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.