Rambutan and Recycled Timbers

Before we get back to work, we thought you might like to see some of the orchard Paul works so hard to maintain. The building site is located in the lower part of the orchard, which receives the full cooling effect of the tradewinds. It is a beautiful spot, with views of both the ocean and the mountain (Mauna Kea). the photo below is near the house site, just next to the tarped area we are working under. there is a large avocado tree sitting on the edge of the gulch. it's the perfect place to hang a hammock and enjoy the view during a break from work (which luke and i have done), or on a nice warm summer evening (which i am sure paul and maxine will do plenty of).

the photos below are of the areas that paul has cleared and has been tending. it is amazing how vigorously everything grows here; the sections of the orchard that paul hasn't cleared yet are completely overgrown with small trees, shrubs, and grasses well over our heads. you can imagine the work paul has put into this place to get it looking as beautiful as it does now.

After a few years of working with a hand saw and a weed-whacker, Paul has invested in a mower and a couple of chainsaws, and is really whipping the orchard into shape. It is quite a task... 14 acres in rainy Hawaii has a lot of potential biomass. Not to mention, the designer of the orchard made some questionable decisions, like planting rows of a eucalypt called Wili-Wili, which succumbed to a blight a few years ago and left Paul with tons of rotting wood scattered all over the property (you can see a nice neat pile of it in the picture above).

The orchard's main crop is a fruit called rambutan, which you can see here. they aren't truly in season right now, but there are some here and there. as you can see above, paul was nice enough to climb up and get us a few. rambutans are in the family sapindaceae, which includes other tropical fruit trees like lychee and longan (both of which paul has on the orchard as well), and, interestingly enough, also includes such temperate trees as maple and horse chestnut. rambutan, lychee, and longan are all fruits with a leathery outer skin which is peeled off to reveal a pale, almost translucent fruit that looks something like a peeled grape. though their specific flavors vary, they all tend to have a sugary, sweet/sour taste with a slightly gummy mouth feel. rambutan, however, are the only ones of the bunch with litte alien hairs! Below are some on the tree in early stages of development.

OK, now onto the construction work...woo hoo!

We finished all the eucalyptus posts we were working on in our last blog entry.

And they are waiting snug and tight out of the rain for next week, when we raise the frame.

Then we moved on to the trusses. Again, the material was free, thanks to a neighboring farmer Paul works for two days a week harvesting heart of palm. He gave us a huge stack of these old scaffolding boards from when he worked doing bridge repairs. After sorting out the rotten stuff, we had enough material for all the trusses and beams. These are no piddly things, either. Rough cut, true dimension 2 inch by 10 inch, old-growth Douglas Fir... this is solid lumber.

We set up our tarp workstation a little more ergonomically with sawhorses this time. It was mainly sawing for these (no chiseling), so we ripped right through. thank heavens (and luke) for those sawhorses. it was one thing propping the posts up on low pieces of wood and chiseling near the ground, but trying to saw and drill that way was a whole other story. after a day of stacking end cuts, checking their levels, and trying to saw without knocking the whole thing over, luke was fed up enough to make three (amazing) sawhorses out of the scraps. ahh, those, along with the clamps paul bought, made life a lot easier.

i can't say i've had that much opportunity to saw in my life, so i was excited (and a little nervous--it's really sharp!) to learn. it took me about 20 minutes to get through my first board--i kept switching arms and getting tired, and at the end of it all it wasn't even close to straight/square. but after some practice, i am a little faster and a little straighter (and a little squarer? hmm...).

Cutting the chamfer on the end of a collar tie...

We decided on a plywood gusset for the peak miter joint, and I added a little dowel on the bottom corner to hang stuff from.

After three days of measuring, cutting, drilling and bolting, we had a stack of trusses ready to go. Note the end truss, above, with the king post. you can see below that there are four trusses with two different heights of collar ties. the top two will go at the lower end of the house for paul and maxine's loft bedroom, while the bottom two will go at the upper end of the house above the kitchen.

And yesterday we worked a long day to finish all the beams. This is one of the floor girders, which joins the post at a thru-mortise that will be wedged from the top. Now all that remains is the diagonal braces, and we'll be ready to put it up! yesterday was a long, cold day (i am going to freeze to death when i get back to virginia!). it rained and was really windy most of the day, but we got a lot done. doing the beams and girders was all about measuring and sawing, measuring and sawing, interrupted only by moving the beam around a lot. but it was interesting, and we got to chisel and rasp the ends so they look all rustic and pretty. these are old pieces of wood with paint, primer, rust, etc. all over them. the contrast between that and the sawed/chiseled edges that reveal the wood underneath is really quite cool.

Beer:30 (you're a good man, paul flessner...)

next time, we'll be telling you all about how smoothly the frame raising went (cross your fingers!). paul is rounding up the posse and we'll be putting this sucker up at the end of next week. i am really excited to see this whole thing put together. until then, we leave you with a cute photo of our tail-wagging, face-licking, stick-fetching, wild boar-chasing mascot: kala the wonderdog!

(p.s. pierre and chewbacca, we love you and miss you and send you big kisses and belly rubs and we promise, you are still our favorites!)