Mother's Rustic Pergola
(Page 7 of 13)
February/March 1998
By the Mother Earth News staff
The posts were well set, but I waited to set them in concrete so they could still be adjusted an inch or two an any direction necessary to fit their tops to the caps milled into ends of the overhead rails.
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After soaking post tops and the end and inner surfaces of the caps milled into the rails with preservative, I cut 6" wide circles from tarpaper and stapled one t( each cap and post top to keep water from migrating in to rot the joints. Tarpaper of aluminum flashing helmets can be fashioned with shears and fastened over each joint with roofing nails and tar if you like or, exposed joints can be coated inside and out with tar that will serve as a weal, cement and will exclude water entirely
After lifting the overheads onto the posts and adjusting the posts as needed to mate the joints, I fastened verticals to horizontals, bulling in four 3" deck screws with a cordless drill/driver. Screw holes must aim at an upward angle or they'll admit water. l inserted these from the rim of the post top into the rail at a sharp upward angle: this is what is called an "upside down toenail."
With a weather report promising several days warm enough that cement could set up and harden before it froze, I mixed concrete in four separate half-bag batches and filled the upper 6" of the holes with concrete and smaller stones from the excavation. I laid in a concrete ring around each post, forming the top surface of the ring into a shallow cone that peaked up around the post base a little above grow, (I level, and smoothing the surface to ward off flowing water. Setting hardwood posts this way—with a rot—proofed bottom bed ded in a good-draining matrix, and concrete restricted to a collar around the top—will guarantee longer life than enclosing the entire post bottom in a cocoon of cement that will keep the wood constantly moist and susceptible to rot.
Next fall I'll drill a half-inch-wide, down—sloping hole two or three inches into each post just above the concrete collar. I'll insert a funnel improvised from aluminum foil in the hole and keep it full of DAP/linseed oil/turpentine mix for a fairweather week or more. This will permit a fresh dose of preservative to soak in where it is most needed—at ground level, where buried posts most readily absorb water periodically, increasing susceptibility to dry rot, a destructive fungus that thrives in moist wood. The holes will be plugged with whittled dowels to keep water out during the balance of the year and the treatment repeated each fall—the season when the ground is driest.
At the same time, I'll fill a pump-type oil can with preservative solution and apply it to all exposed wood in the frame, particularly post tops and bench legs.
As bark sloughs off over time, I'll mix more preservative and apply it to all exposed wood after grape leaves are down each fall. The natural vegetable oils in the linseed and terps will keep the wood from becoming brittle and the DAP will fend off boring insects such as carpenter wasps and orchard bees as well as prevent infection by common mildew and other wood-eating fungi, moss, and molds.
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