The last two weeks

It's been a rainy couple of weeks since my last post, but we pushed through wet weather and end-of-year scheduling challenges to produce some good work.  We're just about done hewing all four floor joists and a corner post.  We've got two sill pieces and a wall plate under way, and we're about to finish up our second set of hewing horses.

This past Friday, Dave Carpenter '87 delivered a trailer-load of white pine lengths to replenish our log stock (see photos below) and stayed to hew with us for the afternoon.  Yesterday, I enjoyed a too-short visit (with my daughter Athalia and our friend Jenna Roncarati) to the replica of Thoreau's house at Walden Pond.  We took photos, measurements, and scribbled notes and sketches.  Athalia couldn't believe how uncomfortable Hank's bed was.

 
Kiera Parece, Michaela Byrne, Karly Cohen (all Pingree '13), and I rolling Dave Carpenter's logs onto nylon slings for transport onto our work site.

Gravity's our friend as we roll the logs down the hill.

Dave Carpenter '87 hews a sill plate.  The sill dimensions are marked on the log end.  After we flatten one face, we'll turn the log on the horses to hew successive sides.  The plates need to finish at 6" x 8".

Dave knows what he's doing with a broadaxe.  He and I first met in 2009 when he was a vital member of the crew that hewed and constructed a replica 1634 Settlement House frame in Ipswich.  (see ipswichcbc.wordpress.com)  Dave's a practiced hand (and eye) at hewing to the line.  Please note (admire!) our custom-built hewing horse supporting the log.

A seldom-photographed view of the rear gable end of Thoreau's house.  I wanted to get details of the woodshed and chimney construction (more info to follow in later post.)  That's Athalia on the left, and the Thoreau statue in the right background.

Photographer Athalia captures Jenna's spectral reflection in the window.  Note that Thoreau's cabin sits directly on the ground.  On our Pingree house, we'll need to decide how to balance historical accuracy with building for longevity.  We're considering a dry-stacked fieldstone foundation, so the sills aren't rotting away on the grade.  There's a reason that, eighty years after Thoreau built his house, no one in Concord even knew where it had stood...  (It wasn't until after World War II that amateur archaeologist Roland Wells Robbins excavated and discovered the actual location.)

There I was, minding my own business, when Hank challenged me to an arm-wrestling smackdown.  As I was no match for his transcendental powers, he made short work of me...