timber hitch

it had been on my mind for a while, how the hell was i going to get the huge sections of sawn timber from the roadside, down to the site. initially i needed to move a quantity of 8, 5.6m x 200mm x 225mm (or 8x9"s in old money), for the first stage of the frame. Antonio at the mill offered to try and crane them down there until he saw how far they'd have to go. but i had a plan. run a steel cable from a tree i had left in situ, down to one of the piles of stone outside the over-site. then belay the timbers down with a rope.

prior to that, i still had the unenviable task of getting the timber from the drying rack to the cable the other side of the road. you have to remember that a few weeks ago, when they were first felled, they weighed over the ton each. now they'd been milled and sat in the sun for a few weeks they had had a massive weight loss, and are probably only weighing in at the 700 or 800 pound mark (or 350-400 kg for those of you on new money). still not something you can put on your shoulder and walk with. well i can't anyway. so i devised a trolley, bought some cheap wheels and made up a wooden cart, to roll them up the hill.









finally, unloaded them, hitched them up to the cable with a timber hitch, and shoved off. using the tree trunk to act as a friction brake to belay them down, without having them cannon through the foundations like some giant medieval battering ram.