A Cabin By A Lake: Service Projects- Part 1- Benches

One of the fun things we get to do this year is helping the Young Women with their service projects. We are finding out that for every hour the girls serve, there are hours of preparation done by the missionaries.

The big push this year is to replace old benches in the campfire pits in the different camps. The benches are old, rotted and full of big, black ants!

We started preparing before the girls arrived at camp- it was our "bad weather" activity when we couldn't cut wood. A lot of the prep work was done at the bottom of the hill in a large storage garage.

The premilled logs were cut to size and loaded on the trailer and transported down from the mountain.

Saw horses were set up and the logs were carried in so we could work on them.

The 6 foot logs weren't too heavy, but the 8 and 10 foot logs get pretty cumbersome.

Each log is lifted onto the rollers, marked and then drilled with a drill press, and then drilled again.

Then they are moved again and drilled on the top side.

Each log is sanded and routed, and then moved again.

The logs are then brushed off and borated to kill the bugs that might be in the wood and to discourage bugs from getting in them in the future. They are then moved again to dry, and then moved again to the trailer. They are then moved back up the mountain.

It gets very dusty in the shed, so we try to protect our radios and jackets.

No wonder no one could get hold of us on the radios!

The prepared logs are then stained- on the bottom, and then the next day on the top.

This happened right after we got one set of logs stained...

Sigh...... orange slush?

Needless to say, we have lifted and carried a lot of logs this summer.

The benches set on cement pedestals. Most of the ones we have used were made by the missionaries last year. As we were running out, we had to set up a cement "plant" and make some new ones.