!! SEPP to Boot: Stephen's Experience (BEL)

Coydon Wallham wrote:Maybe time to invoke the spirit of Wheaton "Labs" to add draw-boring to one of the chair repairs and compare the results.

I just had a chance to watch this drawboring video and... Holy smokes! This looks super-cool and would be an excellent application for such a technique. I'm also building some shelves for inside the tent and I think it would even be worth a try for those, as well.

Thanks for passing this along, man...! :-D

BEL #765

After a couple days out of sorts, I'm back at it again. I caught a couple snapshots of the team working on its first roundwood chair from scratch.

Here's Seth at the shaving horse, peeling bark for one of the rear legs and chair back.



Since we're all beginners at roundwood, to solve problems we'd need to come at them sometimes with a creative approach. So here we are, using ratchet straps to secure the legs in place while we make "minor" adjustments.



The chair is just about done, and I'd say that while we definitely had struggles and it's not carpentry quality, hey: it was our first one ever, and we accomplished a tremendous amount along the way. It's safe to say that "learning has occurred," and our next attempt will be much closer to the ideal. In this picture, JP and Seth discuss where to add dowel rods that will snugly secure the seat to the chair frame.



That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!

For the next one you might want to put a bit of backwards slant to the backrest.  Here's helpful website with some "standards" for comfort: Wood chair measurements

BEL #766

Tonight's Game Night was penny-ante poker. I think I broke even, or at least didn't lose too much of my laundry coins.

Meanwhile, Boot stuff... One of the curious tasks we're fulfilling this season is to add mulch to the roof of both the Truly Passive Greenhouse and Allerton Abbey. The goal is to further insulate the structure in the same vein as a green roof, and when left alone it would eventually deplete and thin out. Adding more mulch like this shredded tree bark helps keep the earthen roof full of organic material and better at reducing the temperature extremes of both the summer and the winter. This job on the Greenhouse is partially done, and then we'll move to the Abbey.



We've also attempted to add some edible plants to the berm surrounding the Tipi. Here's fellow Boot JP watering the onions and sunchokes we planted earlier this week.



Since last week's attempt at bone sauce resulted in only a pile of ash and charred bones - and no sauce - we're attempting it again. Here's the fire we set in Far Arrakis (our sand pit) earlier this afternoon. Here's JP once again, keeping the bone sauce fires burning.



I've adopted the term "Goat Mode" to describe the chop-and-drop, in particular of common grasses. I imagine what a starving goat would do, and mercilessly rip out as much grass as I can reach. After it's all removed, I add it back to the same area. These days, most of it is overgrown to the point that I lay it back down in the same spot and there's no bare soil remaining, which is great.

Here's the "before" picture of one of the berms at Basecamp.



After the first phase is done, I realize I've discovered someone's early attempt at a dry-stack retaining wall.



The final phase is to return the mulch to the same area, striving to cover all bare soil. We'll plant something here later.



That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and enjoy your day...!