March 24th, 2025
This is the big oak trunk that I saved. This photo shows it suspended above the blue plastic drum that would hold the concrete:
It weighed over 200 pounds, so I had to be very careful setting up the support ropes so that I could lower it smoothly into the blue drum and keep it vertical and pointed in the correct direction.
It was quite an operation setting everything up. I had to hoist it up with a complex system of come-alongs (devices allowing a wimp like me to pull cables with hundreds of pounds of force), pulleys, and guy ropes. These are some of the arrangements above the perch. Note how I set up additional ropes supporting the main (lower) branch from the upper branch:
This photo shows the array of guy ropes I used to keep the perch vertical and facing the correct direction:
Here is it after it had been set in place and I had packed the concrete around its base to hold it in place.
