gaining more points in building with stone; now cutting them to fit
I am proud of myself--today it was 30 C in the shade, yet I managed to go out and accomplish stuff. lord_kjar and I managed to move the next 6 large rocks into place ready to concrete into the earth cellar walls.
In the process it was necessary to bring up another pallet of them from the field (these are the large mostly rectangular stones that we bought (cheap!) in the spring). To do this we first needed to move the one really long one, which had been laying across the top of the stones that pallet, out of the way. So we did what we always do, wrapped a chain around it, hooked the chain to the tree trunk attached to the forks of the tractor, lifted it up, and carried it over to its new resting place. After he put it back down and we unhooked the chain we discovered that this time, in the process, one of the links on the chain nearly broke. All of the rest are still nice regular ovals--that one was stretched to round, and the metal had a crack 3/4 of the way through it. We think that probably one of the links had gotten stuck, so that when he lifted the stone instead of the link rotating so that the pressure was on the skinny part of the oval it was instead along the long side, and the weight was too much for it that way.
I am very glad it was only a partial failure, since the stone is long enough that it may well have broken if it had dropped, even from the low height of the tractor forks. (not that anyone would have been hurt in the process, since he was inside of the tractor, and I walked many meters away (into the shade!) before he lifted it.)
We moved half of the stones into place, then took a lunch break. After lunch I went down to the red current bushes (which are near where we fetched the pallet of stones from, so I had noticed that they were ripe) and picked a 1/4 of a yogurt bucket worth of berries. Then we walked down to the lower field to check the progress of the black currents. One or two of those berries are getting close to ripe, so I need to check them again tomorrow evening, or perhaps Monday. Then we did the second half of the stones. The last one we needed to cut--none of the stones on the pallet were quite short enough to put into the remaining spot in the wall. It turns out to be a good thing that we needed to cut it, since the spot in which it needed to sit had odd angles at each end, so a rectangle stone wouldn't have been the best fit, and we would have had to fill in a triangular shaped gap with small stones when we did the concrete.
Instead we measured the angle and length we wanted, he got out the concrete drill and we drilled in a line of holes, then we put pointed metal sticks into the holes and hit them each in turn with a sledge hammer till the rock split. The result was a perfect fit into where we wanted it, and now we have a smaller triangle shaped stone that will, no doubt, be needed somewhere else. (yah, I know, photos would make this so much easier to explain--why do I never think of that while I am standing there in front of the stone?)
After dinner we started scraping paint from the next section of the east wall of the house so that the painting project could continue, but we only managed to do the part we could reach from the ground before the gnats and horseflies drove us back into the house. (where did that lovely breeze we had had earlier in the day disappear to? If it had still been there we could have gotten so much more accomplished, without any tiny creatures attempting to fly up my nose or into my eyes.
So instead we went to the basement (wonderfully cool basement!), where he attached a loop to the sheath of his new sword so that he can hang it from his belt, and I started using the power planing tool to clean up some boards from an old pallet so that I can later glue them together to make a round shield for that Viking Lajv in August. I manged to clean up six of the eight boards that survived the pallet disassemble process before my hands were tingling too much from the effort of holding/pushing the boards across the planer, so I had to take a break.
Then we came up stairs and sat down to the computer, where I discovered that the organizer of the Lajv has created a FB group for those players who are in the household of my storman character, and she has found someone to play my daughter. So we chatted on skype with linda_linsefors about the event and via FB chat with the daughter. I did some writing in the GoogleDoc that summarizes our family history and created a spreadsheet, too, so that we could work out timelines and everyone's ages. These files have been shared with everyone in the FB group, but most of them are going to Visby, so I don't expect most of them to be able to look at it till they get back, so after this burst of energy with pre-event planning and character development I can go back to nice, easy, sewing (I haven't touched my beard in days, need to get back to sewing on that, too!) and wood working projects.
Now it is really much too late, so I will do my yoga and get to bed, and see if I manage to wake up early enough and with enough energy for both days this weekend to be productive. (I may not be working this summer, but he is, so I still feel the difference between week ends and week days--he isn't available to drive the tractor during week days.)
Oh--I nearly forgot to mention: his finger has healed enough that he was able to play violin today. First time since getting it caught between rocks just over a week ago.
In the process it was necessary to bring up another pallet of them from the field (these are the large mostly rectangular stones that we bought (cheap!) in the spring). To do this we first needed to move the one really long one, which had been laying across the top of the stones that pallet, out of the way. So we did what we always do, wrapped a chain around it, hooked the chain to the tree trunk attached to the forks of the tractor, lifted it up, and carried it over to its new resting place. After he put it back down and we unhooked the chain we discovered that this time, in the process, one of the links on the chain nearly broke. All of the rest are still nice regular ovals--that one was stretched to round, and the metal had a crack 3/4 of the way through it. We think that probably one of the links had gotten stuck, so that when he lifted the stone instead of the link rotating so that the pressure was on the skinny part of the oval it was instead along the long side, and the weight was too much for it that way.
I am very glad it was only a partial failure, since the stone is long enough that it may well have broken if it had dropped, even from the low height of the tractor forks. (not that anyone would have been hurt in the process, since he was inside of the tractor, and I walked many meters away (into the shade!) before he lifted it.)
We moved half of the stones into place, then took a lunch break. After lunch I went down to the red current bushes (which are near where we fetched the pallet of stones from, so I had noticed that they were ripe) and picked a 1/4 of a yogurt bucket worth of berries. Then we walked down to the lower field to check the progress of the black currents. One or two of those berries are getting close to ripe, so I need to check them again tomorrow evening, or perhaps Monday. Then we did the second half of the stones. The last one we needed to cut--none of the stones on the pallet were quite short enough to put into the remaining spot in the wall. It turns out to be a good thing that we needed to cut it, since the spot in which it needed to sit had odd angles at each end, so a rectangle stone wouldn't have been the best fit, and we would have had to fill in a triangular shaped gap with small stones when we did the concrete.
Instead we measured the angle and length we wanted, he got out the concrete drill and we drilled in a line of holes, then we put pointed metal sticks into the holes and hit them each in turn with a sledge hammer till the rock split. The result was a perfect fit into where we wanted it, and now we have a smaller triangle shaped stone that will, no doubt, be needed somewhere else. (yah, I know, photos would make this so much easier to explain--why do I never think of that while I am standing there in front of the stone?)
After dinner we started scraping paint from the next section of the east wall of the house so that the painting project could continue, but we only managed to do the part we could reach from the ground before the gnats and horseflies drove us back into the house. (where did that lovely breeze we had had earlier in the day disappear to? If it had still been there we could have gotten so much more accomplished, without any tiny creatures attempting to fly up my nose or into my eyes.
So instead we went to the basement (wonderfully cool basement!), where he attached a loop to the sheath of his new sword so that he can hang it from his belt, and I started using the power planing tool to clean up some boards from an old pallet so that I can later glue them together to make a round shield for that Viking Lajv in August. I manged to clean up six of the eight boards that survived the pallet disassemble process before my hands were tingling too much from the effort of holding/pushing the boards across the planer, so I had to take a break.
Then we came up stairs and sat down to the computer, where I discovered that the organizer of the Lajv has created a FB group for those players who are in the household of my storman character, and she has found someone to play my daughter. So we chatted on skype with linda_linsefors about the event and via FB chat with the daughter. I did some writing in the GoogleDoc that summarizes our family history and created a spreadsheet, too, so that we could work out timelines and everyone's ages. These files have been shared with everyone in the FB group, but most of them are going to Visby, so I don't expect most of them to be able to look at it till they get back, so after this burst of energy with pre-event planning and character development I can go back to nice, easy, sewing (I haven't touched my beard in days, need to get back to sewing on that, too!) and wood working projects.
Now it is really much too late, so I will do my yoga and get to bed, and see if I manage to wake up early enough and with enough energy for both days this weekend to be productive. (I may not be working this summer, but he is, so I still feel the difference between week ends and week days--he isn't available to drive the tractor during week days.)
Oh--I nearly forgot to mention: his finger has healed enough that he was able to play violin today. First time since getting it caught between rocks just over a week ago.