Cows in upper pasture

Yesterday my neighbor put seven cows in our upper pasture; 5 cows, one steer, and one calf I think.  His son came out and patched the boundary fence where needed, I also did a little work on the fence line and mowed some of the pasture. 

The pasture is in great shape; lot's of clover, orchardgrass, timothy, fescue, bluegrass, etc.  Great place to be if you are a cow.   The pond is looking really good, we have some nesting geese and ducks.   Yesterday Mary and I saw six deer in the pasture.  When I mowed I saw rabbits and wild turkeys. 

Next jobs for me are to remove two downed trees and then I want to install a gravity fed water stock tank using the pond as the source so I can fence out the pond.

half dovetail timber joint layout

I recently looked at some pictures of horizontal log timber structures with half dovetail joints.  This joint is very nice because the surfaces are angled to lock the timbers together and also direct water down and out which will prevent rot. 

When making these joints one needs to know the following:
1) timber dimensions, width and height
2) desired spacing between the timbers, this gap will normally be chinked
3) timber extension at joint (the distance that the end of a timber will extend beyond the joint)

I did not find any nice description of the layout online so I came up with the following which will hopefully prove helpful.

Example:  timber size is 8" high and 6" wide.  Desired gap spacing between timbers in a wall is 2".  Timber ends will extend 1-1/2" beyond the joint.

I started with a picture which will be used to solve this example and explain the process.  Two 6" x 8" timbers are stacked vertically in a South wall with a 2" space in between these two timbers.  One 6" x 8" timber is placed in a West wall, perpendicular to the South wall timbers.  The horizontal center line of the West wall timber is in the center of the 2" gap in the South wall. 

Look at the end of the West wall timber where it intersects the upper timber in the South wall, it makes a rectangle that is 6" wide and 3" high.  In this rectangle the center is found by drawing diagonal lines, the center point is labeled point "A" in the picture. 

The layout line for the joint will be found by drawing a line through point A.  Since we want an extension of 1-1/2" we will draw a line through point A that intersects the bottom of the South wall timber 1-1/2" past the West wall timber.  The picture actually shows several lines through point A, one with no extension, one with a 1-1/2" extension, and one with a 4" extension. 

We want a 1-1/2" extension so we see that this line goes through point A and intersects the 3" x 6" rectangle 1/2" below the top on the East side of the rectangle and also necessarily 1/2" from the bottom on the West side of the rectangle. 

This is the solution, the angled dovetail cut will be across the end of the 6" wide timber as follows, 1/2" down on one side and 2-1/2" down on the other side.  The angle of this cut works out to be the ArcTangent of (2.5 / (1.5 + 6)) =  18.4 degrees. 

The other cut will be on the bottom of the timber, it will be 2.5" high and 7.5" long.

The second picture shows a small section of half dovetail timbers created for this example.  Drawings were created using google sketchup.

Oil Moat for bee hives

I noticed that small black ants were getting into my bee hives so I checked my bee book and it said to sprinkle cinnamon on the top of the inner cover and around the hive or to install an oil moat on the hive stand. 

Yesterday I tried the cinnamon and it did help, today I installed the oil moat.   The oil moat I made consists of four round plastic pans about 6" in diameter and about 2" deep.  In the middle of each pan I put a small piece of wood that is about 3" in diameter and about 3" tall.   I set the moats on top of my cinder block supports and the wooden hive base sits on top of the wooden blocks.  My helper John then poured oil into the plastic pans.  We finished the install by putting boards over the top of the base to help keep rain from getting into the oil moats.