22 August 2011

Spent a good part of the morning taking down, then removing the root ball, for a really nice 8″ maple that was growing near the northeast corner of the shed… a tree that I really wanted to keep.  Perry finally convinced me that ½″ clearance between the roof overhang and the tree really wasn’t enough, especially during a nor’easter.  Used the five-fold block and tackle that Zook donated to the cause to pull the tree over, roots and all, after I first ruined my just-sharpened Jonsered chain by using it to cut a few more Leicester nuggets that were lurking, sight unseen, next to the main taproot that I was really trying to sever.  Perry spent the morning double- and triple- checking the roof rafter layout measurements.  Just before lunch we erected a second level onto the north end scaffolding, which put our heads about 16 feet above the ground… perfect for working on the roof and associated rafters. We then put up scaffolding wall brackets (borrowed from Bob Hillman, Perry’s has-everything neighbor) at that same height along the east wall.  Looking at our accomplishment, Perry said, “You know, Bob has a bunch more of those wall brackets, and if we put them up on the south and west walls, we’d end up with a super-highway all the way around the shed at just the right height.”  So, during a lunch eaten in his truck, we went on another raid to Bob’s construction supply depot and took away the scaffolding materials needed for said highway.  By mid-afternoon we could walk all the way around the shed at roof rafter height.  Perry then started cutting the ridge rafter and the king common rafters, then showed me how two people can easily erect a ridge rafter in the right location and without benefit of a sky crane.  Pretty slick!  Unfortunately, when we went to install the two king common end rafters, they seemed to be ⅜″ too short.  Perry double checked his calculations… but they were correct.  Then he measured the distance between the north and south end walls.  Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised that they were ⅜″ further apart after hanging the wall brackets on the south wall and then walking around on the scaffolding for awhile.  Our conundrum at that point was that we had used the only four wall jacks the Bob Hillman owns to straighten the east and west walls… and didn’t want to move those jacks for fear that those two long walls would then warp.  I suggested we use my logging chain and ½ ton come-along to pull the two end walls back together.  Worked like a charm!  Like magic, all of the king common rafters then fit together with the ridge rafter just like they were supposed to.  Just as we were congratulating ourselves, the sky turned suddenly black (completely unforecast!), and we just had time to get (almost) everything under cover before the deluge hit.  Then I remembered that the camera was still on the tripod up in the tree stand.  Running pell-mell down through the woods, I scrambled up the ladder… only to discover that the hemlock’s branches were affording the camera perfect protection from the storm.