Treasure hunt

Acouple of weeks ago, Terry and I joined a local gem and mineral club. It cost $15 to join and you get access to several mining claims the club owns.

One claim is about 15 miles from our house. After church, we went to check it out. A friend of ours knew how to get there so we met him and drove to the parking area. Then we had to hike in about a mile to the claim.

The area was full of holes and craters where people had dug over the years looking for sapphires.

Terry said this would be the best place to dig:

After you get a bucket full of gravel, you sift in these screens.

Close supervision is important.

And we found some! 5 sapphires and one garnet. Looks like one may be good enough to cut into jewelry.

Click on the picture for a better view.
And a bonus. Before we left, I put some of the leftover sand into a bag and brought it home. When I panned it in the creek, I found about 20 flakes of gold. I added it to the other gold found over the past couple of years:

Nice weekend

Looks like the beavers have been as busy as we have. This dam is about 4 feet tall and has backed up a pretty big pond.

Spring has arrived and everything is turning green.

Saturday, Terry and I worked on the forms and steel for the second bridge pour.

This one has a lot more rebar.
Concrete is very heavy so there has to be lots of support underneath so the form can't shift or sag during the pour.

We plan to pour the concrete on Friday.

22nd, mostly sunny 63 degrees

PHASE II

We pulled the forms off of the first section. It turned out pretty good. The plastic worked well to make it easy to separate and left a smooth finish. There were a few wrinkle marks here and there though.
Pepper doing what she does best:
The 3/8 plywood on the form bowed out a little between each stud on the first pour. I took the forms back over to the shop to add another stud between each of the other studs. Now the studs are every 6 inches around the curve instead of 12 which should keep it from bowing again. The form pressure will be a lot higher on the next two pours since the height will be 54 inches. (The first pour was only 36)

Look at the old bridge foundation. It's in pretty bad shape.

We set up the form again for the second pour:
Last time, Joe and I poured this little curving slab. This was to set the form on for the second part. It makes it alot easier and it won't settle when the 15000 lbs of concrete is placed.

I will have to make another one of these to use for the last pour.

19th - Snowing

Here are some pictures of a herd of elk we saw on the way to work Monday morning.

4-wheeling trip

Saturday, Terry and I went four-wheeling around the York area. We took along the GPS. I found a website that will put the GPS points into GoogleEarth and make a 3D map. Here is a picture of what it looks like from one angle:











There are some gaps in the trail where the GPS lost the signal. Here is the trail placed on a topo map. The GPS must have recorded a few bad points.

15th - Drizzle - in the 50's

LET THE STRIPPING BEGIN

Here are the footing forms after Fred stripped the wood off of them. We didn't strip the form off the arch. Fred will probably do that tomorrow after work.Here are some goats (five) on the cliffs across the road from the house.

FRIDAY THE 13TH - NEAR 60 DEGREES

THE DAY OF THE CONCRETE

This is one of two concrete mixing trucks that came out for the pour.

This is Joe (in picture below). He works with Fred and came out to help. He is guiding the concrete chute into the footing.
Here is another angle of the same.
Fred is smoothing out the concrete to make sure it is level.
Here is one that has been poured and leveled out.
I had to work so I got to miss the fun. The last truck was just getting ready to pull out when I got home from work. Fred and Joe were smoothing out the concrete in the curved form that we had built. Fred had also built a curved slab to place the next form on so it will be easier to level up. He had some concrete poured into it. The next installment of concrete will be in a couple of weeks (hopefully). The weather was just right for this pour. Tomorrow will be a day of fun and recreation.

I cut the forms so that they would be more manageable. Here are the inner forms about ready to go in. I attached the weld plates to some wooden blocks so that I could mount them in place in the form

I also added a filler strip to eliminate the sharp angle at the bottom of the arch. It's the triangular piece. Sharp edges in concrete tend to break off easy.

I also mounted some 3" PVC pipe to form a couple of holes in the arch. Later these will be used in hoisting it into place.

HAPPY EASTER

The footing forms in place.



Today we leveled up the form for the first arch. Thought I would try stapling plastic to the inside to make it easier to take apart after the concrete pour.

Placing the reinforcing steel.

There will be 5 of these plates cast into the edge of the arches. The arches will be joined together later by welding these to one another.

Terry tied a lot of bars.

Ready to place the outer form.
All this work.. Pepper was exhausted:

7th- Steel and Concrete Forms

Terry and I worked hard today. We got the footing forms and reinforcing steel in place.