Skipping around on projects

While looking for a source of replacement logs for the cabin restoration project I had some time on my hands. Not wanting to waste it I went back to work on Cabin Bridge #6. My original plan was to use railroad ties for abutments for this bridge. With the bridge design change in width from 8 to 10 feet the railroad ties would be to short. You can see them piled up at the top of the picture. The solution would be four 2 foot diameter piers. How hard could that be?

Well considering that the site is off the roadway and in the woods there were plenty of "learning opportunities".

Lets reflect on them in reverse. How will we get 3 cubic yards of concrete into the 2 foot diameter fiber form tubes? Where is that darn Easy Button when you need it!

 How will one person, working alone support, locate and level the correct length of form tube in each of the pier holes?  This was tricky but a close study of the picture shows my helpers, vertical Z axis board, pivoting X and Y 2x2 attached to form and batter board strings above. With the addition of two staked parallel side boards and some screws into the tube the deed was done!

How deep below grade would the piers need to be (4 foot) and how would they be dug? That was easy!

The end results were 4 - 24 inch diameter piers from 5' to 7' long centered to support my 32' long, 10' wide, 12,000 pound Town Lattice Cabin Bridge #6.

Puzzler - What is the formula for calculating the volume of these tubes? How many cubic feet in one cubic yard?

Tech Vocab - Fiber Form, Batter Boards, Plumb Bob, Transit, X, Y, Z axis

All good projects must come to an end...

Well it has been an interesting past few months learning and working on the South Wayne Community Bridge Project. Many thanks to all the good people that helped make this bridge a reality. It was a pleasure meeting and working with you (I would do it again in a minute).

A special thanks goes out to my student helper, Alex Gertsch and the roofing guys from VS Squared! They really put the "frosting on the cake" as they say with a super cedar shingle roof.

So if you are in the area stop in and have a look and enjoy a few moments of peace looking at this little gem!

Can tell you that material costs for this 32' Town Lattice bridge (not including abutments) ran between $10K and $11K if you are thinking of building one remember, "Crossing a bridge in your future will be a bit easier after you have built one or two."

So now it is on to some more "serious fun" with the 150 year old cabin project.

We have dis-assembled the original cabin and re-assembled it up side down as far as we could.

Now it is time for a trip to the "log store"! The plan is to replace the bottom 6 logs on the back wall of the cabin. Three of the back logs will be re-cut and used as replacements for logs on the rest of the cabin that have rotted. This will keep the aged look of the cabin.

I'll be posting pictures when we start cutting and fitting the mitered dovetail joints in a few weeks.

Cedar shingles looking good!

It is slow going but seeing the results makes the effort worth while.

This is about 6 hours of work by three people. Working with the camber and getting started took some time and the other side should move along a bit faster. Alex got to make an "in school fieldtrip" and work part of the day. He got some good firsthand experience and I am sure he will be able to take the lead and see that the job gets finished.

Could not resist the photo op of the sun shining in through the spaces in the roof boards. Something that will not be seen when the roof is complete. 

I will keep you posted as the bridge roof and approaches are finished.

In the mean time it is off to that 150 year old cabin I mentioned. Here is a picture of what we have to work with.

Not much to look at now but will be a real gem and piece of local history when we get done with it. Mitered dovetail joints are used on the corners and several of the bottom logs will need to be replaced. To get the re-building/repair started I have decided to invert the cabin! So the top logs will be placed on the work site area (top side down) and then continue this with each round of logs. After all the repairs and replacements have been made the cabin will be re-re-assembled on a permanent floor deck.
Should make for some new learning and more serious fun! If anyone out there has any experience with this sort of thing I would appreciate hearing from you.

Puzzler - mitered dovetail notch
Tech Vocab - Froe 

That was easy...

Henry Seffrood and his crew made short work of getting the roof boards on the bridge today. Their SkyTrack platform made working on the roof look easy.

Puzzler - So what's next?s Here's an 8 square hint.

Tech Vocab - Shingles, Shakes, To the Weather, Coarse, Square, Bundle