On a side note, here's a link to my ukulele premier debut on youtube. I'll explain the ukulele connection to the property is a subsequent post, probably entitled "The Sinker Log".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFZB8yWAWrQz 

Plan B Report Card

We had a pretty good rain on Sunday, so my wife and I drove up after work on Monday to see if the roof was still leaking. Even though I had placed the bucket where the previous leak had been dripping, I was a bit nervous that the leak might be in a new spot, and potentially damage the floor.

Well, good news and bad news. Good news: the bucket caught the leak.

Stove Installation - Plan B

Over the next few days various formulations of Plan B began to appear in my brain. There was Minimalist Plan B, which was to remove just a few screws from the pipe boot so I could get better access with the silicone caulking gun. Radical Plan B called for losing the pipe boot, re-caulking everything, and sealing over the pipe boot screw holes with some left-over pieces of metal roofing.  Compromise Plan B was somewhere in between.

My wife had other commitments on Saturday, and she made me promise not to go up on the ladder without a spotter, so I recruited her brother, Scott. He has worked in construction and various other building trades, so I was very glad to get his help and any advice he might have to offer. And he's a great photographer, so he would probably get some nice shots for the blog.

The roof had leaked quite a bit, but the bucket had done its job. We assessed the situation on the roof and determined that the Minimalist approach wouldn't cut it. Scott thought we should remove the pipe boot completely, but I felt that half of it seemed to be water tight, and removing it would expose the screw holes. I removed the screws from the side that was leaking, and cut that side of the boot off. I cleaned off the silicone mess and then reapplied more silicone caulking generously.

We ran out of silicone, so we made a trip to the hardware store about 20 minutes away. In addition to more silicone, I bought a wider storm collar and a roll of black flashing tape. Scott advised mass quantities of silicone, so I pretty much emptied the other tube when we got back. It still looks pretty ugly, but it just might work. I'll probably apply more silicone and finish off with the flashing tape.

Here are a few of Scott's pics:

Installing the Wood Stove

Finally got around to installing the wood burning stove this weekend. I had bought a Sardine model stove from Navigator Stove Works, and it has been sitting around for at least seven or eight months. I found a nice flat rock on the property, and built a cradle for it out of some oak I had milled. I attached the stove to the rock with concrete anchor bolts. It was a pretty rustic look, but Andrew at NSW had recommended that the cook surface be at least 28 inches from the floor, and the cradle accomplished this, plus allowed for using another piece of native rock for a heat shield.

It also took a while for the pipe to arrive due to a snafu at the factory. And then after some initial layout and head scratching, I realized that I needed two more sections of pipe plus two adjustable elbows.

So now with all the components available, my wife and I headed up and got to work. We puzzled for a bit on exactly where the hole in the roof should go, but once that decision was made, we just went for it. Point of no return.

Cutting the hole was a bit of a pain. I drilled a series of holes up through the roof around the perimeter I had scribed, but it was slow going and I coughed up a lot of sawdust. It was not much easier once I got up on the roof and tried cutting through the metal with tin snips. But I eventually got the metal out of the way, and was able to cut through the OSB roof deck, ruining a half dozen hack saw blades in the process.

Now for the fun part. I pushed the ceiling adapter up through the hole, and secured it to the bracing I had framed inside. I installed the chimney pipe in the adapter, and then slid the pipe boot over the chimney.

The pipe boot had been recommended by Andrew, since the regular flashing that he carries does not work for metal roofs.

This is the picture from their web site. Looks pretty good.

Here's what mine looked like.

My wife had been steadying the ladder, but once she got a good look at it, she said, "Pipe boot? More like pipe butt! That thing is butt ugly!"

It wasn't quite so bad once the rain cap was installed, and from a bit of a distance you might not notice. The important thing was, would it keep out the weather, and would the chimney draft be decent. We'd have to wait to check for leaks, but after connecting the interior piping, we immediately built a small fire in the stove. The draft was very nice, and the damper was working well.

We got our chance to verify the weather-worthiness the next day. We had spent the night at my brother's cabin, which is about twenty minutes away, and has all the amenities: kitchen, shower, heat, and a very comfy bed. The next day a pretty steady drizzle had descended on the foothills. After breakfast and some cleanup, we drove back down to our place, keeping our fingers crossed.

The way the pipe boot had turned out was disappointing, but nothing compared to finding a black puddle on the floor the next morning. Before installing the pipe boot, I had tried to seal the edges of the hole with black pipe cement, so when the roof leaked, the water was full of yucky black sediment. We cleaned it up, and put a bucket under the leaky spot. The leak was actually pretty slow, and seemed to be in just one place. I tried adding some more silicon from up on the roof, but the leak persisted. Oh well, time for plan B. I'm just not sure what plan B is quite yet.

But we made another fire, and the place heated up quite nicely. Here are a few more pics.