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

Stephen B. Thomas wrote:...
Sorry, y'all. Using baby white pine and Douglas Fir for these. All the stuff I've felled for this project is found on the acre I'm stewarding.

Okay, all from the acre you're stewarding...  If you plant some Willows now, and feed them your 'willow candy', in a few years you'll have the new willow branches you need to replace the Pine/Fir when you repair your roof.

BEL #845

Significant progress to report today on the stewardship acre.

To sum it up: the roof frame is attached! Now I'll work on the door.

When I visited the site yesterday, I disconnected the tarp from the frame, and then re-strung everything. I went from corner-to-corner for both the tarp and the canvas.

I realized the canvas didn't have any grommets, so instead I grabbed a rock...



...and tied it into a bundle at each corner, like this:



I'll eventually do the rest of the grommets on the tarp, tying them to rock bundles on the opposite edge. For now, the roof cover looks like this from the underside:



The frame requires that the roundwood roof frame is somehow connected securely to the dimensional lumber building frame. So I started by chiseling-in deep notches on the underside of each of the roundwood supports that would attach to the building.



A drawknife was used to smooth the roundwood to a flat surface, allowing maximum purchase and a flush fit between the roof frame and the building frame.



At this point I most definitely want to send thanks and kudos to fellow Boot, Erik, who joined me up at the stewardship acre today. I also appreciate Paul allowing Boots to join me for some time each week to help with tasks on the stewardship acre.

Here's Erik draw-knifing one of the roundwood roof supports.



If Erik wasn't here with me, then the next photo wouldn't have been possible. Between me standing on the building frame, and Erik standing on the ladder, we both managed to lift and maneuver the roof frame into place and secure it. The construction screws we used helped pull the pieces together and ensure a snug fit.





In general, this is a major step forward in terms of building-construction progress. It's been a long day, but this was a fitting end that put me in good spirits and helped me feel accomplished.

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

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:Okay, all from the acre you're stewarding...  If you plant some Willows now, and feed them your 'willow candy', in a few years you'll have the new willow branches you need to replace the Pine/Fir when you repair your roof.

There are a few poplars available that I could move up to the acre without much of a problem. Once they go dormant, I'll dig a couple of the "suckers" out from around a parent poplar down at Basecamp, and move them over to the plot with the hopes they'll be my first Poop Beasts. We'll see.

This current roof is a temporary solution. Once we have the sawmill up and running again, I'll be able to fell a few trees and turn them into shakes for a legit roof. I'll hang on to this tarp-and-canvas guy for a while, but I hope it's not so long that I end up having to repair or replace some of these bowed pieces. It would be nice to do a similar roof on a smaller structure, maybe one I could sleep under in the hot summer months. Re-using the materials from this current roof would be ideal. This is a bit further down the road, so to speak. So there's time to work it out (and to have the sawmill at 100%).

What's required to get the sawmill up and running?

Allen Jackson wrote:What's required to get the sawmill up and running?

It's been behaving poorly after making a few cuts into the same log. Specifically, it begins to "bend" or cut a curve into the log, instead of cutting into a straight line, maybe after a half dozen panels are cut, and the curving begins half-way down the log (about the 5ft mark on a 10ft long log). Over the past year and a half, we've moved the sawmill frame to a permanent location on solid supports, we've leveled everything, we've done component replacements, we've lubricated and/or replaced all the necessary bearings... No luck just yet. We're still attempting to pinpoint the exact cause of the problem.