Cabin walls are up, now back to the roof

It has been a labor of love and the weather has been good! Glad to have gotten the logs on the wall before the snow came and made things more complicated. Now it is back to the roof and placing the trusses and gable end on the walls.

The roof trusses were built this spring on the cabin floor, removed and then stacked off to the side out of the way while the cabin walls were being cut. Now I will take the bottom chords of each truss to the top of the wall where it can be notched and fitted.

Since the bottom chords have been flatted I needed to come up with a way to raise them and came up with this set up. I had the yard arms left from when I raised the ridge log in truss building so I fastened them to my scaffolding and used my chain fall to do the work.

With a little bit of tweaking it did the job nicely.

Because the back gable end will be made of logs the back truss needs to be set in from the cabin log wall. The notch to fit the bottom chord to the wall was new for me but I think it will do the job.

The fit is good and now I can notch and groove the first gable end log and see how it matches up with the bottom chord truss log. I will then remove both logs from the wall. The truss will be assembled and braced up on the ground. The first gable end log will be put in place next to the bottom chord. Then the rest of the gable end logs can be placed, scribed and cut while at ground level.

Well at least that's the plan.

End of my rope...

At this point the logs are up over my head and work must be done from ladders and scaffolding. Very time consuming and a real pain! Work goes on but slower and slower the higher I go.

As the walls go up the 10 foot ramp incline becomes steeper and steeper. The logs become heaver and heaver. No chance now of being able to pull the 200 - 300 pound logs up without the help of my block and tackle.

This brought up another problem solving/learning opportunity. How to get more pulling distance out of my block and tackle. Rigged with 100 feet of rope I had only a 25 foot pull. Two anchor points would do the trick but there would need to be a way to tie off the par buckled rope and hold the log midway on the ramp while re-rigging the block and tackle for a second pull.

A short piece of chain was used to anchor the rope par buckle which is under the considerable load of the log being pulled up the ramp. Once the block and tackle is loosened the chain takes the load and then the block can be lengthened and re-hooked to the remote anchor in the ground away from the cabin for the second and final pull bringing the log to the top of the cabin wall. Tricky but easy!