Author: Shaun

The Roof Felt Getting Old and Brittle plus Rolled up the Sun Shield

On Wednesday, we performed a quick and dirty fix to our roof over our temporary living quarters and rolled up our Sun shield tarpaulin covering over our corridor.
We suddenly sprang lots of leaks on Tuesday morning during some heavy weather and discovered on the following day that the strips of the roofing felt had shrunk enough to pull apart at the overlapping joints. So we applied a quick fix by inserting a long narrow strip of rubber in between the two layers of the felt and that would hopefully stops most of the water from entering our home.

We then rolled up the Sun Shield tarpaulin off the corrugated plastic roof and put that away, plus also completely removed the mid-section support arm and their concrete blocks (all stored on our main garage roof for the time being), so it is ready for the whole roof to be recovered in a brand new layer of roofing felt when the weather is dryer and less windy. We also inspected the roof over our store room and the garden shed and decided that both needed recovering too.
Therefore we ordered 13 more rolls of felt plus a tin of glue and roofing nails and we will grab any portion of any day that is dry, to put on as many strips of new felt each time. we are unlikely to get a whole day or so of dry warm and calm weather so we have to take this approach to grab each moment as it present itself.

25 September 2019
Roof Section D and E Covered in Membrane and Battens and Slates Coverage Progresses on Section B.

For the start of the week, under a damp chilly sky, we gave our nail gun a inspection and discovered that it needed oiling in the drive piston chamber. It was rather dry and sticky with old oil. But the air line should be supplying a tiny amount of oil every time the gun is fired but the device is not apparently working. But at least after cleaning and oiling it , we now have a fully working gun back again!

We proceeded to cover the “D” and “E” sections of the roof with the breathable membrane and put on all the wooden tile battens which makes it now waterproof and ready for slates to be mounted. This took the whole day Monday, the mornings of Tuesday and Wednesday plus morning of Thursday to complete.

D-E-partially-battened

D-E-fully-battened

The latter half of Tuesday was spent making the third aluminium support arm for holding up the Side Porch. The new length of the 2inch square tube arrived last week and we were able to complete this task of reinforcing the roof of the Side Porch.

Center-porch-support-made

And the latter half of Wednesday was spent making stainless steel support posts for our skylight to attach a hook wire around for safety and ladders. We needed one more pillar post as we seemed to have mislaid one or miscounted when we made the original set.

We continued on Thursday afternoon and also most of Friday, putting up more wooden battens that forms the structure for holding the flashing slates. We used the string to maintain a straight line, but the right hip has a slight curve in it so we had to follow this curve. It probably wouldn’t be noticeable unless one looks very carefully. We had to skip the remainder of Thursday afternoon so we resumed Friday (and took most of the day) putting on the rubber membrane band and the bull-nose wooden strip which was then covered in the fibre-glass + dark grey resin coating.

Rubber-and-bullnose-on-BCD-hips-and-ridge-

For late Thursday afternoon, we needed to do the valley trough, installing two full lengths and a specially modified shorter piece that fits right up where the ridge and the skylight meets together. The modifications were done late in the workshop after 6pm so that would be ready in the morning.

Top-of-DE-valley-trough

We also (again late Thursday afternoon) completed putting up the flashing rubber membrane strip along the kerb of the skylight and covered it up with the aluminium protection horizontal band.

Skylight-kerb-flashed

The next job, after finishing the flashing protection strips, from mid-afternoon of Friday, was to cut strips of the metal mesh off our supply roll. We finished off the entire roll and we now have a pile of mesh with a bent bump near the front of each strip to act as a rain water drip deflector. We hope we have enough to finish the job of covering the remaining gutters from “C” to “H”.
On Saturday, we did a little repair job on the C-D corner of the gutters where the joint has warped a bit and there wasn’t enough PU glue in first place. so we clamped the oak timber back into shape again and filled all the gaps with more PU glue after we had sanded and rubbed inside the joint to get some clean surfaces again.

So we decided that because the glue and clamps are in the way, we would instead continue on putting up slates. We got back to the “B” section of the roof and spent some time marking out the initial positions of each row going up the valley using our large framing square and string to get a vertical line to project back on each row to the valley to mark the regular nailing points. Then we also did the same on the “C” section but this time, exactly in the middle so we know where to start the slates from when we want to cover the roof and generate our special pattern.
And finally, for the rest of the day, we started putting up more slates, on the “B” roof portion, another 150 slates, going up the valley, doing all the angled slices in the slate hanging over the valley trough. It is a long laborious job but we got there, right to the top!

Slating-started-on-B

C-Roof-slate-alignment-marked

So for the start of the new week, we will put on the metal mesh over the gutters and then continue putting up a further 3500 slates to cover all the roof sections from “B” to “E” we have prepared.

21 September 2019
Preparation of Hips and Ridges All Completed, Gutters Installed and Rubber Liners Inserted In Gutters

The start of the week was a bit damp with a very light rain falling almost all day Monday. We resumed work on our roof by nailing and gluing the layers of plywood strips to make up the flashing structure for the Hips and Ridge that goes up the Side Porch and up to the Skylight on the E-H corner. We had to saw several lengths of plywood strips from our left-over pile (to make the 175mm wide pieces) and cut three more 100mm 15mm thick strips. But that is all done now and that also see the completion of this job of putting up these flashing strips as there is no more to do!!

Hips-and-ridges-for-EFG-H-1

Hips-and-ridges-for-EFG-H-2

So for the following day, Tuesday, we were able to get on with the job of installing the gutters, using our pile of Oak timber pieces, ready in their two styles. But we discovered that we are running out of pieces! We had only five and half lengths (2metres each) of our base boards and seven lengths of the front vertical pieces. This only allowed us to complete the remainder of the ‘E’ section and around the corner onto the ‘F’ (the Side Porch). We did have enough to continue around again to the ‘G’ section which is very short and has a downpipe channel located at the end but no more than that to enable us to complete the last section ‘H’ which needed three more base boards. So we decided to stop short on the ‘F’ section and make more Oak pieces in our workshop when it rains next time.
So we glued the base boards in and then got the front vertical pieces push on, glued and clamped, all the way to just short of completing the ‘F’ section, which now enables us to get the valley in the D-E corner to be prepared and get the Front Porch covered in slates.

E-Gutter-wood-glued-in

Half-of-F-gutter-done

Wednesday started a bit damp so we couldn’t get on doing the fibre-glass and resin process to seal the E-F outside corner so instead we got on with putting up the breathable membrane and half the tile battens on the ‘C’ roof section. It was very interesting as this roof is very steep at 60°!! We had more showers at noon so we came in for a discussion on slate tiling patterns and then had lunch.
Thursday was a lovely day and we got on with the task of putting up more battens on the ‘C’ and ‘B’ roof sections and they are now both complete and ready for slates.

B-battens-finished

C-battens-installed

During the day, after lunch, after waiting for the wood surfaces to be dry enough (after the rain we had yesterday), we proceeded to fibre-glass and resin the outer corner of the guttering, where the E-F sections intersects. With this done, we can now insert the rubber liner.
Finally, on Saturday (Friday?s work was lost due to other commitments), we indeed got our rubber liner inserted into the gutter running along the ‘E’ section of the roof. That was the morning’s task and after lunch, we then ran up a strip of membrane up the valley and nailed six lines of 38mm wide counter battens that supports the valley trough. And finally, we started putting up the breathable membrane bands across horizontally the ‘D’ and ‘E’ sections of the roof. We only managed to get one line up as our usual nail gun was playing up and misfiring the nails. We swopped over to our alternative gun that uses full headed nails held together in a strip by a plastic material moulded around the nails.
But then we tackled the first tile batten and the nail gun was doing funny things to the nail strips, this time they were the 50mm long nails. We had no problems with the 64mm ones! So we are having a jinx on our tools at the moment. Phew!
Finally, to finish off the day, we applied black mastic sealant to the ends of the rubber liner to make sure that water cannot creep in.

E-Gutter-done-and-start-of-battens

Next week, we will get on putting up the breathable and battens to get both ‘D’ and ‘E’ sections water tight and ready for the next load of slates to go on.

14 September 2019
Metal Posts Installed, Platform Modules Rearranged and Guttering Completed for E

Monday, we had a little quick job of making some extra shelving for our living quarters, made out of pieces of plywood lying around

New-shelves-for-Mum

Then we got on with installing the last two metal aluminium legs for the Front Porch and its roof. We managed to hoist up the beam running underneath the roof edge, using our car hydraulic jack to lift it up 10mm on the outer corner and then a more distance (30mm) in the middle. All three legs are now bolted down into the concrete foundation pads and the plain steel concrete bolts were covered in bitumen sealant to protect them from damp sand in the long run. The top of the legs were screwed into the wooden beam using stainless steel coach screws.

3-metal-poch-legs

Porch-leg-concrete-bolts-masticed

The final job of Monday was to clean out the man-hole chamber that got damaged several months ago by a delivery van driver. We used our vacuum cleaner to suck up the sand and then wrapped a strip of rubber membrane around the top of the chamber to cover up the broken edge to stop further sand and soil to leak in. we will do a proper repair later on when we get the driveway laid.

Manhole-repaired-2

Manhole-repaired-1

Tuesday morning was spent going around the eves cleaning the excess brown glue away from the rafters coming down to the back of the fascia, doing about half of the circuit before lunch.
After lunch, we resumed our task of moving the platform modules to their new position.
Wednesday was spent all day adjusting the platform modules including moving the lift shaft into its final position (where it will serve us right to the end of completing the whole roof).
Thursday was another half workforce day, so the second set of the aluminium bracing support were made, this time for the Side Porch. These arms are angled at 53° from the wall surface about 6 feet off the ground and reaches out all the way to the corner of the framework beam.

We wanted to avoid having straight vertical posts supporting the porch so we can move vehicles around on our driveway without the fear of bumping into a leg and causing complicated damage to the overhanging porch and the roof. The angle was derived by calculation the stress and strain numbers on the 50mm square tube and the 53° position turned out to be the surprising optimum angle! Late afternoon, we installed one of the new arms on the E-F corner, all screwed using four stainless steel 80mm by 6mm hex head coach screws at each mounting plate.

Angled-porch-support-EF

Friday, we put up the second arm, similar to the first arm and it was screwed with more stainless steel hex head coach screws.

Angled-porch-support-FG

We had designed the porch with just two supports but discovered that we hadn’t fully appreciated in how flexible a 6metre beam would be and not having a third middle support point meant that we are likely to have a dip in our gutters especially after we have loaded the slates on to the roof! So we spent the day installing a middle horizontal additional support beam. We had to cut out a rectangular hole in the middle of the existing beam to allow a 89mm CLS timber to be inserted and a similar hole in the wall in between the Utility room’s window and door. That was the middle layer so two lengths were glued and clamped on top and underneath to stiffen it up. Behind the wall, we also put in a third layer underneath the two existing layers (of the top plate) and that was glued and clamped as well.

New-midspan-top-brace-on-F-porch

The last piece of structural piece of work to be executed was to provide a vertical post behind the cement board so we could screw the metal arm into place later on. This post forms the third side of the triangle that forms a combined structural element to hold up the middle of the Side Porch roof and gutters. The post is made up of three 95mm by 45mm regularised timber pieces, two of them glued together to produce a square core element and the third piece glued and screwed overlapping the front surfaces including the top and bottom timber layers of the original wall.

New-wall-post

Top-new-wall-post

On Saturday, we repaired the temporary Loke fence where some sections had torn the plastic webbing. One of the wooden posts proved to be fragile and rotten at ground level so we replaced that post with a new round post. Then using the left-over length of the fencing, replaced the torn sections and threaded a rope weaving in and out of the top line of the webbing to provide a stronger support for the plastic fence against strong winds.

Loke-edge-fence-renewed

The excess glue was cleared away off our new middle support beam and sanded it down hard to reduce the blobs of bubbled glue along the joins.

Finally, we finished setting up the platform modules with all the safety side strips and installing the motor into the lift shaft.

Scaffold-platforms-and-Lift-moved

We are ready to resume work next week on the roof now and get the Side Porch prepared for tiling and allow us to complete the Front Porch, at last!

7 September 2019
Roof Section A More or Less Complete and Three New Aluminium Posts Created for Front Porch

We had a bank holiday Monday to our week so we did a slow day of measuring the Front Porch various elements so we can adjust the level of the Porch with our new aluminium posts. The spreadsheet gave us the relationship between the three concrete pads we done ten days ago and they are now hard enough for supporting the load of the Porch and the roof with the slates, and the support beams and the gutters itself.
We used our laser level site to get the numbers and we now have three length to make our aluminium posts with top and bottom plates to help spread the load and fix the posts to the wooden beam and also keep it stable on the concrete.
The posts are in the order of 3200mm long, plus or minus 3mm.
It was very hot and we decided to avoid working on the roof until the next day Tuesday.
So Tuesday, half a day Wednesday (afternoon) and half a day of Thursday (morning), we got the rest of the largest ‘A’ section all covered in slates, an additional 1,200 of them, making a total of 2,500!
The temperature was still very hot and it climbed to 29°C on Tuesday but was cooler on the following days. We drank lots of water more or less every hour. Phew!

Roof-A-complete

The remaining part of Thursday was spent tidying up our platform walkways, moving the trolleys of slates back to ground level, moving equipment and materials around so we could start undoing the modules along ‘A’ and the ‘P’ sections. We need to do this because we need to gain access to the other half of the main front roof, the ‘E’ section on the other side of the front porch.
For Friday and Saturday, while one half of the work force was occupied elsewhere, the metalwork was done on the posts for the Front Porch. There are three aluminium square posts, measuring 50mm a side and 3200mm tall. Each end has a flat metal plate welded, to help spread the load across the interface; the concrete pad at the bottom and the wooden beam up inside the porch roof. The bottom pad is a solid 150mm square and 6mm thick and the top piece is 75mm wide and also 6mm thick. The top plates comes in two shapes; a straight one measuring 125mm long for the middle leg, and two L shaped one for the corners. The first thing Stephen need to do was learn how to weld aluminium, this need changes to the welding machine and learning a new technique for the welding. This took up most of Friday morning (doing many practice welds and checking quality)!

Aluminium-welding-Cross-section

Then the plates were cut and butt welded. The on Saturday the plates were welded to the posts.

Porch-legs-1

Porch-legs-2

Porch-legs-3

We started installing them Saturday afternoon and we got one up in the C-D corner but we were trying to lift up the other corner, the B-C corner, to slide the metal leg under the beam, only 10mm to lift but it is proving difficult to do. We are using a car hydraulic jack but can’t get a stable base to apply the force to lift up the beam and the roof that 10mm.

Porch-leg-base

Porch-leg-top

We will resume on Monday! Once the metal posts are in place, we can rearrange the working platform modules again so we can get access to the whole of the ‘E’ section and around along the Side Porch too. Then we can do more guttering and inserting the rubber liner.

31 August 2019
“P” Roof All Complete, Mesh on “A” Gutter, Half of “A” Roof Covered in Slates and Flashing Installed Along Skylight

Another week is complete, with lots of Slates being mounted plus some little bit of work on the window’s octagon pillars.
The hip flashing was first to be done, with the bull-nose shaped fibre-glass covered in the dark grey resin, going up the P-A intersection of the roof.
Then we went to work on the “P” section of the roof and finished it off, as now we have means and support to climb up (on the “A” roof) to gain access to “P”.

P-Finally-finished

We also put up the Skylight rubber flashing along the “A” section to the “C” ridge line and put up the aluminium cover strips too.

We then installed the other half of the slating battens on ‘A’ (another 24 rows and about 260m long)

Roof-A-all-battened-up

Next, the metal mesh (for the guttering) was cut into strips off the roll, but with an additional modification applied at the same time. we put on a steel rod on to the jig so we could push and squash the mesh around the rod to make a “bump”, sticking up into the air. We are hoping that this will solve the annoying and troublesome rainwater from running across the mesh without dripping off into the gutters and dribbling over the edge down to the ground. This bump will, fingers crossed, interrupt the flow of the water and force it to drop into the gutter as it should do in the first place!
We then proceeded to cover all the way along the “A” section and half of the “B” section including the valley corner. We had already, by then, installed two 3metre valley trough modules up the A-B valley.

Gutter-Mesh-on-A

For the last two days, we got on with slating the “A” roof and we have managed to do about a one thousand three hundred slates.

A-Slating-Day-1

A-Slating-Day-2

There were interruptions during the week, some due to bad weather where we worked in the workshop on our windows and continuing with the task of shaping our octagon pillar pieces, but we had other little interruptions too.
Next week, we will carry on with the “A” section and put up another 1500 slates, up the valley and to complete that. Then will do the three porch metal posts and get them done before we start putting on more weight on the roof and the porch.

24 August 2019
Membrane Installed on Section A and B with Half of Wooden Battens Plus Work on Oak Timber for Windows

This report is for the last two weeks of work, we had some of the days on other commitments, but we mostly worked on our roof with some in our workshop processing more oak during the wet days.
The first task was to put in our Rubber liner into the gutters, in section “A”, “B”, “C” and “D”,. It was a bit hit and miss in finding clear weather but we managed to complete this task over two afternoons.

The next task was to complete the Hips and Ridge lines, building up the layers to form the edge of the main slate surface and allow for our flashing slates to protect these edges.

Then we concentrated on putting up the breathable membrane on just the “A” and “B” sections, to allow us, later on, to get on with the job of putting up slates (which will, in turn, allow us to do another rearrangement of our working platforms so we can reach the remaining of the “E” section and go around the corner onto the “F” Side Door Porch).
The “A” roof is the largest section and it needs 55 rows of tile battens, each one being at least 10 metres long each. By the end of the 2 weeks, we have got that done with half the battens installed, but at least, we now have two sections rainwater proof.

Roof-A-half-battened

Roof-B-half-battened

When it was raining or strongly forecast to be (which amounted to about 4 days in total), we got on with the operation of planing our Oak timber to make the decorative Octagon shaped ‘pillar’ that stands on each side of each window. We had sliced wider planks in half with a 45degree cut and we had thought that we weren’t going to get very thick finished pieces because there seems to be lots of patches of “dips” and “bulges”. We did actually reject about ten planks anyway and got replacement ones from storage. We learnt a valuable lesson about Oak timber (well any timber!) and how random and natural they are!
We ended up with 54 finished, all 20mm thick after planing . Half are the slightly wider ones for the front facing piece and another 27 smaller ones for the angled piece going into the window frame.

Oak-window-octagon-parts-planed

After the gutter rubber was installed we noticed that water collected in the front porch gutter i.e. the ‘C’ gutter, It was over 20mm deep before starting to flow away. This shows that the temporary legs we installed when we built the porch are not supporting the roof properly. We need to install proper support before loading hundreds of kilos of slates on the roof! We need strong legs which will stand up to being bashed by materials moving around, so we decided to use metal posts. As the posts go into the ground we wanted rust proof ones, we started looking at stainless steel and even got as far as trying to order some but the supplier did not deliver to our location. Whilst searching for other suppliers we looked at aluminium (which is as strong as Stainless steel) and found it was half the price of stainless so we bought Aluminium instead. The post will be 50mm square hollow tubes with 4mm thick walls with 6mm thick plates at the top and bottom. The final task of this period of work, was to dig three holes at the spots where the metal posts will go. The holes were dug down 450mm to the standard frost level point and concrete was poured in to form solid pads about 450mm square and 150mm thick. The metal posts will then stand on these pads and stretch up to connect to the framework forming the porch, about 3.2metres high.

1st-Hole-for-prch-post

2nd-Hole-for-prch-post

3rd-Hole-for-prch-post

Aluminium-ready-for-porch-posts

Next week, we will carry on installing all the other half of the wooden battens for “A” and “B” roof sections while we wait for the concrete to cure and strengthen and start putting up Slates, firstly to finish off the last little bit of the “P” and around onto to “A”.

17 August 2019
Gutters Installed but also more Site Clearance done too

It was another week of a mixed bag of jobs and tasks, but we made progress on the guttering, oak planks for our windows and did some site clearance too.
The first job of the week was to correct a problem with our Downpipe channels where the bottom base board had warped. We basically clamped it back together again and then drilled pilot holes and screwed in five stainless screws on each edge. We did this minor operation on the A-B and D-E Downpipe Channels (these are either sides of the front door porch).

Then our skip arrived and we got on loading that instead. We started to cleared away a pile of rubble and rubbish that has been accumulating over the last few years, we found the skip we order was not big enough.

The-rubbish-heap

With a slight delay to the work on Tuesday, we got on with the job of installing the Guttering, putting eight oak pieces for the base of the gutters and another eight front pieces, including two angled blocks for each of the Downpipe Channels. This took us several days to complete, spread across the week (about 3 days in total), with some rainy weather interruptions too.

On Wednesday, saw the arrival of our second skip and we did a little bit of clearance before the rain arrived as forecasted. So we retired to our workshop to resume the task of slicing one good straight edge to all our 27mm thick oak planks. Next we entered all these planks and their minimum width measurement into our spreadsheet. It turned out to be eighty planks in total that we have been processing. After analysis, we put back all the planks that were 180mm and wider, back to our external storage racks. Also took back those ones that had bigger knots in the middle plus a half a dozen width from 100mm to 150mm, all to the storage racks too.

So Saturday, after we had finished gluing the gutters (Thursday afternoon and all day Friday), all along the “A”, “B”, “C”, “D” and a third of the “E” sections of the roof, we proceeded to fibre-glass and resin the two Downpipe Channels and the two outer corners (B-C and C-D) with our usual black coating, ready for the rubber membrane to come in. Also all the excess glue that had bubbled out, both inside and outside of the guttering, was removed and sanded smooth.

A-gutter

AB-and-BC-Corners-fibreglassed

C-Gutter

DE-Corner-fibreglassed

The last job of the day, and week, was to fill up our second skip with the remainder of the rubbish and clear away unwanted sacks of shredded plant material too.

The-Heap-is-gone

Next week, we can start on putting the rubber membrane into the guttering, which will lead us to start putting up the roofing breathable membrane and wooden battens, ready for the slates – Hurray!

3 August 2019
A Mixed Bag of Tasks and Jobs Done This Week

A week of a mixed bag of lots of little tasks, jobs and errands, with a mixed bag of super-hot days, thunderstorms and a cool damp day to finish the week!
For the first job on Monday was to finish as much as possible the of the ‘P’ section of the roof, putting on several hundred more Slates. We couldn’t finish it as the last few columns need to have access from the other roof surface (the ‘A’ section along the front of the house) so we had to stop there and started the process of tidying up everything off the platform modules, ready for them to be moved.

P2-Slated-as-far-as-we-can-go-now

But first, after almost forgetting to do it, we washed out the finished gutters using the pressure washer and sanded smooth the joints (removing the expanded glue) and surfaces along the guttering. Then we removed all the edging plywood strips off our working platforms, removed all the screws joining the modules (there were eight of them) together and released them from the walls of the house too.
But we couldn’t move them for two reasons number 1 was that we had two crate’s full of Slates were in the wrong position, or rather, they clashed with the need to locate the line of our working platform to go along the front of the house and secondly, the old little covered storage hut (containing sheet materials) was blocking the route when we needed to move the eight modules around to the front.
So the next job was to make a new storage rack inside the house, this time, a four layered construction with room for a large pallet on the concrete floor for the cement boards.
After the external storage hut was emptied, we took it apart and recycled some of the bits and screws but most of it was beyond use and carried away ready for burning or other items put into the rubbish bins.
Now the next job was to empty two crates of Slates and we moved about 3200 of them and piled them on top of our other four crates. We used our large flat bed trolley to help us with that massive heavy job!

Slates-moved

Now at last, we could move the eight modules, one at a time. We made it easier for us by clamping a wooden bar across the legs and carrying each one the long way around the house. The eight modules gave us the scope to work on all the ‘A’ section, all the ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ and the first bit of the ‘E’ sections of the roof, this is nearly all the sections along the front of the house. We will have to move two more modules to enable us the access to the rest of the ‘E’ section to the corner with ‘F’ but we will do that later on.
That was the end of Wednesday and we finished a little early too because it was very hot (our air temperature was 33°C and the ground was reading 40°C on the sandy soil but our slates on the roof was reading 50°C!!

Thursday, we avoided the hot sun by working in our workshop to process the next set of Oak timber planks, to make a series of narrow flat vertical pieces to form the octagon shaped pillars on each side of the windows. We brought in all the 27mm thick by 2metre oak planks, about 75 in total. We will only need some of them as we are making a set of 100mm wide parts and a set of 70mm wide parts, 26 of each (we should be able to get two parts from many of the wider planks). We would like to pull out the nicest quality ones so we try to avoid those ones with knots and twisted grains. We first chopped all the ends, removing any split ends and other defects and got started on slicing one straight edge using our track saw. We managed about 25 planks so far.

Lots-of-Oak-planks-for-window

We had Friday off because of other commitments but we resumed on Saturday and catching a break in the rainy weather, we went out to fix and join all the eight platform modules together and anchor them to the building, also putting on the edge plywood edging strips too.

Scaffold-platforms-along-ABC

Scaffold-platforms-along-CDE

That concludes the mixed bag of things we did this week, but at least, we now have everything ready so we can resume work on the roof, this time along the front of the building where we continue putting on the gutters, fibre-glassing the corners, inserting the rubber and then the membrane and everything else!

27 July 2019
26 Oak Vertical Pieces Produced for 13 Windows

For the last three days of this week’s work, we were in the workshop processing the pile of Oak timber that makes up the vertical elements of the window frames. It is ironic because the weather forecast said rain on all three days but actually the second day (Friday) didn’t have any rain what so ever! But we just got on with the job of planing and cutting the oak.
We went through the usual process of planing one side of the 26 timber pieces and one of the edges, working on the top configuration of the planer with its two long extensions, before transforming the equipment into the thicknessing mode and planing the second side and the other edge, all to a known width and thickness. While doing this process, we realised that some of the current oak pieces were not going to be good enough so we got three more rough timber pieces off the storage rack and included them in all this stage!
When we finished we rejected the worst three pieces (they went back outside to the rack) and so we had 26 finished pieces.

Sides-planed-to-size

The next day was building a template to guide the router with a ball race parallel cutter, to shape the end with a 6 degree slope and turning at a certain point to finish off flat. This shape matches the surface of the sills, and lines up at the back where the glass will sit.
The template was made of two pieces of hard cement boards, screwed onto a piece of wooden batten and then sliced in the chop saw with the 6 degree angle. This was then screwed together to a base board and that was screwed to a long double sided rail that holds the oak pieces. Then each piece was inserted into the template and the end routed to shape.

Start-with-square-end

run-router-along-jig

end-up-with-base-of-side-shaped

The last step in this day’s work was to cut all of them down to their required length of 1654mm long, carefully setting up more end blocks and supports, to make sure that all pieces were cut to exactly the same dimensions.
That was day two and we now have a pile of 26 proper length oak pieces, with the special shaped bottom ends.

The last day (Saturday), we had to do the other ends, which in some ways, were more complicated because it has four individual cuts to be made, two across the grain and the other two ripping down the grain. We took thirteen pieces and clamped them all together so we could run the track saw at the precise position, to cut across the grain. Then rip across the end to remove the resultant blocks. The “waste” blocks were quite large, 30mm thick by 34mm long and 46mm high.

Lastly, we put together another template jig, this time to guide the battery saws to cut off a thin slice and that finally made the “pillar” which will fit up into the header frame of the windows. This piece of removal was only 3mm thick by 66mm by 45mm.

Saw-Horizontally

and-vertically

Top-of-a-side-completed

All-sides-done

This concludes all the work on these vertical side pieces of the Window Framework. The next rainy day task is to plane more oak timber but this time, the two sides of the octagon “pillar” that sits in between the sill and the header, on each side of the window. It might be more than a week before we get back to the workshop as there is a hot weather front coming in from Europe next week so we will be getting on with the roof.

20 July 2019