Baking again

This is actually from a couple weeks ago, I misplaced the photos somehow. But, we're baking outside again, and things certainly look good.

All of this was cooked in the earthen oven with wood fire. Bread, muffins, pineapple cake and lasagna.

Bug work: Call Melissa!

Melissa did a bunch of research and decided that we wanted to do an anti-bug treatment on our beams before we started putting a varnish on them, so she went with 'borrada D', which is somewhat not as toxic as some; it's borate based, but one doesn't want anything in extremes, so of course Melissa wanted to take the precautions:

She's actually using an old pump-pressure sprayer that I salvaged from a construction lot guy who was going out of business. hand powered AND free. love it.

Working through some of the mistakes:

So, when the concrete guy was here pouring the fast-drying stuff, I thought I had the spots marked out for where to put the bolts... I intended the thing to be bolted on alternate sides of the posts, up and down the frame. Well, that didn't work out when we finally got the posts in a line.


So, we had to work with some immovable objects... and just deal with where the posts ended up. Here you can see what's probably the worse one:





Since it had to be in the corner like that, we were able to use the 'oney' bracket and get it bolted in...

Same thing on this one, with the added bonus of the post not exactly being long enough to reach the ground (I love that joke) but we mixed up some concrete adhesive with some rough sand, and built the footing up to the post... and added an extra long bracket this time.

Deck Work:

We re-did the deck sealer this week... that's a process. First I cleaned it twice with a brush and 'simple green' then did a oxcilic acid bleach wash, then finally got to painting on the sealer. Then we can't walk on it for two days. It looks better, but I think there was a bunch of tree crud falling down when it was wet, so I'm afraid it's going to be a bit textured this year.

More peg work:

Using the cool japanese pull saw, I got down to cutting off the pegs, so they're flush with the beam and posts.

Some folk say leave them sticking out, but that's just something I'll end up bonking my head on later.

Pounding in the Pegs!

I soaked the pegs in Linseed oil for a while, and then got out my *really big* home made hammer, cranked down on the joint with a come-along, and pounded in the madrone pegs.





Talk about old-timey fun!

Bolted to the Ground

I don't know why I look so goofy in this picture, but I'm certainly happy to have the posts in place, and now bolted to the concrete footings. I don't think they're going anywhere.

Making Pegs

so, starting with the piece of firewood, then working down to a round peg with the drawknife (there was an earlier post on this) I made a bunch of pegs. Well, now that I'm about to use them, I wanted to make sure I got them to be the right size. So, first, a little more time in the vise, shaving them slightly:








and then checking them with a 1 and 1/8th inch hole cut in a scrap piece. I figure if I can easily slip on the 1&1/8th, it'll be just about right to force into a 1 inch drilled hole.

starting to get them to stand up...

As the day went on, we started getting past the 45 degree mark, and things started to seem to 'fall into place' - no pun intended. We were still working hard, but we were able to take breaks for photos of people under the frame:


There is no way we could have done this without Art. He continues to be a huge help on really important days.





We finally got it vertical, and after playing around with the posts and getting things lined up, we were feeling pretty good:







and then we went to work putting in the temporary bracing by screwing the ends into the posts and the bottoms into driven stakes. Charlie the supervisor dog did a good job too.

Holy Cow- big big day. Got the 'north bent' up

First of all, once again Melissa's dad Art came up to be a huge part of our success on getting the first third of the timber frame standing up.

First, we made a tripod to hold a pulley that would have a cable on it attached to the truck:

The tripod stood in the living room and bedroom of the foundation, and the truck went downhill from the front door...

As we hooked everything together, we also jacked it up on supports, inch by inch, moving from post to post, up and down the whole beam.


After a while, we were scrambling to find stuff that was tall enough to hold the weight of the beam while we were working on another section. This is a picture of a milk crate on top of a sawhorse. it got a lot weirder than that as the day went on.





Slowly, the beam went up, increasing the angle of the posts.. we built different sorts of 'blocks' to hold the bottom the posts in place, so they wouldn't slide off the concrete footings. they all broke once, and then we (Melissa) rebuilt them, and they worked.





In the photo below, you can see the ropes that went to the cable attached to the truck (over the tripod)... those didn't actually work all that well. it was mostly the farm jack that did the work.

Putting it together:

While this photo of me working on the littlest one makes it look not-too-hard, believe me, it's hard.



it took me all day to get these three posts, with their knee braces, into the beam. After this, I'll have to put the posts down on the ground, and work horizontally, as the posts are getting too big for me to pick up and move into position by hand.

Starting moving stuff into position

This wasn't as hard as it looks, but it wasn't easy. We had to move the beams and posts from where we were working on them inside the foundation, to up on the ground where we'll put them together before standing them up.

Luckily, I'm learning a lot about moving heavy stuff easily. In the picture below, Melissa is standing in the same spot as the above photo, so it gives you an idea of how we had to move these things (that are too heavy for me to lift one end off the ground)

Kuk Sool space floored



One side project I've been doing slowly is to create a platform where Melissa and I can practice martial arts. I put this down in the valley to the north of our house spot (it's about a 200 yard walk down to it from the bathroom).

On top of the redwood beams, I put a lot of different (scrounged) 2x4s, then two layers of half inch plywood. it ended up being 20x20. Now I'm going to start looking for some sort of padding... carpet, or astroturf or something. Someday I'll build a fancy roof for the thing.

Hey!

a while back we were given a batch of hay bales, and since they're always useful, of course I wanted them... and I put them under a blue tarp to try and protect them over the winter. Well, that didn't work.




Rotten hay is still great for what we probably would have used it for anyway -garden mulch-- but it's funny that my hillbilly hayloft thing stores the hay so much better than a store bought tarp. (well, I got the tarp free too)

Harvest (?) Day: Amaranth





Last summer we tried to grow a batch of amaranth (you can see the purple stuff behind Melissa in this photo from last July)


here in the garden, and also up closer to the house... the deer got the stuff closer to the house. By the time we picked it, we only had about a dozen flower heads, which we hung up to dry under the yurt and forgot about.

This week, we got them down, bashed them up in a bucket, and started the 'winnowing' process. Here's my attempts at getting the little sticks and stuff out of the bucket.


Melissa then did some of the classic 'winnowing', using the wind, she'd drop the seeds into the bucket below, and the chaf (seed shells) would blow away in the wind. You can't see it in this picture, but it's working.






Unfortunately, because of having only 12 flowers (and maybe because the mice got some of it over the winter) we basically got one meal's worth.


Still, a fun experiment, and makes me want to grow a big crop soon.