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.

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.

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.

The second page features the element fire. A handful of images show different ways stone and fire can be integrated into a project.

Crossing over one of the monoliths.

Always with the marbles…

I engraved a nautilus into this six by six bluestone tile with a Dremel tool. I will do a future blog detailing the process I used because it’s a really easy way to get the line you want. This one is found on the stoop. There’s another at the top of the steps as well, suggesting the sweeping shape of the staircase.

There are several different types of mortared stone work represented in this project. The big wall with the monoliths is a free-standing structural stone wall. The backside- which is hidden from sight- is ugly as anything, but it’s solid and would stand even if the driveway weren’t there. On the house and along the stoop we built a mortared veneer, generally eight inches thick. There’s a small area on the house (behind the black drain-pipe) where we cut stones down to two inches thick and applied them with thinset, as if they were tile. We made this design decision so that the stone on the house foundation didn’t stick out oddly. The steps are also structural stonework, resembling castle walls, four feet thick with a mad amount of in-fill.

On our first day of wall building, I spent an afternoon working between two of the monoliths. I decided to recess the wall two inches back from the front edge of the big granite, for a visual effect. I didn’t like it and worried how it would impact the top of the wall. It took a laborer a day and half to remove about six square feet of wall with a sledgehammer, chisels and pry bars. It be plenty sturdy.