Monday, September 6, 2010

Cabin Building - Day 14 & 15

Spent two days attempting to drill out 8" deep holes in the concrete piers and 2" x 6" holes in the beam to set the leveling screw jacks and get the sill beam installed for the east wall.

Pardon the jumpy video, my poor narration, and utter lack of English language skills! It was raining, I was freezing and Ripley kept trying to play (i.e. knock mommy over and eat the camera).

Concrete sucks to drill through and it takes forever!!  I recommend anyone attempting a similar foundation should set your bolts into the concrete while it's curing... soooo much easier!  Boring large holes in beams also sucks when you're doing it with a spade bit and a chisel... if you can find and afford one, a large ship's auger would have been much easier.

A tip with the Ellis jacks: put the bored-out beam on top of the assembled jacks once they're attached to the pier and then wind up and attach the top plates to the beam from the underside. That beam is friggin' heavy and kept wanting to tip over sideways, which made it nearly impossible to thread the screw into the plate when it was already attached to the beam.  We'll do better on the second beam.

But at least we have our first sill beam completed and attached to the piers... and it's LEVEL!!


Linda Foley said...

Double thumbs up!

Anonymous said...

I've found that various sized auger bits work very well for boring holes. Auger bits and T-handles or bit and braces only cost a few bucks at antique stores. Maybe have someone search some shops and sent them up to you. .

Here are a couple of T-handle auger bits, I think I paid $15 each for them.

If you have a lot of large holes or mortises to hog out, a boring machine is the way to go.

Marybeth said...

Love seeing your progress. I was just wondering where's your tent? Do you think you'll be able to stay in the cabin this winter?

Plickety Cat said...

Jon, looked everywhere up here for antique bit & brace and larger augers... couldn't find any :( I could have gotten some shipped up that I found online, new and used, but lordy the $$$ on postage! I've got my folks in TX keeping an eye out for used proper woodworking tools since we'll absolutely need them for the big house, but this cabin only had 8 big mortises to deal with (still a PITA though!)

Marybeth - the tent is about a 1/4 mile up the trail closer to the edge of our property. We considered moving it down next to the cabin, but thought it would be nice to actually get away from the construction site at the end of the day... plus with all the rain and mud that could have been disastrous to try moving anyway! We might get the cabin frame up before the snow flies... maybe even weathered in enough to stay in; otherwise we'll probably move the tent down (or into) the cabin for winter since our current site is less than ideal.

Quinton said...

I'm having a hard time understanding why you would choose to put the beams on jacks. It seems like it would be much easier and cheaper to just jack-up and shim if your pads move. You have a very stable support system there but it looks more than a little unstable in a heavy wind setting on those jacks.

Gungnir said...

Well Quinton, we could jack and shim, however it takes a lot longer and if one pad rises we'd need to shim the other 7.

As far as wind stability, we haven't put on the cross cabling yet (or the floor), once that's on the thing will be like rock.

Sam.... said...

You guys are a never ending source of entertainment, I must say. Better than the "reality" shows currently in vogue on TV. As always, I continue to admire you two and hope the weather starts to cooperate more than it has so far!