Bolt Holes and Preserving the Jungle Fort

Man! Talk about coming to a screaming halt, these past few weeks have really bit into the creativity in me, family commitments and visits to friends have eaten every available spare minute so as you can imagine not much has been done to expedite the project forward. The one thing that I can say is, the lumber is drying out nicely on the driveway but I’d rather be at the assembly point now rather than sanding and coating with preserve. I have noticed some hairline cracks creeping into the boards during the drying process but there’s not much I can do about this. Even if I kept them under a tarp to reduce the amount of direct sun I’m sure the same thing would happen. I’ve been turning the boards on a regular basis and moving the pile from top to bottom to keep as even an evaporation process as possible. If the cracks get too large I may have to consider replacing them if I feel there may be a problem.

Following the set of instructions has proved to be reasonably easy although I have to double check the dimensions because of my variance to the plans. Some of the cuts will be made when I am closer to the assembly of the parts, just incase I have to change because of an unforeseen hiccup in my design and to minimize cracking at crucial points.

Well to cut to the chase, I did managed to cut all the chamfers on the corners to make each of those boards child safe and I found that the presoaked boards had plenty of preserve pressured into a depth of about half an inch. I’m not too concerned about the raw ends and at the end of the day it will be easy to seal them with a couple of coats of green preserve.

My next main goal was to markout all the primary parts that would be bolted together. These would be the all important parts that would start the construction of the Jungle fort. Most of the holes for this stage were half an inch in diameter. For this you really need a drill press plus a minimum of a couple of roller stands, these you can adjust to meet the table height of the drill press. I have a couple of stands that came from Sears but I also found that the roller stands from Harbor Freight were exactly the same and you’ve guessed it, cheaper as well, I guess it’s all about having a Craftsman sticker on.

Another reason for using a drill press is, the counterbore to receive the washer and bolt nut are drilled on the opposite side of the markout after drilling the half inch hole. This means you are counterboring with no material for the center spike of the spade bit or Forstner bit to bite into, also setting the depth gauge of the drill press makes it easy to control all the counterbores without worrying about drilling too deep.

Uprights drilled and counterbored and sealed with green preserve.

I have noticed over time that the prominent green color fades with sun exposure, bleaching the wood to a uniform gray. That being said I will coat everything with redwood stain for an initial overall color but even that will eventually be bleach out. The main thing is the whole play set will be protected from wood eating insects!

During the marking out process I have had to reverse some of the measurements because the swingset in my case is to be mounted on the right hand side. This means that I will have to reverse boards that have been marked out for the right side and place them on the left so you can imagine why I’m taking it easy in the drilling process. To try and speed things along I’ve sanded and rounded all the boards that will be used for the decking, any edges that displayed cracks or splinters I’ve cut back with a chisel. Some of the boards had minor damage from fork truck handling so those areas were cut out to minimize splinters.

Wood decking coated with green preserve.

These boards compared to the WPL, Wood Polymer Lumber are considerably thicker so I wasn’t worried about the integrity of the boards that were chiseled to remove problem areas. The only thing is I may find when I do fix them to the joist timbers, is that I will have to countersink for each screw to provide good anchoring to the joist because the initial screws may be a little short.

Green preserve by Jasco.

If you are in the process of coating with green preserve make sure to put down a plastic sheet to prevent the drive from getting stained. I’m pretty careful but man that stuff makes a mess, put on gloves as well and do it on a breezy day to reduce the amount of smell.

I’ve still got plenty of parts to cut and stain but I’m aiming for getting the main frame together over the 4th July week, if not the whole unit done but that’s going to be a stretch. I want to make sure I record it all but you know how it is, when you’ve got children!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.