Posts Tagged ‘rigging’
Everything Arrived
Thursday started with a morning delivery of the lumber I ordered for my shade sail project. The truck stopped on the road, and the driver used a three-wheeled forklift to move my posts and boards up the driveway.
Having never done anything like this before, I’m uncertain about a lot of the details. I’m feeling confident about the overall concept, and I have purchased everything I think I will need, but I’m haunted about how it will all work out in the end.
I have decided to install a header around the top of the posts to bolster the stability of the whole frame against the pull of the canopy hardware and the pushing guaranteed to happen from 1200-pound horses with an itch. Watching how the 24-foot-long 2 x 6 boards flopped like noodles, it occurred to me that those probably should have been a beefier dimension.
I’m not used to dealing with such long dimensions in lumber, or anything else, for that matter. It’s hard for me to visualize where 24 feet of something will fit. Even the forklift driver needed to make some tricky adjustments to barely fit between the hay shed and the wood fence with the boards balanced on the forks. There was a little squeaking as the boards rubbed against the metal shed as he eked his way through.
By noon, FedEx had delivered a box with the shade sail canopy on our front steps. Cyndie and I tried to unfold it in the loft, letting it drape over the railing to get a feel for the size. I didn’t realize how big 18 feet is. It doesn’t seem like that much out in the paddock, but in the house, we couldn’t find space to stretch it out.
I opted for the barn.
It took me several tries to rig up attachment points that worked, but we eventually got it stretched out enough to take up slack in the metal cable sewn into the outer edge all the way around.
There was no way we could have done this outside yesterday with gale-force wind gusts howling all afternoon, leading up to a robust thunderstorm just before sunset.
I’m aware that maximum tension is the key to getting the shade sail to perform optimally, but my initial rigging in the barn showed me there are a few little details to achieving my goal that make this project a lot more complicated than it seems like it should be at the start.
My new contractor friend, Justin, will stop by today to take exact measurements to determine where we will place the posts.
We are getting close to finding out how much the horses are going to freak out over the strange new feature appearing in their midst. So far, the flapping labels on the lumber outside their paddock kept them on edge for much of yesterday before I pulled everything off the wood.
If only they knew what was going to happen next.
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Oh Brother
It has been six weeks that I have worked full-time at home in my new role as ranch manager. For me, that is a lot of work days with no one to talk to other than our animals. Yesterday, I got a break from the solitude when my brother, Elliott, showed up with all his tree climbing rigging gear, offering me a day of his services. Not only did I have someone to talk with, but it was family!
Not only was he offering his assistance, he was providing a priceless service of trimming tree branches that were well out of my reach. In particular, one “widow-maker” that had fractured long ago, but still clung to the base of its branch and swung near the location of the wood shed. That one has been bothering me for a long time.
I had originally tried my own crude methods to toss a line into that branch in hopes of snagging it so I could pull it down. I couldn’t get it to let go, so the branch continued to menacingly dangle there.
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It was an incredible treat to watch my brother work. I had no idea it was possible to toss a line as high into a tree as he did, and successfully drop it down on the other side of a limb. Seeing him pull himself up made my arms tired just watching. Actually, after a while my neck muscles were complaining about how much time I spent with my head tipped back, looking straight up.
When he made it high up into the tree, he rigged two more points of security and then pulled out his saw to begin the cutting. From his new vantage point, he was able to spot dead branches to cut that I hadn’t even noticed from the ground. As he worked, we moved ever closer to the roof of the wood shed that is laying on the ground beneath this tree. To protect it, Elliott tied a rope to the branches about to be cut so they could be lowered in a controlled fashion.
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It is quite a process, and I was very intrigued by it, if not feeling a bit addicted. For the rest of the day after he left, I kept wanting to go back out and do more of that work. While helping to put away his gear, I asked Elliott to teach me how to “braid” the long ropes for storage the way he does. It’s slick because they easily come undone when you are ready to use them.
Being able to do these climbing and rigging skills would be a very handy thing for me, with the number of trees we have. It would require that I do a lot of learning to master tying the knots I need. I have difficulty remembering how to tie a knot soon after I learn it.
I don’t know that I would have the arm strength to do this, though. I have a permanently separated shoulder that means I have no skeletal strut supporting my collar-bone, and that leaves me significantly weaker on my left side.
I’ll just have to rely on the graciousness of my brother to make the trip out with all his gear again someday, to bring down more of the dangling dead branches that loom.
Elliott, I hope I didn’t drive you nuts with my excitement about having someone to pal around with yesterday. I can’t thank you enough for the “workout” you put in here. I am exceedingly grateful to have these branches down! Hope your arms aren’t too stiff today…
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Relative Something 