Links

Day 6 Report

A perfect day in paradise; plenty of heat but lower humidity, and no afternoon thunderstorms. We began with an expansive breakfast of home-made biscuits and gravy and TWO kinds of sausages to go with our eggs. Naps looked like a possibility at our pre-game meeting.

It took all day, but the joist recycling project is nearly complete; every piece has a home, new materials slid in where required, all joinery complete and a much better understanding than we had 24 hours ago of how to deal with the difference between the summerbeam configurations for Chamberlin and for Hertzler.

Meanwhile, all of the new sill material has been laid out and checked, and the gang has made excellent progress on the cutting.

Throughout the day, old friends and new faces drifted in, only to be handed a peavy or a broom or some other assignment, along with a pile of paperwork and a wrist band. I invested a good portion of the day milling about putting together the booklets for the incoming participants.

We topped off another fine dinner with an evening of philosophy around the campfire. There will be more work tomorrow.

Captions: A half-acre of joists, and the tools it took to recover them. The all-beard team: (Left to right) Joel McCarty, Charlie Simonds, and Don Rice, the mason who did such a great job restoring the foundation, and who is now almost a timberframer, too. Don Seela, among the hardest working man in timberframing, lives about 12 miles away and shows up every morning with a delicious collection of hand tools to tempt us with. He and his son are scheduled to put on an impromptu flea market for us on Monday morning. Tom Cundiff and Vincent Leyendecker, head down in a layout puzzle so dense that it requires three drinks and a chainsaw wrench to work through. Here's a 25' long joist that is the poster child for ring-shake. Check back to see if it can be saved.