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| From 2014-08-02 |
One of the problems is the ground is super rocky and with the fixed hexagonal shape, you don't have much leeway on where the pole goes. If you cheat it over to softer dirt, it won't be a hexagon anymore. That means if you hit rock, too bad, you're just going to have to break through it.
Well, we definitely hit rock. I think I put on a pound or two of muscle pounding the 3-4" thick limestone with the 45 pound breaker bar. It was pretty tough work pounding it over and over again.
In the end, we were able to get each of the posts about 24" deep and the diameter was just a couple inches wider than the pole. I figure with the super tight hole and almost solid rock sides, 24" ought to be plenty deep.
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| From 2014-08-17 |
Once the cement had hardended, it was time to cut the poles down to size. We decided that 7' ought to be about right. One downside of using raw cedar is that the poles aren't perfectly straight. Some have little bends in them that we were hoping would get cut off during the resizing.
It looks like cut down helped with straightening up. Unfortunately I ran out of light and time to finish and decided to throw up a cross beam to get a preview of what the finished product might look like.
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| From 2014-08-17 |
The crossbeam is definitely sturdy. Lifting a 6x6x8 7 feet in the air is not a feat for the faint of heart. It took everything I had to lift it up there. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I did it twice. The first time I decided to hang on it to simualte what it would be like to swing. Well, all I ended up accomplishing is knocking it off the poles. Luckily it fell forward instead of falling back and crushing me.
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| From 2014-08-17 |
Be sure to check in for more updates in the coming weeks. If the final product turns out half as cool as what I have pictured in my head, it's going to be awesome.
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