Shop update #31 (5-30-18)
I was able to get all 13 steps for the Giant Cub Scout Bridge cut out by Friday night.
On Saturday morning the older boy and I met his Boy Scout Troop at the Pomona Cemetery at 8:00 am and spent the morning placing flags on the graves of all the veterans (video below). That afternoon I gave the steps a coat of spray polyurethane to help prevent the colored paint bleeding into the wood and let that dry for an hour. My son and I masked off the letters to eliminate the worst of the overspray and put the steps in order. Once they were in order I marked every other one with a B or a Y to make sure they got painted the right color. The blue steps got 1 coat of paint and the yellow got 2. We let those dry overnight.
Sunday was spent seeing the new SOLO movie and enjoying the day with friends at a BBQ get together.
On Monday I helped with building the Giant Cub Scout Bridge. I call it the Giant Cub Scout Bridge because it is 12 feet long, 4 feet wide, the center of the arch is about 18 inches off the ground and it has 8 – 4×4 posts for the 1 1/2 inch rope railing. At least it was the last time I saw a picture of it. Once I got there I found out that they had added 3 feet to each end and 4 more posts. I will now refer to it as the Even More Giant Cub Scout Bridge. We got all 38 – 2 x 6 x 48 inch steps installed and sanded. I cut 8 of the 4×4 posts down to 48″ and 4 of them to 59″ and chamfered the 4 sides of the top. I then cut 2 holes all the way through each one using a standard 18 volt drill with a 1 1/2 inch spade bit with the speed cutter tip. Cutting the holes by hand with that setup really sucked. The drill drill got away from me quite a few times and hurt my wrist. I had to stop halfway through and take a break so that I didn’t really hurt myself. I tried using the small drill press that was there but the speed cutter tip kept getting stuck and stopping the bit. By the end of the day we got everything cut, sanded, and assembled. A bunch of us are going to meet up tonight and give it a coat of deck stain/sealer. We need to have it ready to be reassembled at a local park at 8:00 am this Saturday for the bridging ceremony.
I also built some homemade bird spike strips but I will be writing a separate article for them.
