Summer 2018 begins. The road was clear and everything in the house came on line: electricity, water, phone, internet, TV. (I still have no trees.)
A view north over the log cabin. Ice is off our bay but there's still ice in the south arm.
Since the ice out the ducks cannot be far behin
The carport is still standing. That old ratty tarp even made it thought the winter (more or less). It's time to order a new one.
Dock is out. Not quite as easy as in the sales video but maybe I'll be better next year.
This little red pine is one of 25 that survived the winter. If you remember I planted 100 trees last spring.
Stopped raining - back to work. Change the oil and oil filter on the motor. This is easy.
Drag the boat out of the boathouse and put the motor on. This is hard.
Nothing to it, right?
I have a new tarp (thank you Amazon) so this guy is now a wood pile cover.
These are the tarp clips that Chris and I made back in 2014 after a storm came though and ripped out all of the grommets. That was back when it was suspended between trees.
I ordered seedlings again. Maybe I can attain a higher success rate than last year. This time only 10 white pine and 10 red pine.
There's still a little tweaking to do but I think this will work.
Here is one of the twenty new trees this year. I'm hoping that planting them right away will make a difference.
This PVC pipe is zip tied to the tarp clips and then tied to the fascia board.
I can now just remove the PVC and nail the tarp clip to the fascia board.
On the opposite side there is not quite enough tarp to wrap around the fascia. I'll need to think of something.
The water in the log cabin came on with no issues.
Here is a solution. I do like Chris' suggestion of just cutting an inch off of the tails of the rafters. I may still do that.
pro·cras·ti·nate
/prəˈkrastəˌnāt/
verb
Unwillingness to paint stairs in a reasonable time frame.
per·sist·ence
/pərˈsistəns/
noun
Finishing the primer coat on the stairs even though I would rather be doing almost anything else.
The guy with the bulldozer showed up today to tidy up the mess left by the loggers north of the house.
This is a start on replacing the aft boat seat.
This looks so much better. Logs and stumps are gone and it is relatively smooth. I'll need to plant something for ground cover, something that requires no maintenance.
And as a bonus I have a new burn pile. All I need now is some rain.
I finished painting the stairs - finally.
I picked up some impatiens for the barrel yesterday. That's about the extent of my gardening.
I haven't forgotten about the boat seat. Here it is, upside down, with some of the components in place.
How come you haven't posted any bass pictures, haven't you caught anything? OK, I wanted to wait until a got a decent fish but this (3.2#) will have to do.
There is an aluminum bar on the underside of the bench for the sliding seat mechanism to ride on. I need to countersink the screws so it will slide over them.
It's attached with epoxy and screws. (Note to self: wear latex gloves when I do the next one.)
Big old snapper laying her eggs in the driveway this morning.
Almost ready for glue-up. I should probably get the sliding seat thing off the boat and test it here before I do that.
The aluminum channel looks pretty good to me.
The old seat slid is completely rotted away. The metal J hooks which hold it to the bench are the only salvageable pieces.
I've started building a new one. I should have routed a 1/8" rabbit for the aluminum bar, since I didn't I need to route in mortises for the J hooks.
The bottom of the seat slide is mostly just T-nuts.
Here's the new slider. I'll put this back on the old bench until I finish up here. I'm waiting for some gel stain from Amazon.
That turtle was just feeding raccoons.
Finally time for the glue-up.
I finally got someone to replace the gate. Funny how the road moved to the right.
I'm using contact cement to glue this plastic sign to the bottom of the slide mechanism.
A little paste wax and this should slide easier on the bench.
Almost ready to actually put this into the boat. I still need to do something to the ends where it gets bolted to the boat flange.
This is the center seat. I needed to remove the bolts holding one side ...
... so I can flex the sides apart enough to get the old seat out and the new one in.
This is the new back bench. Rather than just use a washer with the bolts to hold it down I got a strip 1/8" aluminum to cover the whole edge.
This is (I hope) the end of this project.
One last look at the old bench before it goes on the burn pile.
This is Dorset where evidently today everything is on sale.
It took all my willpower not to snap up one of these.
I'm back from Denver. The BranLin wedding was quit the affair. I had a wonderful time - big thanks to Janet, Calan, Rob and Terri. (I suppose Brandon and Kaitlin had something to do with it too.)
This big ol' balsam came down while I was gone but fortunately it was mostly parallel to the road so I was able to drive around it last night.
If you look closely in the center you can see a tall metal pipe - that's a flag pole. The rope broke, so I think we have ourselves another Baxter challenge.
I guess I should do something with this swinging bench that rotted away last year.
First off remove the bottom rib with the rotted end.
If I'm going to rehabilitate this thing I'll need to duplicate this.
I have a couple of scrap 2x6s that are long enough as well as I still have the original template from back in 2011.
Burney came over this morning with his real bass boat to see if the two of us together can catch some fish.
I need to make some 1/2 lap joints,
Which means I need to use the dado blade. I still have some lingering trepidation when I use this guy.
Perfect.
This is the first glue-up.
The second part of the joint is a gusset to reinforce the 1/2 lap.
After routing out 1/4" into the 2x6 a plywood gusset is glued in.
In the original build I used 3/8" plywood but I don't have any so 1/4" will have to do.
This should be strong enough - this is mostly shear pressure along the plane of the rib. I'll do the other side next.
I've traced the outline of the template on the rib.
Now I can use the jigsaw to cut just outside of the line. (If I had actually built that bandsaw I could have used that.)
I could have used double sided tape but I decided to just nail the template to the 2x6.
I decided to use the oscillating spindle sander to get closer to the template. I actually just wanted to use another tool.
The router with a pattern bit does the finish work.
This is the (nearly) finished rib.
Picking up Dorothy here at Bemidji International Airport.
There is suppose to be a scroll like design on each end of this rib. Fortunately I still have the original template for this too.
As long as I've come this far I figured I might as well take the whole thing apart.
Using the thickness planer to clean up the slats. This is faster than using the sander AND it's a new tool.
Dorothy and I went to Itasca today and had lunch at Douglas Lodge. Here I am doing what old people do best - sitting in a rocking chair on the porch.
The headwaters. No, I did not walk across the rocks.
Dorothy flies back to Detroit. Who will keep me working on the bench now?
That's all the individual pieces primed.
Starting to paint now. These guys are going to get 2-3 coats each. That color is green.
Painting is done: primer and two coats of green. As you can well imagine I'm tired of painting slats.
Almost back together. Oddly enough there is one slat left over. Better that than short one.
Fischer's 7th annual lake party.
There, better than new. I think I'll spray on a clear polyurethane before I call it done.
These are some old cedar boards that have been lying about. Some are from the old cabinet in the cabin and the 11' 1x8s have been here for as long as I can remember. Maybe I can use these for something.
I cut the tongue and the groove off of the cedar boards. Maybe a pass through the thickness planer and then I'll see if I can glue these guys up into some useful boards.
Is today the day I stain the deck? Maybe so.
I'll let this dry and then move the stuff over. I don't think I have quit enough stain to finish - that would be a bummer.
Bummer, I ran out of stain.
Trying to figure out how to best use these 1x cedar boards (and if there are enough). I may need to buy some 2x boards rather than edge glue and face glue all these.
Chris arrives ready to fish.
I installed a NEMA 14-50 outlet in the garage.
Chris' new gear pays off - booyah.
This is probably the biggest bass I'll catch this year: 6.0 lbs (21").
We made the templates for Dorothy's glider.
The kitchen faucet in the log cabin is leaking again - as usual. I'm tired of replacing the o-rings.
Every thirty of forty years a new one seems appropriate.
This is the front door to the hill house - badly in need of replacement. Watch this space.
Back to work on Dorothy's glider. Here we are using the templates we made earlier.
Here are a couple of pieces. I've given up on finding 2x cedar boards and am now using pine boards I have in the garage. I'll stain or paint.
All the template pieces are cut, sanded to within an inch of their lives and stained with the same American Oak gel stain that I use for everything.
Here we have the right and left side of the chair put together. Slow and steady progress.
At this point it's just a chair, I need to add the base to make it a glider.
This is the old door I mentioned a few days ago.
And it's gone. No turning back now.
Some of the drywall needed to be trimmed back.
I hadn't planned on replacing the bottom sill but it needs to be done.
The only PT board I have that is big enough has a twist in it. I can set it in this sled so the planner has a flat surface to reference from.
After making the board flat on both sides it needs to have bevels cut in three places.
The bottom sill - it fits!
Skip forward a couple of hours and here is the new door. I still need to put molding around it.
And a shot from the outside. This needs brick molding around it - tomorrow. (This took us 7 hours ... we don't work very fast do we?)
The outside molding (brick molding) will need to be custom made. I was hoping I would be able to reuse the old stuff but no.
We needed to cut a 2x4 like this to retain the roughly 1" thickness of the trim and meet the door jam.
Heres's what it looks like installed. The top was a little tricky because the house siding stuck out a bit more than the rest.
Now just some caulk and white paint.
This old screen door is still serviceable but it needs some work and just looks tired. (Not unlike myself.)
A quick trip to Home Depot.
A new screen door with the screen and glass incorporated into the frame.
Chris heads back to Florida.
Because you asked:
Chris: 20 fish for 45.6 lbs
Bill: 16 fish for 41.4 lbs
Congratulations Chris.
No hummingbirds for a couple of days now. Time to bring the feeder in.
I finally finished putting the inside door trim on. Now the door is done. (Does it seem like my productivity has declined since Chris left?)
I stained this patch of deck in front of the door that was left undone when I ran out of the old stain. This is a different brand and not an exact match but very close.
A new resident for the carport: Tesla model 3 duel motor. What fun.
I finally brought Dorothy's chair down to the log cabin. (Just in time for closing up.)
Days are getting shorter. I closed up the log cabin today. We'll see in the spring if I did everything right.
Just a taste of what's to come. This will be gone in a few hours (or days).
Cold but no rain today so I brought in the boat and dock.
It's pretty but BRRR it was a cold walk to the mailbox.
"Gassing up" for
Packed up and ready to go - the end of another good summer.