The Project
Over the course of more than a year, we’ve been building a quonset-hut style shop to be used for welding on skiffs, creating any number of things for our remote life, hanging nets, and storing gear. It started in January 2021 with organizing shipping by barge from Seattle to Kodiak of the many crates with thousands of pounds of metal to be bolted together. A smaller fishing boat then hauled it to our beach where we unloaded the pieces by hand. Building started last spring with clearing a foundation and placing pilings, and a year later we’re finally enclosed and using the space!
Using the tractor, we placed creosote pilings scavenged from beaches, which have been drifting around in the ocean for years, the leftovers of old, defunct canneries.
Prepping to raise the first arch. We really didn't know what we were doing. The wasn't much of a manual that came with it and the internet wasn't a lot of help since we didn't have a small army nor specialized equipment such as scaffolding. So we made our own with what we had and improvised mightily.
Each arch is two feet wide, spanning 30 feet, and 19 feet high. We ended up making the cradle more and more beefy as we learned and bolted up the structure.
After getting the pad leveled, the foundation of creosote pilings and 3 arches raised in the spring, we took 3.5 months off to go fishing. In September, with bugs swarming, we rejoined the battlefield using the tractor extensively as a hydraulic-assisted ladder to get the extra reach.
It was a milestone when we had enough of the arches up to park the tractor out of the weather. Progress was slow going during the winter months but we worked when it wasn’t too frozen, covered in snow or too windy.
Adelia used a climbing harness and rope to insert bolts in the upper parts of the arches while Tollef was underneath matching them up with nuts.
About 5,000 nuts and bolts later the last arch is up! Now we can start on framing in the end walls and chainsaw milling the posts for the doors (after first cutting down two of our neighbor’s spruce trees she kindly donated to our project, towing them behind the skiff to our beach, and dragging them up with the tractor to dry over the winter).
For the ocean side doors, at 14 by 14 feet, we used a big beam that we beach combed in the fall. What a find!
Putting in a header for the doors on the “shorter” land side of the building.
We’ll put siding on later, but we are thrilled to be closed in and functional in the wonderful new shop!
The shop’s first customer, Adelia’s skiff, is rolled in on bouys with the tractor. 35- years old, it needs repairs and upgrades. Tollef - time to fire up the welder!