I bet the Druids and Wiccans are having a fit with the full moon falling on the Equinox this year eh!
Anyway, I made a bit more progress on the retaining wall over the last couple days. Spent a significant amount of time yesterday just standing, looking, and thinking though. Felt unproductive, but I'd rather get things all sorted in my mind than overlook something important and find out the hard way down the line.
First up yesterday, it was time for inspection by the shift supervisor:
Everything checked out, I guess, so I kept plodding along.
Even got to bust out the vintage TS350 cutoff saw to do a bit of work with the blocks. I had to cut the "tails" off of a couple of them; then I can put the beveled ends tight together to make a 30° corner.
That's as far as I got last night. Starting to look like something, anyway. There is one 30° corner at the end of the timbers that form the main stretch of the wall; then another one three blocks past that. I was going to put in a third one to complete the full 90° turn at the end of the wall, but it really wouldn't make much difference in the end, and would end up making three short sections in the front of the wall instead of two longer ones, which would mean a lot more cutting and work. I still have to situate the last few blocks; I ended up having to move the end of the straight wall out a couple inches which threw everything all off. It's harder than it looks to get those all lined up really nice, too.
Today I got the bottom platform framed in, and all the timbers you see have been anchored with rebar and are nice and sturdy now. The boards are just sitting there for now; I built a small frame out of pressure-treated 4X4 posts and set it inside the big timbers on top of a healthy layer of drain rock. An 8X8 will go across the back of this level on top of the two deadman pieces and will act as the step up to the next platform; next, a longer deadman will go all the way from the face of the wall back to the back of this next platform and will act as the step up to the next level, a 90° turn to the right. Hopefully I'll get a fair bit of that done tomorrow, since I should have all day to work on it. I'm still going to need a fair bit more 8X8 stock though - I need quite a few short pieces which may not work out all that nicely with the lengths I have, so I hope I can get away without wasting too much. I still have 10 logs left to mill up top though, 6 of which should give me nice 8X8s 10-12 feet long.
It's turning out to be a bit more of a project than I initially thought I was getting into, but so far I'm happy with how it's looking and coming together. It's something I've wanted to get done for five-odd years now, so it's about time.
