Restoring the exterior of a cedar cabin using three Festool Sanders

Lovely looking place, Frank. Well, except the latrine part. (I love indoor plumbing.) How many years do you get out of a latrine before you need to relocate it?
 
frank, thanks for sharin` your most special of places! i hope your grandson cares for it as you have to be passed to his grandson...the only thing more precious than land is family, and family land is priceless.
 
frank, thanks for sharin` your most special of places! i hope your grandson cares for it as you have to be passed to his grandson...the only thing more precious than land is family, and family land is priceless.
I am glad to share it Tod. And if any members who care to visit, they woud be very welcome. An interesting way to travel would be by train on the Algoma Central railway from Sault Ste Marie to Hearst. I would be happy to help anyone interested with travel arrangements and accomodation at Pellow's Camp. Anyone for the first week of October?

Tod, you are absolutely right with your statement "the only thing more precious than land is family, and family land is priceless". Five generations have loved the place and it is very important to me that we increase that number.
 
Lovely looking place, Frank. Well, except the latrine part. (I love indoor plumbing.) How many years do you get out of a latrine before you need to relocate it?
Our latrine is just about the nicest that I have ever seen. You might change your mind were you to visit Art.

The current "home of Billy Bass" has been in service for 21 years. I am not retiring it but, rather, augmenting it. I find that after about four weeks with an average of four people, a latrine becomes less pleasant to visit. So, once the second latrine has been built, the plan is to open one of them for 3 weeks, switch to the other for 3 weeks, then switch back.
 
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Frank - Of all the places in the world that I have never been to, Pellows Camp has to be one of my favourites:D

Living in an overcrowded corner of an overcrowded island and not really being an overcrowding sort of guy, the idea of a season spent without electricity or crowds is very alluring. One day maybe......

Thanks for sharing.
 
but Frank has already noted his very dangerous use of the wood for leg support. :eek:

View attachment 12516

The front does look really great, Frank... Hard work on your part, with help from the Festools, has really paid off.:thumb:
Hey Greg, I admit that sometimes I am not as safe as I could be on ladders. But, even though I have fallen off them a few times, I have never hurt myself.

What do you think of this setup, that I put together a couple of weeks ago?

Sanding then re-staining east side of cabin -3 -small.JPG

I admit that it slipped and that I fell. :eek: But, I landed on my feet and did not even drop the sander that I was holding.
 
Our latrine is just about the nicest that I have ever seen. You might change your mind were you to visit Art.

The current "home of Billy Bass" has been in service for 21 years. I am not retiring it, but, rather augmenting it. I find that after about four weeks with an average of four people, a latrine becomes less pleasant to visit. So, once the second latrine has been built, the plan is to open one of them for 3 weeks, switch to the other for 3 weeks, then switch back.

I'll take your word for it, Frank.

ps: Does Billy Bass do the "Pork, the other white meat" joke?
(Friends have one, and the kids get a big kick out of visiting the john to see the fish)
 
Frank - Of all the places in the world that I have never been to, Pellows Camp has to be one of my favourites:D

Living in an overcrowded corner of an overcrowded island and not really being an overcrowding sort of guy, the idea of a season spent without electricity or crowds is very alluring. One day maybe......

Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Ian, that is great praise indeed. We have had several visitors from England over the years, and they are among the most enthusiastic.

Pellow’s Island is the best place that I have ever lived. But, the second best is in England. Between 1977 and 1979, we lived in the village of Soberton Hampshire where we had a fantastic view up down and across the Meon valley and our neighbours there really welcomed us and made Margaret, me and our children part of the community. We really hated to leave.
 
I am glad to share it Tod. And if any members who care to visit, they woud be very welcome. An interesting way to travel would be by train on the Algoma Central railway from Sault Ste Marie to Hearst. I would be happy to help anyone interested with travel arrangements and accomodation at Pellow's Camp. Anyone for the first week of October?

Hmmm, sounds like fun. But I bet it is a bit chilly in October!

Since I'm in London, I wonder if it would actually be quicker for me to pop over the border into MI and drive north through Mackinac... rather than via Toronto and North. Of course, six tickets (Me, SWMBO, + 4 kidlets) on the Algoma Central Railway would probably add up also.
 
Hmmm, sounds like fun. But I bet it is a bit chilly in October!
It can be. It can also be quite nice. I was there in early October last year and the daytime highs were in the 10 to 15 Celcius range and the lows around the freezing mark. I would be happy with that weather again this year.

Since I'm in London, I wonder if it would actually be quicker for me to pop over the border into MI and drive north through Mackinac... rather than via Toronto and North.
You might think so, but my brother, who lives in London ,tells me that the route via highways 401, 400, and 11 is shorter.

After writing the above, I decided to check using Microsoft Streets and Trips and it tells me that the route I described above is 1083 kilometres, whereas the route via Michigan, Wawa, and Hornpayne is 1219 kilometres. That's 136 further and it avoids two border crossings.
 
You might think so, but my brother, who lives in London ,tells me that the route via highways 401, 400, and 11 is shorter.

After writing the above, I decided to check using Microsoft Streets and Trips and it tells me that the route I described above is 1083 kilometres, whereas the route via Michigan, Wawa, and Hornpayne is 1219 kilometres. That's 136 further and it avoids two border crossings.

Curious, I go to maps.google.ca and it wants to route me via MI at 1205 km. But if I grab the route and drag it back into Canada and drop it on the 401/400/11 route it drops by just over 100km.

Google must think that the highways in the states are "quicker" to drive than the 11 ... hang on, yup, the distance is shorter, but it is estimating a time of 13hr-53min in Canada, and 13hr-12min going via the US.

Clearly, google has never experienced a 1hr delay at the border. :rofl: Actually, I almost never do either in Sarnia.

But going via MI would be fun since I've never seen the Mackinac area, and taking the train from Sault-Ste-Marie would also be an adventure. Oh well, I'm just daydreaming. :wave:

...art
 
frank, thanks for sharin` your most special of places! i hope your grandson cares for it as you have to be passed to his grandson...the only thing more precious than land is family, and family land is priceless.
Well said Tod! I can tell you that most people who marry in to the Pellow family love the island as well.
 
Good to see you, Frank. I was thinking about you yesterday, wondering if you were at the cabin yet or not.

Congrats on the article on the Festool site, too. :thumb:
 
Hi Vaughn. I have not made it to Pellow's Camp yet this year but will be going next week and will be there on and off most of the summer (a lot more on then off I am pleased to say).

We were on vacation in Pennsylvania and Virginia for a good portion of May.
 
It's finished!

2008:

I am happy to be able to report that I have now completed the fourth and final side of the cabin. I spent the bulk of the summer at Pellow's Camp but so many other things were going on that I only completed the task last week.

It was the turn of the south side to be finished this year. This is the side that gets the most weather wear and so the one that was in the worst shape. Here are two before photos:

Refinishing south wall 01 -Before view -small.JPG Refinishing south wall 02 -Closeup view of a really bad section -small.JPG

Early this year, I found a much better scraper made by Bacho in Sweden, so I am doing very much more scraping before sanding than I did on the other three sides:

Refinishing south wall 03 -Frank using new scraper -small.JPG

Notice that I also acquired something much better to stand upon than me precarious footing of prior years.

There were some spot that were two small for any of my Festool sanders and I had to resort to a Dremel:

Refinishing south wall 04 -Had to restort to Dremel sander for some of the sanding in thight pla.JPG

Here is a photo of the the completed job:

Refinishing south wall 06 -Completed -small.JPG

The combined scraping and sanding took a little longer than the other three sides. Each of them took 19 hours. I sraped the south wall for 7.5 hours and sanded it for 14 hours -thus totalling 21.5 hours this time.

I ran out of time to finish the two cabinets (and they stand out like sore thumbs :( ). Next year I will paint them both brown.

Also, next year I plan to lightly sand the north side and give it a "refresher" coat. But that job should only take about half a day.
 
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