Please enjoy the following music as I did these past few weeks:
Twilight Singers - Bonnie Brae
This project has had more interruptions than AOL dial-up porn. I've been regularly having to reset my brain and reference my notes on almost every aspect. Thankfully, no major errors have occurred. The weather was mostly forgiving. It's either a week of hot and dry or a week of cold and rainy. That makes it a little more easier to schedule.
Assembly is fun when the joinery is perfectly balanced. Too snug of a fit is, at best, frustrating and exhausting, at worst, can rupture the housing. Thankfully, I nailed it this time. Who knows about next time.
First assembly took 12 minutes. Second assembly took... all fucking afternoon. Something was off with the tenon length and mortise depth and I couldn't figure out where. It's also not easy to slide them in and out by yourself in the baking sun. After three lemon spindrifts, and a few dozen four letter explicatives I persevered.
The trunnels, or pegs if you please, are hand rived out of black locust (robinia pseudoacacia). I'm very pleased with the tightness of this joinery.
Raising the assemblies wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. We used the excavator to lift them. What's not shown is the 3/4" stainless threaded rods I anchored into the plinths. They protrude out of the concrete 6." This means we had to lift the assembly higher than 6" above the concrete to let the sill slide down onto the rods. The excavator barely gave us an eighth of an inch clearance above that.
I know, none of that made sense and pictures or video footage would've been preferable. Sorry. Better luck next time. Maybe I'll remember a camera and tripod.
There were some unresolved design issues with the retaining rock wall and where the access gates and fencing would be. The masons would be onsite the days I wasn't there so I had to draft a quick plan and leave it for them. Remarkably, they had no questions in English, Spanish, or Spanglish. They nailed it exactly as I drew.
Off-site and back in the grotto I had to fabricate the scissor trusses. This was a lot of fun. I drew my plans on a piece of MDF (gross) and then transferred all the lines for the joinery.
To tighten up the joinery I ran my saw through all the kerfs to get better alignment and fit for all the shoulders.
What I haven't talked about yet is the carving on the trusses. Lychgates exist only in relation to churches and cemeteries. There are always carvings or religious motifs involved in them. From the onset of this project I knew I was going to carve phrases into the trusses but was unsure exactly what.
I settled on a phrase from the book "Rules For A Knight" written by Ethan Hawke. Yes, that Ethan Hawke. It goes like this:
Every knight holds human equality as an unwavering truth-
A knight is never present when men or women are degraded or-
Compromised in any way because if a knight were present-
Those committing the hurtful acts or words would be made to stop |
I carved this in a lettering style called Half-Uncial which is completely English/Celtic/Gaelic/Broadly-British through and through. Architecturally appropriate, more or less. It's also one of my favorites.
It just kind of settles in there nicely I think. I want to build things that look like they've been there a minute. I want my structures to have a very real balance between its environment and its users. I want them to have a mature presence that is not distressed but seasoned. Almost as if you're too many generations removed from knowing the builders. Maybe I'll achieve this one day.
Next up is installing the cedar shakes on the roof. After that the gates, fence, and lattice. Speaking of lattice, 1 of the 2.75 dedicated readers of these dispatches will remember the lattice railing I did on the north end of the property last winter. It's aging very beautifully and receiving the Chinese wisteria (wisteria sinsensis) well.
MTF.
