!! In the quiet hours of the bootcamp grind, I found myself: Esteban's Bootcamp Experience

After Seth and I pulled the Cooper Cabin gate apart, we quickly realized this was less of a “small repair” and more of a “the patient is technically still alive but all the bones are broken” kind of situation.

For context, we harvested the trees just a few days before building and installing the gate frame, so we were very much working with fresh green material right out of the woods.

Nearly every mortise and tenon joint had checked, and when we opened it up, the worst of it was right where the loads and movement all concentrated at the joints. Some of those cracks honestly looked like the wood had spent the winter working through personal issues.

After reading through everyone’s comments here, the picture is getting clearer. It’s not really one single culprit — it’s wood doing what wood does, just under less-than-forgiving conditions. Rapid drying from freshly felled material, constant weather exposure, and a gate that’s always under load all stacked together. The result is basically what happens when a material that wants to move is locked into a structure that doesn’t.

Mike’s point about roundwood behavior really resonates here. If you use green wood, it’s going to check as it dries. If you use dry wood, it already checked somewhere else and you’re just inheriting the story it brings with it. Either way, movement is part of the deal — the question is whether the design can accommodate it or not.

Coydon’s explanation about dry tenons in green mortises also feels like a key lesson. Letting the mortise shrink onto a stable tenon instead of both members changing size at the same time would likely have reduced a lot of that stress. The idea of slowing drying with bark or thoughtful harvesting timing is also something I hadn’t seriously considered before, but it makes sense in hindsight.

I also think Mike is right that some of the members were probably a bit undersized for the job. Once you combine load, movement, and early-stage drying, light sections don’t have much margin before things start expressing themselves as cracks.

Stepping back, the main takeaway for me is pretty simple: this wasn’t a single failure point, it was a system where very fresh greenwood movement outpaced the design’s ability to accommodate it. Roundwood really does feel more “alive” than dimensional lumber — which is part of the appeal, but also means it doesn’t quietly tolerate being ignored.

That said, this rebuild ended up being one of the better teachers we could’ve had. Every log has its own behavior, and sometimes the only way to learn it is to come back later and see what it decided to do on its own.

And Timothy — if you ever decide to replace your dimensional lumber gate with a natural roundwood one, I’d absolutely encourage it. Worst case, a few seasons later you get to stand around with friends having very serious conversations about cracks in wood like they’re meaningful clues instead of just… wood doing wood things.

B.E.L. Post # 159

After the morning meeting, Seth and I headed to the classroom and got right into the Cooper Gate repair/rebuild. We ended up basically rebuilding the entire gate frame, minus one piece. This time around we upsized everything and used larger diameter stock — roughly 4".

Once the frame was back together, we headed out to the Abbey for installation and got it set in place just before lunch. The only thing left at that point was to install the lintel piece.

After lunch, we shifted gears and headed out back to the laboratory area, down at the sawmill site. We felled another tree and bucked it into 8' lengths for milling, but the sawmill started giving us trouble again.

Seth took a closer look at the motor belt and found it had torn. We headed back to the shop, grabbed a replacement belt and a socket set, and got it swapped out. After that we ran the mill again, but we were still running into issues, so we decided to pause on that rather than force it.

We wrapped up the day by heading back to the Abbey and finishing the install of the lintel piece we had left earlier. With that in place, we called it for the day.

That sawmill sure can be fiddly sometimes.  Good luck figuring it out!

Sorry to harp on this but I think the notch cuts bypassed one another on that big tree.  It's hard to be sure but looking at the pic, I highly suspect the upper cut of pacman's mouth ended at the red line and the lower cut of pacman's mouth ended at the orange line.  You really want these to end at the same spot so pacman's mouth can close smoothly.  

B.E.L. Post # 160

After the morning meeting we split into two crews for the day. My crew consisted of Lorenzo, Michelle, Shawn, and Zven, and we spent the first half of the day working around the Laboratory area. Since I was the point person for our crew, I decided to divide everyone into pairs so we could tackle multiple projects at once and keep things moving efficiently.

I paired Shawn and Zven together to buck, split, and stack a roughly 40’ fallen tree near the tipi site. Since Melissa can’t spend lengthy periods of time in direct sunlight, I had her working in and around the classroom/shop area where she could stay out of the heat while still keeping productive. She spent time collecting inventory of the pallivions, sharpening chainsaws, relocating the picnic benches from in front of the classroom bay doors to a more suitable location, along with finding and tackling other miscellaneous tasks around the area. Meanwhile, Michelle harvested junkpoles that will eventually be used as pickets for the tipi gate, getting them staged and ready for either Seth or myself to install later on. During that time Lorenzo and I continued work on the Cooper Cabin gate, installing the pickets and officially completing the project. It felt good seeing that gate finally come together after all the rebuilding and repairs we’ve been doing lately.

After lunch our crew remained at Basecamp while Seth’s crew headed to the Abbey. I had Lorenzo and Shawn work on chop-and-drop around the berm directly across from the library, while I worked the horseradish berm near the street side. While doing that, I also gathered up mulch material and built ring configurations around the baby trees near the turtle lot to help retain moisture and suppress weeds.

Toward the end of the Boot day I headed up to Raspberry Rock to spread some “candy” around the young raspberry plants that Samantha kindly brought us. While I was up there I also gathered the water jugs and hauled them back down with me. We wrapped up the day with a group photo, which I’m definitely looking forward to seeing once it gets posted. Overall it was one of those days where everybody stayed productive, tasks kept flowing smoothly, and a lot got accomplished across Basecamp.

Seeing shawn buck that log on the ground- there should be a timberjack with all of the logging tools. My second favorite tool for jobs like that (after some sort of saw)...