The Unturned Stone

We are in the gable, the very last stonework of the cabin structure. It’s a crazy complicated place to work; the rafters limit movement and getting material up to the appropriate height is very challenging. I’m cursing more these days, every time I bonk myself on a rafter. Ideally the rafters would have waited until the stonework was done, but we are weaving the roof and stonework together in an effort to get this thing done.

I just added to the Cabin Panoramic page with images showing the rafters going up.

The rafters are rough cut, true sized 4″ by 12″ timbers, bolted together with plates of steel. Overhead they resemble a fish skeleton.

We’ve been using our Griphoist winch to pull the rafters together before bolting them onto the sill plates.

Fall is coming quickly at 6,500 feet. The mornings are brisk, and the meadow is bursting with it’s last gasp of color. The bees are in some kind of nectar frenzy and the whole meadow is alive with their buzzing.

We built a stone bench last autumn as part of a retaining wall in a bustling neighborhood in downtown Asheville. I drove by today and discovered that the bench back has become a small shrine of totems and trinkets. There’s something about this that makes me really happy.

We have made decent progress on the cabin over the last month. The roof in underway and the chimney is finally done. The front gable needs to be done. It will include a small, arched window so folks sleeping in the loft can enjoy the views.

I recently updated the Cabin Panoramic page with a few images from the work we’ve been doing this spring and summer.

This is a view of the interior of the front wall of the cabin, showing the arched window and a shelf recessed into the corner. The beams above will support a sleeping loft, though right now they are being used to stage stone for the last little bit of wall.

The front rafter defines the limits of the stonework yet to be done.

We have been using a laser to level the sill plates. One misty morning, the invisible laser beamed brightly through the thick air. I’m trying to imitate Iron Man.

The scaffolding obscures the view, but this is a hint of the face of the cabin, with its arched windows and imposing door.

I’ve been making some changes to the site, expanding our portfolio pages on drylaid flagstone paths and patios and mortared flagstone. Wherever possible, I have linked the small photos to larger images. I’ll be expanding that as I go.

We’ve had help on the cabin, as we push to get it done by the fall. Bill, Grace and Kevin of Artisan Stoneworks of Spartanburg, South Carolina joined us for a couple of weeks. Masons we met through the on-line community, they were all skilled and talented and great to work with. With their help we finished both sides of the cabin and got the front door lintel set in place.

This last week ended a bit early with a torrential rainstorm that soaked us all through in a matter of seconds. When you’re working in the clouds, the storms just sort of appear. The arch over the front window is about half done. The keystone is shown here, rigged to the gin pole. In this image, it is strapped, but we have since drilled the top for the Lewis pins so that we can set the stone into the arch from above. The half-finished arch, with dry fitted stone awaiting mortar can be seen at the bottom of this post. Note the Lewis pins in the bottom image.

Stone masons love hammers. Someday I’ll have a web page devoted exclusively to cool hammers. Until then… Built by Hulme’s Tool Shop to Kevin’s design, this hammer weighs four pounds and is perfectly balanced. Both sides are carbide tipped.