well considered gifts and merry Christmas

A well considered gift for the man who needs to pound things of various sizes.


And at this weight (16lb), I have an excuse to buy another slightly smaller one (maybe a 10lb-er) for 'light duty' applications.


Every little bit of tools brings us closer to building our own timber-framed house. This particular hammer will, no doubt, persuade many a stubborn timber joint to come together nicely. It may drive the wedges to split reluctant logs as well.

The reason I ended up with a gift like this is due to the Amazon Wish List which leaves no excuse for those who are stumped on what to get someone. Never again will someone have to get another Bass Pro Fisher 4, thanks, but no thanks....

God rest ye merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
Remember Christ our Savior
Was born upon this day.

To save us all from Satan's pow'r
When we were gone astray,
O tidings of comfort and joy
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy.

Merry Christmas to all,
and to all a good night!

Just when you thought it was safe....

Just when you thought it was safe to leave your tools on the job site, the job gets delayed and you're stuck trying to work with your key tools locked in a trailer 36.6 miles away. Apparently I will never learn this lesson.....so frustrating.

Anyway. Last week I got to frame some new walls in an 1842 brick colonial in Dresden. All these old houses tell quite a story. Its mostly a story of neglect and mismanagement. This particular house had seen years and years of neglect culminating in a roof leak that led to a big insurance claim which provided the funds for a three room remodel where most of the water damage had taken place. This is the living room or parlor framed with new wall on the exterior, new ceiling joists supplementing the existing ones, and 1/2" of plywood strapping on the interior walls. I used the plywood strapping instead of framing new interior walls in order to simplify the trim detail around the existing doors.


Here we have a timber-frame and SIP addition to a home in Harpswell. My friend Andrew cut this frame over the last few weeks and we raised it in two days last week. Today we finished boarding the roof, and hopefully tomorrow or the next day we'll start install the the Structural Insulated Panel enclosure.


This area will become a study/office area. Its not really wide enough to be much else.


This area is going to be the new great room, I think.


The far portion of this will be the entry/mudroom.

Next week I start on a new project with Dyer Ridge Builders that may last into December......

Keeping busy

What use is being unemployed if you can't hang out, watch daytime TV and eat cheetos? I can't seem to catch a break with this 'unemployment'. We were back at it for a couple of days to put up this 24x36 high-posted cape. It took about a day to ferry the whole thing down there to Bristol, then another day with a crane to put 'er up. This morning we finished screwing down the purlins and put a couple of big tarps on the roof. We're short on tarp tatters, so we thought we'd put it up there ahead of some 60 mph winds (Hurricane Earl) and that would work nicely. Besides, I don't really get enough of being 27 feet up over a concrete slab.


After a quick lunch in my sweltering apartment, I thought, I haven't sweat enough today, so I'll go over the shed and work some more. I put in a little work bench. 38 and a quarter high, 30 inches deep and a little under 12 feet long. It should do nicely for some little projects for customers and our house project.



12 x 16 feet can feel quite small if there's too much stuff in it, but with some clear floor space, it feels just big enough. I'll have to stay organized.


Still not sweating enough, I decided to use the lumber loft for lumber, and I moved a couple of piles of pine boarding and some 2x8x 16' and 20' framing lumber up there to keep it out of the rain and out of sight.




We're watching the Hurricane tracks for Earl and hoping it doesn't get too wild here. Right now we're just in the 40 mph wind zone. If the seas are going to get too rowdy, we'll pull the sailboat ahead of it. Wouldn't want 'er to get swamped!

Oh the places....

Another day at the office. This time, the office is in Berlin, Maryland, just west of Ocean City. Raising a 24x48' high-posted cape with a 10x24' kitchen addition.

Lifting the first bent (in this case Bent 5) off of the assembly area in the grass. We assembled on the grass to avoid messing around with the plumbing stubs sticking out of the slab.

Bent 4 coming to meet bent 5. Bent five is temporarily supported by two diagonal kickers to the mudsill and two come-a-longs to my truck, out of frame on the left.

John, master crane operator.

Bents 4 and 5 up and connected with lower connectors hung with their braces by come-a-longs from above. Bents 3, 2, and 1 assembled on the ground.

Bents 2,3,4, and 5 raised, connected and joisted. End of day 1.

Last bent (bent 1) raised and connected.

Flying in a daisy chain of purlins.

Shed Rafters and collars hung from main rafters, waiting for shed wall section.

All done. Homeowner (right) and I nailing on the traditional evergreen sprig on the gable.

Completed frame. Trailer packed. End of Day 2. Next stop: Ocean City beach.

Post/Girt/Connector Joinery

Queen Post, Collar, Rafter joinery seen thru the stair opening.

The Strip, Ocean City, MD: 8 miles of high-rises, t-shirt shops, bars and traffic.

George Washington Bridge. New York City.

After two days of work and two days of driving, I'm quite happy to be home in Maine where things aren't quite so crazy and the weather is perfect.

Oot and a boot.

Winter is a great time to be out and about in Maine. There are no crowds, no traffic and no tourists from 'away'. I think the low temperatures and precipitation keep them away. But we find plenty of interesting things to do, vocationally and otherwise. I just created a new blog for my carpentry endeavors, you can see it here: http://woodandwagner.blogspot.com.


Here is part of a timberframe I recently had a hand in raising. All that snow presents some serious challenges to the project. If the trailer at right looks a little high that's because it is. The site was so tight that the crane truck drove in with that trailer and to get out had to pick the trailer up off the ground and spin it. Conditions were so icy that the crane and trailer got stuck on the way out with all of us behind it. There we sat for over an hour, idling, while a sand truck came to put down some traction.

These bunch from our snowshoeing jaunt yesterday at the Land of Goshen:


Wags, winter forest head shot. (Photo by KT)


KT, winter forest head shot. When the temperature is in the teens or lower, she opts for the artificial beard.

Birch among Pines.


If KT received a revelation from heaven while snowshoeing, I imagine this is what it might look like.


There is a fungus among us. In this case on a big dead pine trunk. (photo by KT)


The aforementioned fungusy dead pine trunk. (photo by KT)


Wavy ice on the streaming stream. (photo by KT)

Last weekend I got to go snowshoeing on Saturday with our friend Rob from Milwaukee. Then on Sunday, we got up in the wee hours and drove up to Sugarloaf Mtn to experience what many say is the best downhill ski experience in the East. I can say it was the best I've ever skied. I'll post pictures from that soon.

News from the Country Estate July 26

Greetings from the Country Estate:

Summer made a cameo appearance this week with temps in the 80's and high humidity. The gloomy skies of clouds, fog, and rain more typical of this year's summer returned however, with today barely reaching 70 degrees and intermittent rain showers. On Friday we received more than an inch of rain in five hours during a 'nor'easter'. KT and I did some rainy day shopping and saw the latest Harry Potter movie for a matinee price. An ok film. Just ok.

During a break in the rain last week I was finally able to install some relatively hard to find shock absorbers on my sailboat trailer. They are actually snowmobile shocks, but they're just the right size for minimizing radial oscillation due to cornering. They were about $20/a piece and non-returnable, so I was pretty glad when they did the trick.

After strapping the boat down, I was ready to bring the vessel home. The drive was relatively uneventful and boat, truck and driver arrived in good spirits.

Now in storage under a tarp next to another in progress boat project, she waits for some more time and money to tackle a few projects before she is seaworthy once more.

The end is in sight for the building project that never seems to end. Here we see the 34'x51' timber frame home after two days of raising work. There are only about 8 lifts left, just four dormer assemblies, four rafters and a dormer truss on the far side of the building. The second floor has 19 feet of headroom at the peak of the roof. That's a great height if you are going to house the raptor exhibit at the zoo....We'll build whatever they want.

A hen left a peace offering of a single egg on our deck after both roosters spent the afternoon digging up my tomato patch and fouling our deck. I immediately fried the peace offering to over-easy and partook of it with salt and pepper.

Probably the freshest egg I have ever eaten.

Inspired by my fresh egg experience, I went out to the garden and harvested a bunch of lettuce, some scallions, and a turnip for a mid-afternoon feast. I chopped and fried the turnip and scallions, adding two fresh eggs to make a country scramble.

I regret not planting four times as much in the garden, but who knew the weather would be this wet?

I spent the afternoon studying poultry slaughter techniques in preparation for the next time the roosters decide that its a good idea to hang out and crow by our window at five in the morning or dig up the tomatoes again.

Tomorrow its off to work again thankfully and hopefully all week.

News from the Country Estate June 14

Greetings from the well-soaked Country Estate!

-The week or so of nice weather (nice for us humans) broke last week with rain, rain and more rain. It rains now in fact. This is all good news for the garden up to a point. The peas, pumpkins, kohlrabi and turnips are doing well, everything else ranges from so-so to dead. If we were subsistence farmers, we'd be worried, but as it is, we say, well you've got to start somewhere. Here is a a recent self-portrait of the eastern branch of the Wagner clan/Maine-branch of the Ruff-Wagner clan. Some of you's have not seen KT's hair short or my face be-goateed. The goat is a recent occurrence for me, but KT's easily-maintained-do is at least four months old. She might add that she is not making any statement other than that of living a simple life expressed through the hair-follicles. As it is, I think she's quite presentable with or without hair :) (Thanks to In-Law Amy for the Bean plaid shirt, it fits great!)


In other news, two weeks or so of stress for me comes to an end as I start work on a new project tomorrow and money flows in again. Not a moment too soon too as big blue trucks don't pay for themselves literally. Its not until they start carting around tools and materials that they begin to make sense. With that in mind I forced the rack I built for the Chevy onto the Italian Stallion (now that Chrysler is owned by Fiat that name seems fitting). Oddly enough the bed of the new truck is two inches wider in the front that the Chevy. Installing the now dry and brittle hemlock posts was not without its challenges. The bed on the new truck is also three inches longer than the Chevy requiring new side planks at a full 8 feet. The result:

I will be putting the whole rig through its paces tomorrow morning. I'll be loaded to the gills with ladders, tools, planks, saw horses and the like for the job on Thompson Lake. We've got two timber frames to raise, one hand cut in Hemlock and one machine cut by South County Post and Beam of West Kingston, RI in Douglas Fir. This will be our first time raising a machine cut frame. It will also be my first time in this particular part of Maine:


Ver mapa más grande

In addition to raising the timberframes we'll be enclosing the buildings with structural insulated panels from Winter Panel in Brattleboro, VT. All that raising and enclosing means a lot of time working with a crane and working on the roofs--exactly the kind of work I had in mind for myself when I was five!

KT sends her greetings to all y'all in the blogosphere and interweb

That's the way it looks from here.

up to

Hokay, so, here are some of the things I've been up to this week:

Finishing up window and door trim at Tandem Glass Studio and Gallery

Sweeping up hand plane shavings. Some of us do it the old fashioned way. (Mainly, I didn't have the power planer with me.

A hand plane shaving so thin that its translucent.


With two small ratchet straps I was able to pick up my snow plow with the tractor.


And drive very slowly and carefully around the back of the carport.

Getting the snow plow into a spot for storage turned out to be a lot less work than I expected.

As I mentioned in the last post, I spent Monday through Thursday out on Swan's Island raising a timberframe for Connolly and Co. I caught a cold on the first day, so I didn't enjoy myself as much I might have otherwise, but it was a very successful raising overall. Swan's Island is located about 8 miles from Mt. Desert island, the home of Acadia National Park. It is accessible only by private boat and the State of Maine Ferry. Here are a few photos of the chaos:

Bent 5 of the barn frame going up.

Bent is now vertical as we walk it over to its proper place.

Bent 4 up and braced off. See the shed dormer taking shape.

Setting purlins in bay 4.

Flying a dormer/post/ridge assembly into place in bay 3. I am at the peak on the left.

Bringing the ridge/rafter peak joint together for a perfect fit.

Raising bent 2.

Flying the last set of purlins complete with the traditional sprig on the last piece.

The crew.

J.R. of J. R. Williams Crane Service. The man behind the levers.

The finished frame.

Close up of shed dormer.

The 4000 sq. ft. log home we stayed in Monday through Thursday.

The Great Room in the log home.

View from the deck at the log home. There is a light house in the distance.

Waiting for the ferry back to Mt Desert Island and home.

Ferry rides are still exciting to me.

Ye olde sailboat in its current condition, in storage that is.

View from the stern under the tarp.

And from the bow.

Looking pretty awkward with its fellow boats out of water.

I've got my work cut out for me this weekend. I pressure washed the boat trailer in preparation for Rustoleum's Rust Reformer primer and a new coat of blue paint. I've got to hook up the lights and bolt down the pressure treated longitudinal rails and the keel rest. I've scribed a template for the hull cradle, but I still have to cut the actual plywood. The stern jacks are still an issue. I don't feel like spending $250-300 on new equipment. This afternoon I'm making an impromptu trip to North Conway, NH towing like 10,000 lbs of equipment.

Next week, more work, more gardening, more boat stuff and hopefully a bit of climbing.

---w---