Dec 2007/Jan 2008.

The second stint at building; late Dec 2007 through early Jan 2008.

This was another two week stay, but the weather wasn't so good to us this time. We lost several days to rain and snow and the heavy frosts and biting winds made working in the open a bit of a trial at other times (not so much "blood, sweat and tears" as "blood, sweat and nosedrips").

There's a big jump in sequence from the previous build pictures to the first house pictures here. There are a couple of reasons for that. The first is that we were too busy with "all hands on deck" work for any of us to be wandering around taking photos, and the second is that our troubleshooter, Tanaka-san of Logtech, made sure we got value for money on the days he came to assist and put in a lot of very hard work in a very short time.

There also isn't much visible change to the structure itself towards the end of our stay. The work we were doing (fitting the bolts) is pretty much invisible in most of our photos. There were forty-odd bolts throughout the structure. Some of the bolt holes in the top couple of layers of logs needed to be drilled out (because of either offset or missing holes in the logs as shipped) before we could start manually countersinking bolt holes (both top and bottom of the logs) and then fitting and tightening down the bolts themselves. That alone took the best part of three days to complete.

Miyoko, Tanaka-san (Logtech) and Yumi on a tea break.	The progress as of tea-break time on the morning of the 25th.	Your's truly trying (vainly) to clear the junk out of an electricity hole.
Installing the roof truss.	Preparing for the winter weather.	Back to work under blue skies.
Now where did I put that pencil?	Adding the nut (which one is that?).	Late afternoon on the 27th.
Detail of bolt countersunk in the top surface of the log wall.	A Japanese saw.	Detail of a wall bolt showing the square washer and lock-nut.
Detail of bolt hole cut on the underside of the log.	Detail of bolt hole cut in the topside of the log.	The same hole, now with bolt installed.
Bottom detail of the same bolt.	Our first pair of rafters are up, but...	The "spacer" kludge.
Spacer in place over front door (terrace).	End of day, Sunday the 27th of Jan.	February 12, 2008
February 12, 2008	February 10, 2008	February 11, 2008
February 11, 2008	February 12, 2008

This page created on 2008-02-12.