Roselea

Author: Shaun

  • Ordered new Nail gun

    This morning we did some research looking for a nailing gun which will allow us to nail metal plates onto timber as well as the usual wood joining plus the ability to take different sizes of nails. There is one particular model that seems to fit the bill so after reading various reviews on it we ordered it along with boxes of nails including hardened nails for firing into metal plates! Another advantage of this nailing gun is that these nails all have full sized heads on them which offers better fixing properties when nailing panels! It is nice to see that the price of the nails are very similar in bulk!

    It is good to have a second major nailing gun on hand, just in case our older (coming up to 8 years now) big gun stops working again!

  • Cement Boards delays!

    The supplier for the cement boards are being very slow in delivering them. We found out today that they are waiting for other orders to come in, to make it worthwhile for them before delivering all the way from Birmingham!

    It is very frustrating for us and it is very much the case of rare use of these cement panels and our relatively small order thus making the problem worse.

    We tried phoning half a dozen local building suppliers to see if any had these types of cement panels in stock and none had! Oh well! In hindsight we should have ordered these panels a month ago!

    We are not quite losing time just yet, we are preparing all the timber for the other parts of the walls and roof, the wire suspension system on the back wall for hanging our long ladders and other items that are too long for storing inside. We probably have about 2 or 3 days worth of jobs left to complete before we hit the point of twiddling our fingers!!

    Fingers crossed!

  • Stack of Cut Timber

    We spend the afternoon cutting up most of the timber for the left side and the right side of the garage. We are still awaiting the cement boards to come and we got on with other jobs like cutting the CLS 89mm by 38mm timber into all the different lengths. It is nice to see the quality of the timber, they are fresh, clean and in good nick! Only one or two had “bad” spots like the point where the suppliers had crunched the edge with their straps holding the whole bundle together!

    We have produced over 74 pieces! And more to come!

    Stacks of Cut TimberStacks of Cut TimberStacks of Cut Timber

  • Cut out Windows!

    I waved the router around and cut the windows out in the back walls! Because the router bit has a ball bearing wheel exactly the same size as the diameter of the cutting blade then it is very easy to slice the extra material away without the worry of going too far and making holes!! I could do this and I did!

    See picture below!

    BackWall with window cutouts

  • Chop Saw & Bench

    We are using our old chop saw setup which includes three 4foot benches to hold and guide the timber into and out of the chop saw. It is getting old and the benches suffered for being outside in all weather for a couple of years! We are planning to make a new setup inside the Garage when it is built. But in the meantime it is doing a grand job of chopping up our timbers into regular lengths for building the walls.

    Saw bench and some cut pieces

  • Building Inspector Approves our Wall!

    Our building control inspector came today to take a look at our back wall. We assured him that the cement boards is the final layer with the DPM plastic material sandwiched in as well!

    I got the impression that he was expecting the wall to be upright! But he is happy. He will come again when we have got the roof on and tied down! He can then see the structure of the posts and windows etc.

    We also talked about the electrics and what form of approval he wanted to see when the electrics are installed.

  • Glue Dispensing Machine

    Stephen has designed a glue dispensing machine using an old pressure spray bottle. He made an adaptor using thermal plastic (you can soften this plastic in hot water and mould it into anything you like) with a high pressure compressed air connector. We then connected a length of garden hose to the outlet and a quarter turn valve to control the flow. With further moulded plastic modules shaped into a broad nozzle to the width of various timber (38mm is the most common) and drill a couple of little holes to allow the glue to come out in a constant stream!

    It is working in tests but we haven’t tried it for real yet!!

    Glue dispenser

    Glue Dispenser - Connections

  • Back Wall Constructed

    We have constructed the back wall of our garage. It is still lying flat on the floor slab at the moment as we are still waiting for the delivery of the cement boards! All the joints and the OSB panels were glued and nailed together in a few hours (about 5 all together). We hope to reduce this on future walls when we employ our new glue dispensing machine! We have calculated that this wall will weigh about 300kg (660lbs) and we are planning to slide it up to the top of the mass wall up wooden slopes using the old fashioned block and tackle method. We have ordered a roll of rope and twin pulleys blocks to give us a 4 to 1 ratio pulling power!

    We just hope that the cement boards will come soon! Or there will be lots of grinding teeth noises!

    When we finished the wall construction @ 19:15Back Wall done @19:15 we realised we couldn’t close the shed door! So we had to push hard to slew the door round enough… Then we covered it in plastic to keep our hard work dry.

  • Air nailing gun not firing!

    Our big framing nail gun has stopped working! The trigger works and we can hear air coming in but the piston is not moving with the usual loud thump and of course the bang as the trigger is released to fire the nail!!

    Stephen took it all apart and greased and oiled the various moving parts but it took two tries of fiddling around to get it working again! We are not sure why it is working again! But we are not complaining or least not yet!

    That took a couple of hours in the morning!

  • Lintels and corner posts

    The lintel over the windows of the back wall of the garage was constructed in one continuous 8.5metre piece. It was made up of two vertical 90mm by 38mm CLS timber with an 11mm OSB board sandwiched in the middle and topped with another 90mm by 38mm timber lying flat. All was glued and screwed together as per instructions in our Structural Engineer’s report.

    We also made the same sandwich construction of two 89mm by 38mm CLS and 11mm OSB to make the corner posts (4 of them) to allow maximum connective forces when we join the walls together.

    The air nailing gun is not working!! oh drat! o bugger!

    We fell back to good old Turbo Gold screws!