As part of maintaining 'our' trail, TJ has improvised a number of small bridges to get us across the perennially mucky spots (there are alot of percolating springs along one stretch), carting a ragtag assortment of shipping palettes and surplus lumber out into the woods. Along one particularly boggy stretch, the wetness has got the better of the bridgework, and the boards are mostly rotted and spongy, or else slick as ice.
Even taking greatest caution, nearly everyone who's walked it has skidded out and landed hard. TJ's been strategizing through the winter and finally devised a replacement.
We have a stash of rough-cut hemlock lumber, milled from a couple of giants we had dropped a few years ago. Hemlock is a good natural alternative to toxic pressure-treated lumber: moderately resistant to insects and decay, and given that our property was carved out of a hemlock forest, it's plentiful and cheap for us. Rough-milled at a nearby sawmill, its dimensions are true: a 2" x 4" actually measures 2" x 4" instead of the frail 1 3/4" x 3 1/2" of 'finished' lumber. It's been a boon to have all that lumber on hand, in a variety of widths and thicknesses and lengths – so far it's provided enough wood for a 10' x 16' woodshed, a 4' x 12' compost crib, the roof for the root cellar, several raised beds for the garden, and a burly stoneworking bench (all built by Himself).
TJ put together 4 lengths of 'boardwalk', each consisting of two 12-foot lengths of 2" x 6" with three 2-foot 2" x 4" cross-braces attached with 3-inch drywall screws. (There's an old joke that a hammer and a roll of duct tape make a Vermont tool kit; I'm convinced you could build or fix almost anything with a box of drywall screws and a power drill fitted with a Phillips head bit.)
We carted the pieces most of the way out on a hand-truck, then carried them the last hundred yards or so.
We laid the components on top of sturdy log lengths cut from a tree that got dropped over the winter. The cross-braces got screwed to the logs to make the whole setup secure:
It took us less than an hour to pull up the old wood and lay the new walkway.
Looks like somebody else has been busy out here, too.
Another nice post. Great looking 'bridge'. Thanks again for the duck fat!
Posted by: Anna Dibble | 06 April 2012 at 14:23