The unbearable lightness of beams

September 17, 2015 by easternhighlander

Subtitle: Beams for mystery building projects!

We arrive just in time for the start of unloading these hardwood beams. Edmore and Delight are already in action on top.

The start of unloading seligna beams

It takes an 8 ton truck to bring the hardwood beams

It takes an 8 ton truck to bring the hardwood seligna beams

Beams slide off carefully @ +50kg

Musodza in action on the truck

Two beams at once join the stack

Stacked on pre-leveled poles.

Tidy stacking

Ramius and George unloading

Manjari

Tendai

Makanza & Saunyama

Several loads later the stack grows

End of the day

Fencing Part 6: D to C

September 7, 2015 by easternhighlander

Arrive at D, turn the corner and we are heading for C. Now we have to practice our downhill fencing skills.

Dogs at fencing D to C

D to C just before the decline

George checking the fence

A serious Garikai

Ramius nailing while the end of the fence is stretched strand by strand

Ramius up close

George manually tensioning for Ramius

Looking back on progress D to C

Last pole before the decline

George holding barbed wire strainer

Pulling the extra strainer between high and low poles

The team tackles the high to low problem

Tightening the high strainer

Bottom support for the same pole

More supplies arriving down the steep section

Garikai

A taste of things to come in C to B

And below the Hornbydale entry in the all Zimbabwe Adventure Fencing Competition 2015.

The C to B Adventure Fencing Challenge Competition

Fencing Part 5: D to E

September 3, 2015 by easternhighlander

You have no choice but to endure more and more posts – about more and more fencing! Its that much fun as you can see in the next 3 pictures!

We are using the first 600m as our testing ground – to work on our technique and get it right – ready for more challenging times ahead of us.

George and Garikai – enjoy that fence puller!

Tendai

Burying the bottom of the fence

and moving stones to hold the bottom down securely

The bottom of the fence is bent outwards and trapped with boulders

George and Tendai

Bonox veld fence going up

Meet one of our early challenges

Mr Artwell is actually hammering the staple sides together to make sure they are parallel and easy to hammer into the posts

Used as a tool holder

George the senior fencer on THAT boulder

The hands that built Hornbydale

Garikai taking it seriously

And these days we can’t end a post with pictures of nice poles. (Now more important than doggie pics!)

Beautiful poles

Need I say more!

The pole dipping factor being decommissioned

We may not know what it is … but we built it anyway!

September 3, 2015 by easternhighlander

There were a lot of semi-dried, over-sized eucalyptus logs that needed a use. So we built this ….thing …

Tendai hammering a smaller in-filling log

Very heavy wood logs

Needing a lot of effort to roll

Rolling logs

The big lift

7 man lift

into place

Didymus lifting

Didymus in charge of the design

Tongai trimming and shaping

Tongai and Ramius congratulating themselves!

The rolling team end of day

The designer – triumphant!

Team photo!

Ok, it’s a tidy way to store the logs for future stone cracking (i.e. burning) and provide an interesting castle for the school children to play on. It’s a good place for grown-ups to sit absorb the surroundings too.

Sorry – missing a doggie photo!

Fencing Part 4: Start Fencing – Section E to D

September 3, 2015 by easternhighlander

It has really arrived! The day we start putting up the 2.1m mesh fence supplied by Fence Secure of Msasa Harare and made in Zimbabwe (also termed Veld Fence or Bonox Fence).

I will post under the alphabetical boundary sections. We are starting from point E (close to the house) and heading off to D about 250m away to the east.

Ramius and Tendai on Day 1 of fencing

100m of fencing rolled out infant of the poles

100m of fencing rolled out in front of the poles

I’m sure there is a technical name for this device – ‘fence grabber’ will do for now!

Using our custom made fence grabber for the first time

To pull the fence tight requires the use of a fence puller. The puller is tied on to the grabber (which is temporarily screwed down onto the fence) and then itself wraps around the straining pole (right of picture below). The straining pole has extra (barbed) wire tied down to a large stone(s) buried in the ground. You can just see the barbed wire below top right.

George attaching the fence puller to the fence grabber

As we learnt the hard way – the chain must not be twisted or else, sooner or later, the puller cannot grab any more links as they are twisted out of alignment compared to the jaws.

The chain must not be twisted!

George happily inspecting the fence grabber

The whole lot is tightened using the jaws, one by one, to grab and slide over successive chain links. There is a lever coming off to left below which provides the manual driving force.