Author: Shaun

Today, in the morning, processed a couple more Oak pieces, one extra 150mm plank to add to our forty we have already, just in case we run out. The other one is much wider at 220mm which will be needed in making the special ten outside corners of the roof and the Fascia, as we wanted to have a 45° angle “chopped-off” the guttering etc.
Then after lunch, we went around measuring every single sticking out rafter (the eves) using our site laser level and surveying equipment. All the numbers got recorded and then transferred to a spreadsheet to reveal that we have a wobbly “random” positions for the ends of the eves (in theory they should have all been the same height), which is where our Fascia boards will be mounted on.

The analysis shows that most of the individual rafters are a little below optimum level (the construction drawings requires the level to be 2.7metres above ground), the worse one being 25mm low but actually the average was only 3mm too low and most less than 8mm low. There are only a half dozen of exceptional ones being either too low or too high. This led us to feel more confident that we will mount our Fascia boards at exactly the 2.7metre point above ground and make the necessary modifications or adaptations to each individual rafter as required.
The end results of this decision is to allow us a much better control over the positioning of the gutters themselves so each section can have a proper “downhill” slope to encourage the rainwater to flow towards the nearest downpipe in a quick and orderly manner!

Today, we finished off planing the fifteen planks that were glued overnight to get rid of the glue colouring and any slight imperfections. Then we converted the planer machine into the thicknessing mode, connected up the vacuum chipping remover cover and started planing all forty planks for the first time, slicing them down to 38mm thick initally.
After lunch, we continued to slice off a thin layer at a time, millimetre by millimetre until we reached a product with good smooth surfaces.

The end tally was that we managed to plane thirty-five planks down to a thickness of 34mm and the other five down to 32mm thick. The last five had more “features” in the Oak timber which needed more removal. These slightly thinner planks will be used on our shorter sections of eves (like for example, “B”, “D”, “G” and “I” sections).
Next, we sit down with our construction drawings and find out what we will need for doing the five internal corners which has a downpipe to connect the gutters plus also the three oddity ones located with the side door porch and the conservatory. These eight “specials” needs to fit into the Fascia board so it allows the rain water to flow backwards from the Fascia board (which has the guttering fitted on), along a horizontal channel to a hole where the downpipe will be located. The other design requirement needed to be teased out, are the ten outside corners, which will have a 45° angle “chopped” off the them, which applies to the Fascia board and to the guttering too.

This morning, we finished gluing the last fifteen sets of Oak timber, only using 5 set of clamps (as our new ones haven’t arrived yet). We had to wait for the 30 minutes for the PU glue to reach first hardening stage but it wasn’t too bad as we were able to keep a cycle going with new freshly glued ones and be able to unclamp the oldest glued set which was just about at the 30 minute point.
Then after lunch, the five we had glued yesterday, we scraped off the excess glue and then put them through the planer to slice off a fraction of a millimetre to clean off the stain of the glue and any slight imperfections.

You cannot see the actual joint itself, but only by the fact that the two Oak strips have a very slight different in colour and of course the grain do not match up either.
But it is looking good and tomorrow, when we have done the same to today’s fifteen glued planks, we then will be ready to pass all of these twenty glued planks, plus the other twenty single Oak pieces, through the planer in its thickener section and achieve, hopefully, a set of forty Fascia boards with all the same thickness. We will see!

This afternoon, after lunch, we finished off planing the various pieces of the Oak Timber so they are ready for the job of gluing them together to form wide enough Fascia strips (needs to be greater than 150mm wide). Then using our biscuit jointer tool to help align the pieces, we proceeded to glue and join together five planks.

We used a fast acting PU glue so we don’t have to wait eight hours to get maximum strength, this glue will reach working strength after only 30 minutes. We are planning to be able to clamp nine set of pieces together in a session and by the time we have done the last one, the first one will be ready to be unclamped and we can carry on with the tenth set and so on. Hopefully the new clamps will come tomorrow in the post! – or else!
After the twenty sets are glued and cured, we will very slightly plane the finished surface again to remove any trace of glue and any very slight misalignment’s, and then all forty pieces will be put through the thicknesser part of the planer machine (this planes wood to a fixed thickness) to get a final set of finished Fascia boards – at last!

These last few days have been somewhat disrupted with various external meetings and other commitments and the work on sorting out, planing and processing the Oak Timber have been patchy. So far, after today’s full day, we have selected  32 narrow pieces and sawn them to 95 mm wide, then selected 11 pieces just over 180 mm wide. These pieces have now been put away back on the Oak Storage rack outside for later in the project.
The rest are the 40 mm thick oak is being processed into more than 75 meters of Fascia boards, we need 40 pieces of oak  which are 150 mm high, we have enough planks to make 20 pieces from whole wood and parts to make another 20 from two narrower pieces glued together.

All of the pieces have now had one flat surface planed (60 pieces in total). Now we are planing the narrow edges to ensure that they are right angles to the processed face. On Monday, we will finish that task off and then start gluing and joining together strips.

Today, the all the timber pieces were sorted, measured and recorded in a new spreadsheet. We now have a realistic list of timber pieces with known minimum widths and we can now more accurately sort and set aside the planks we will need for other part of the house construction.

The saw bench is now set up ready for the task of slicing down all the timber so we get a complete collection of pieces that has both edges that are parallel to each other, cut to almost the desired width (the final adjustments will be done on either the planer or other cutting tools, depending on the target requirements).
We got out our old fence guide (from a previous work table [you know we never throw things away!]) and passed that through our planer machine and we now have a straight flat guide (accurate to 0.2mm maximum deviations down the whole 8feet length). We wanted to use this guide instead of our other fence because we found that one single fence without any joins or transitions will give us an uninterrupted consistent movement of our work pieces going through the circular saw.

Tomorrow, we will begin the next stage of processing the Oak Timber, and then glue together some of the pieces to make wider version to make up the required numbers we will need (some 40 planks for the fascia) all being at least 155mm wide.
It is taking the time but again, we are setting up the “factory” so we can get repeatable and consistent results each time and give us satisfaction and a nice looking house!!