One of the slows has been progress on the door - I've now laminated into 6 sections the upper half of the stable door. For a job I thought I'd do in a day, it's taking an amazingly long time. I'm still no wiser about what the dense timber it is made of - which is sort of relevant as they may fuss about fire retardation. Personally I suspect it's a lot more fire-resistant than the expensive imported tropical timber I am supposed to use - but can I prove this? The internet is being no help.
So: Olives
Anyway a couple more days before bottling.
I went out to see the legendary John Tulloch with the tractor's water sheep... hydralic ram, and to consult him on setting up my own off-grid system. John is an amazing man - a sort Nikola Tesla character, with the same incredible breadth of knowledge -anything from Quantum Physics to how to fix hydraulic rams - and the same ability to visualize thing in 3D. I'm not the bluntest pencil in the box but he makes me feel a trifle dim. He adds being pragmatic to all of this. Anyway one of his favorite fields is alternate energy sources, and he talked me through getting my Solar power set-up. I've got 9 panels, I will soon have 29. An old shed, and one of John's fiendish devices, und vith ze power galvanic... ahem. You get the picture. I hope to have power on the site soon - We have water, we will have power. Now all we need is get some form of shelter.
I'm also looking at the possibilities of buying some macrocarpa to do my floors - a bit soft but beautiful. It may just be an expense too far.
On another tangent, I took in a 7 foot log of Cape Barren pine - a kind of cypress native to the Island. Also rather soft, but with a lovely cedar-like scent. I hope to get slats of this to make shelves for the linen cupboard.
I've got a load more bulbs to plant, and no further developments...
Dave, with respect to the wood for the door. A lot of fence posts were made from red box or red gum. Red, grey or yellow box is an incredibly hard wood with a density of something like 1197kg/m3.
ReplyDeleteYou also previously mentioned milling your own timber - a mate of mine has a Lucas mill and says anything und 8” diameter is not really worth your time to do.
Turns out to red ironbark, and yep, over a ton a cube. I'd agree with your mate, and say you really want 2 foot sticks - but I will take what I can get particularly of the prettier native woods - I found a fallen bulloke which is probably only about 8 inches on a friend's property. I am tempted to try that, just because it is so rare as a timber, and beautiful. You can't cut it down, it is protected.
Delete