Tree Killing and Dirt Work

Our tree clearing day ended up being wet. It started raining first thing in the morning and never quit.

Some trees were cut down and their stumps left in the ground, others were pushed down with the hoe and stumps removed.We took a total of 15.

Dean takes great pride in his ability to push trees over, legend has it that a tree kicked the shit out of him when he was young and he's now getting even.

All of the downed trees are stacked on a landing with plenty of room for the fire wood cutter-splitters people to come harvest it for heat.

Next day our dirt work started by leveling off the site, we then started on the pier and did we got lucky, a 7 foot deep hole around here is a lot to ask! Once we got to depth, Doug leveled out 5" of 1-1/2" rock in the bottom.

The re-rod cage went in next followed by the sono tube with spread footing attached. Back filling with lifts of sand, we leveled and compacted around the tube working to within 4" of final grade.

For the last 4" we used more of the 1-1/2" rock which will make a great base. One other thing to mention that is not shown in the photo, we braided a good 8' copper ground rod and ran it up the side of the tube.

Home sweet home, the scary part was lifting and pulling the observatory over the tube without smashing or crushing the top of the newly installed tube.

There it is, the pier through the floor with ground rod in the front, we then aligned the building north/south.

Our permanent pier is now established.

N 47 44' 22.3"

W 090 35' 42.8"

Tomorrow is clean up day, as well as site preparation for the warm room.

Big Surprise on Top of Hill

Using a GPS to navigate the thick woods, we punched a 1000 feet trail to the top of the hill and ended up hitting the northwest corner dead on. This corner is the site I had picked and photographed earlier in the blog.

It was the middle of the winter when I picked that site and now it looks entirely different, Dean flattened a small spot so we could evaluate the sky view and amount of trees that would need to be cut down to improve it, we noted:

Evaluation included the following:

1. amount of trees to take down

2. ability to remove wood from the site

3. final view obtained

4. cost to run power

5. accessibility in winter

After spending an hour of looking around, counting trees and shooting compass lines we headed back down the hill looking for a possible site lower down. Ends up the best site we could come up with is 10 feet from where we started the road and 30 feet from where the observatory was unloaded in the first place.

To keep us from feeling like we wasted our time, we tossed around the idea of tapping maple trees and running the tubes down the path to a central collection point, but I'm not putting this idea on the white board just yet.

This is the new site, it was cleared a few years ago for septic work, it has a road, good view, close electric service, and it will be easy to remove the downed wood.

This was the best compromise, far less trees removed and in time we can continue to improve the sky view, I was disappointed at first but getting happier by the minute.

Big Truck Small Road

Observatory moving day,

Dean showed up and shoe-horned his truck and trailer into the storage building driveway, after about 20 minutes and a Thermos of coffee we had a plan.

With the hoe on his trailer, Dean lifted the dome off the building and placed it on my small trailer.

Then lifting and pulling, he was able to get about 1/3 of the observatory up and on the deck of his trailer, and then he swung over and lifted the complete building level with the trailer,

Now with a chain come-a-long hooked to a nice big tree we just slid it across the trailer.

Quick strap down, little more coffee, and off we go.

Just getting out of the driveway was tight, now there was only 3 miles left down a crappy road that is only 10 feet wide in most spots.

It was a slow trip with low hanging tree branches, sharp curves and giant pot holes! Once we reached the site, we simply reversed the procedure to unload,using my truck instead of the come-a-long to slide it off.

All in all the move went great.

After offloading the hoe, Dean starts clearing the 1000 foot road through some very thick woods. I'm excited to have this land opened up a little but we tried not to tear it up too bad because it's full of beautiful maple trees

Very Wet June and the Damn White Board

It just keeps raining.

June has been really wet but the woods needed it and now every thing is nice and green.

I have used the rain time to gather up supplies and on one trip I came up with the great idea of a large white board to track all my projects.

I have always said that every bundle of roofing shingles should come with a handful of pain killers, well I now believe every white board should come with anti-depressants.

I started by dividing the board into major projects, Cabin, Storage Building, Observatory, Home,

then writing down all that needs to get done by winter in all 4 categories.

All I can say is WOW, this amount of work would kill a normal man.

Observatory work over the last few weeks.

First off the door got painted, I'm still looking for the right set of hinges to complete the look.

Then I picked up the 18" sonotube along with the spread footing and anchor bolts. The bottom of that spread footing is 36" in diameter and will make for a very solid telescope base.

Using a break rotor mounted to the garage door frame I started bending the reinforcement rod hoops and legs

Then I built a cage and to keep it from rusting, I was able to cover most of it with blood, the sharp pointy wire ends tore me up pretty good.

Also built this anchor bolt jig, which will allow us to get the bolts in the center of the pier at the right depth and spacing.

Here it is on the tube, the long leg allows us to set a compass on the center line far enough away from the steel anchor bolts so they don't mess up the compass reading.

The bolt pattern will be set true north.

I have also been working on the road going up the hill to our site with a chain saw and trimmer and the road is slowly taking shape. The rain has slowed down Dean's arrival, but I think we're ready for the big dirt work to start.

Pier Mock-up and Door Building

It's been funny,

some days the observatory seems large and other days very small. Well after temporarily installing the pier then mocking-up the telescope with it's wedge mount I found I'll be lucky to get it all to fit!

Running down a plumb bob from zenith it's looking like about a 8" pier offset to the south, and the overall height looks to be very close.

Sorry for the poor photo but here is the mock-up, I'm very glad I spent time on this step, it will save a boat load of work later on

.

A few weeks ago Jim designed this logo and had an ink stamp made for our books, photos and later we will use it on our letter head, it's clean, simple and I like it.

Now for the Door

A swing out service door ended up to be hard to find as well as expensive with a long wait time, and after all that I still would have had to cut it down to fit.

So instead of paying $300.00 for a door, I made 2 lumber yard trips (70 total miles) spending $120.00 dollars in materials, and then invested around $400.00 in labor. The lesson I learned, it's only about twice the cost if you build it yourself.

Only kidding, total cost was less then $100.00 and took about 3 hours to build, and using the logo in the door panel worked out very well.

First Dome Rotation

Only had a few hours for the observatory today,

so I focused on installing the dome's rotation motor and controller. It went great and here is a short video of a test run using the key fob to operate, later it will be controlled by computer.

Installed Dome and Unusual Visitor

Woke Tuesday morning to find the boys glued to the window, which in itself is not unusual. They seem to get a lot of visitors including bunnies, red squirrels, deer, mink and pileated woodpeckers, they see it all.

Much to my surprise, todays visitor was a very large beaver.

Not only was this a new animal for the boys but this one hung around for quite some time. Then, with the cats stretching to watch his every move, the beaver slowly turned down the path toward the lake, reached the shoreline and just disappeared under the water.

I left for work an hour later and they were still at the window wondering what the hell that was and where did it go.

And now for some Observatory news

Lester and I got the dome mounted today, it took a bit of Rube Goldberg engineering, luck and some brute force, but it went up surprisingly well with no death or serous injury! Sorry no photo's Lester didn't think he could hold it by himself for a quick snap shot (what a puss)

I had painted the trim yesterday and installed it today before Lester showed up, I'm very happy with Hun's color choices, now all we need is to install and paint the door.

I'll take inside photo's tomorrow.

Paint Job and Unpacking the Telescope

This is how it sat for the past 2 weeks of bad weather, which included snow! I did my best to keep it dry so at the first break in the sky I could paint.

Inside the shop I did some work on the dome, mounting ring and wheel kit, it now rotates smoothly and is ready for final installation after painting.

Also unpacked the scope because I needed some measurements from the unit to continue with pier building. It's fun to see it out of the box and nice getting it mounted to the tripod without dropping it.

How's this for a lens?

Finally I caught the break I've been waiting for, it was sunny and mid to upper 50's so the paint went on both inside and out.

The color is Canton Jade, I like it.

I hope to put together a crew this week to install the dome on top of the building, so the weather is no longer a problem.