BRK #157
Friday Thick-Of-The-Winter Edition...!
Everyone seemed in high spirits today, and looking forward to an exciting, satisfying holiday weekend. As it was still rather cold outside, we prioritized mostly indoor activities today.
Caleb and I continued on the Classroom chandelier
project. Here's a photo of the raw slab of
wood we're using for the bulk of the fixture, before we began work.
Flattening both sides of the slab was an important step. There appeared to be a cut drawn part of the way through it (an artifact of its previous time over at the Sawmill), leaving a thickness of about an inch and a half, and we decided to stick with that as a guide for the roughed-out size.
After cutting it to length, Caleb used a chainsaw to sweep off the rounded topside and produce a slab with two flat surfaces. To encourage a level cut, a bubble level was affixed temporarily to the bar of the chainsaw so Caleb could adjust on the fly and preserve the surfaces as much as possible.
While Caleb was chainsawing, I busied myself making supports for the roof joists in a couple strategic places. As it turns out, we're not using the majority of the hardware we selected yesterday. Instead, we'll be looping steel cable round these locations so as not to disturb the joists and risk their support strength. Anyhow, here I am using a mallet to hammer-in a planed, fitted support block into the joist from the underside. I used our tallest non-extension ladder to make it up there.
The shift wrapped with us planing down the completed slab so it has smoother, even top and bottom surfaces. We'll be rejoining this effort on Monday. Personally, I think the electrical wiring will be the most challenging and most interesting part of the project.
Meanwhile, Daniel and Grey were working on an improvement to the Red Cabin. Here they are shredding up some
straw: a key component to
cob. They later moved out of the
Workshop and up to the Red Cabin to sculpt some interesting interior channels for additional flammable gas flow through the Rocket Heater's manifold and burn chamber.
In the afternoon, I made another attempt at starting the
tractor. We'd really like to have the Lab plowed one of these days, but the negative temps just wouldn't allow it. Here's my makeshift "heat tent." There's a flood lamp down there, gradually heating the engine block from below. The block heater is also plugged into electricity, doing its best to warm the tractor's insides. Sadly, there was no change. At least the battery is holding charge just fine beyond my multiple start attempts.
Finally: Here's my obligatory cat photo, this time of
Choco. I keep joking with the rest of the folks here: I've had simple conversations with human children smaller than this guy. He's smarter - and tougher - than he looks. And he's one tough-lookin' feline hombre.
I wrapped my afternoon shift with a number of supply quote calls and various inquiries to stock-up on materials here at Basecamp for the year ahead. It's a good time to be here, with lots of potential building.
That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!
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