Prepping the pillars

Now that the holes are dug, we're moving on to the next step. I've never been around commercial/concrete construction in the States, so I'm not sure how we'd do this part there, but the last couple of days the workers have been cutting, bending, and tieing rebar together by hand to make the steel skeletons that will be poured around to make the pillars.

This is how the skeletons end up

They cut all of the chunks of rebar apart with a hacksaw and vice, then bend the chunks using a steel bar with a notched head at the end that grabs the rebar, and finally use wire to tie all of the pieces together.

The next step will be to build wooden forms, stand the skeletons up in the holes and fill the footings in with rocks and concrete. After that, to make the pillars, they'll nail the wooden cement forms around the skeletons, and then start filling the form with bucket after bucket of cement dumped into the top of the form, until it's full. Hopefully the cement mixer will be ready to roll by the time we get to that point!