Mother's Rustic Pergola
(Page 6 of 13)
February/March 1998
By the Mother Earth News staff
To establish our pergola's ground plan, I laid out a rectangle of small saplings to approximate the desired size and shape with the south end centered at the grape vine, the opposing sides parallel, all four corners 90°, and the shape trued to a rectangle. To check this, the lines running between diagonally opposing corners should be the same length.
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With the pointed end of a 6' steel pry bar I probed as far as I could into the soil 2' to each side of the grape vine. I located stones, but none made the dull, boot-sole jarring thud indicating a large boulder, anal I was able to winkle the probe around them, down more than a foot and a half. I repeated the probe at the other two corners. Then, with a clamshell posthole digger, garden spade and fork, long-handled shovel, and the 6' prybar, I dug 2' to 3' deep holes at the northern corners. It took a little more exacting excavation to dig the holes at the other end—at each side of the grape vine. I needed hand gardening tools to dissect roots out from soil and larger rocks, and I had to make "scratch 'n sniff" tests to differentiate grape roots from the piney-smelling roots of the nearby fir tree.
Level Platform
Many pergolas have split-log, rough-sawn, or hewed-plank floors set up on stone foundations, but such niceties seem better suited to shelters for spiffily dressed Sunday strollers in a city park than to a garden-side work shed in the north woods. Besides, our pergola is on a 10 foot piece of hillside that falls a good 18" from the left top corner to the right bottom. This means that a floor would have to be terraced.
To look best, however, the tops of all four main posts must be even-must describe a fiat and level plane. To determine their lengths from different post-hole-bottom depths, I needed to establish a ground-level plane of reference.
So, I hammered yard-long lengths of sapling into each post hole and, beginning at ground level at the highest post location, strung a line between them around the outer perimeter using a small line-level to assure that all sections of the line were level ...thus, on the same imaginary flat plane. Then I measured the distance from the level line to the bottom of each post hole. These figures added to the desired 7' height of the frame would determine the total length of each post.
Once they were cut to length, I set all four uprights side by side with tops even so I could mark and precut opposing lap joints for stretchers that connect posts and rails, and mark attachment points for seat and table frames on lower inner margins of the posts. Then I beveled the tops of the posts and cut dish shapes into the bottom ends of the 10' long top rails so they'd fit down over the post tops and help repel water. The primary tool used to do this rough milling is a rotary chain saw "Lancelot" on a 4 1/2" angle grinder.
The Frame
I waited for the weather to warm briefly to melt the early snow before putting in the posts. In the bottom of each hole I tamped in several inches of crushed rock, tossed in a handful of rock salt and set in the post, assuring that it was vertical with a carpenter's level. In successive 6" layers, tamping as I went, I filled the hole around each post to 6" below the surface with crushed rock, n moving the larger stones. A handful of rock I salt went around the post between each rock layer. This salt will dissolve slowly over time to soak in and pickle the wood as an added preservative measure. Primitive, but effect ive for centuries.
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