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Day 4 Report

A soggy sunrise and a cheerful breakfast meeting to plan out the work day. This was a long day with more humidity that most of us are used to, and as with yesterday this day was also truncated by a sharp thunderstorm. Our hosts are happy for the rain, though we don't understand why it has to come all at once.

Don Seela and Tim Devore did the lion's share of the dirty work of unloading the trailer filled to the top with wet and dirty barn parts. We rough-sorted by type as we picked the load apart, giving the assessment team plenty to scratch their heads over. Some of the labels nailed to the timbers by the disassembly team vanished during storage or transport, adding to the mysteries.

Tom Cundiff led the attack on the joist piles, arranging by length and position to assess how much and what kinds of repairs will be required. Since the summers in the Chamberlin barn were in different positions than the ones on the Hertzler foundation, quite a bit of creative work will go into this floor system, which needs to support not only barn dances, but a very heavy cannon and carriage that belongs to the Mad River Light Artillery (from whom we have yet to hear).

Meanwhile, Dane and Brian and Kevin spent a long day in the hot sun making notes, taking measurements, all in preparation for putting the puzzle back together. It looks now as if we will not have to shorten all the posts, but rather repair their minimal damage, and replace at least one post entirely. In anticipation of the rains that were so obviously on their way again, we hustled to place all the new sill material (very nice white oak we bought from Trillium Dell in Illinois) under the big top in order to have work under cover. A good day that ended with venison and ribs in the gathering house.

Captions: Left to right: Dane Gustafson, Tim DeVore, Tom Cundiff, Brian Beals, and Project Manager Vince Leyendecker, looking for a way out. There are no exciting images of truck unloading or head-scratching over piles of wet, dirty timber; but in our haste to get the new sill material undercover, we may have asked too much of Kevin Brennan's brand new timber cart.