The Other Uncle John Helps Out

This weekend was Rudi's seventh Birthday, and Katherine's parents and sister (Liz) were over, along with Liz's boyfriend John. I figured now was the time to jump right in and install the angle brace, which required two people, one to hold, the other to install.

The braces are made from the trunks of the two White Spruce I felled recently, cut to appropriate length using the best and straightest section of trunk. I used the Husky to make angle cuts at the base and test fit it, and then angle cuts at the top until the fit was reasonable. The cuts were done by eye, and were compound, meaning they angled off from the line of the trunk in not one, but two directions (The base was a notch cut at 45 degrees, slanting across the trunk at about 30 degrees or so).

Also visible are two of the turned finials made by my father, now stained and lagbolted in from the back. Three lagbolts each 3/8 by 5 inch were bolted in, two from the main beam, and one from the floor beam sitting above the main beam.

Deck Foundation

As most of the deck of the treehouse will be hanging out to one side of the main support tree, I had to figure out a way to support it using the tree itself somehow, and not resorting to additional support posts. The simplest and most evident manner appeared to be using a single main 'outrigger' beam to provide support for the four floor beams away from the tree. This beam would then be supported by two angled brace posts which would then be attached to the trunk of the tree very clost to the base. I decided that this support should be angled in the same direction as the support posts, pretty much 45 degrees from vertical. I constructed four small angle blocks to support this beam (one block for each floor beam supported by it). In addition, I cut a small 1-1/2 inch notch in each floor beam to accommodate a very secure attachment of the main beam to each of these floor beams. Check out the pictures, which shows the detail very well!