Dock Work!

I spent this week working on the dock at Lake Ozark. The dock at my Uncle’s house is very old, and it’s probably been there for 30 years, which is unusual for a dock. The wooden boards on the dock are cracked and are covered in algae, so it was time for some new boards. We started on the walkway down to the dock, which is the hardest part. When constructing a walkway, you have three layers: 1. the metal bars that support everything, 2. the vertical runners that run from the shore to the dock, and 3. the wooden boards that go horizontally across the runners. The walkway is right over the water, and without the boards there, you’re just walking on the metal support bars. I made this collage to show the progress we made over a couple of days.

Working over the water is the worst place for construction. Even by the dock, the water is extremely deep, and my uncle can’t swim! Every time he would slip it was a little scary, but luckily he didn’t fall in. The only thing that fell in was a very expensive ratchet, which we tried to recover, but sadly it’s now one with the fishes. It was so nice to be out on the lake though, and working with my uncle was fun. I became the master of using the drill to unscrew the boards. We aren’t quite finished as you can tell by the last picture, so we will have to work on it another week. Overall, I had a really fun time getting to help my uncle and learning about how docks are made!