Category: Phase 4

Construction of External Skin of House: External Walls, Roof and Skylight. Slate tiles on roof and timber cladding on walls.

Scratches On Glass Latest Results

We made contact with our Triple Glazing supplier and directed them to our previous blog report. After examining the photos, they decided to send their Sales Director to inspect our three windows in person. The person came on Wednesday and agreed that one of the windows was unacceptable. They were surprised to why their fancy laser scanning machine didn’t pick up these scratches in the first place. Apparently, the equipment costs £120,000!!
The other window was deemed borderline acceptable, the scratch being small enough and faint enough to not be a bother and one has to really concentrate on finding it to notice it. We agreed with that way of looking at the problem. The third window had the scratch on the outside surface of the glass and they pointed out that the scratch could have been caused when we were handling the glass, but, to be fair, they said that they will supply some polishing compound and we can polish out the scratch ourselves. This will also help remove any of the metal splash marks too.
So we bought some quality polishing pads and wheels and when the new replacement glazing unit arrives, we can use the polishing compound on the other windows.

They have phoned us to say they will replace both of the windows with the internal scratches which is very good of them and they will be manufactured the week starting 9th November.
We did have a delivery date of Friday the 14th. We had elected for the Friday so we had time to fine some extra bodies to help lift out the 120kg window and put in the replacement one.
But now with the new COVID-19 Lockdown we don’t know when the delivery might be! (The supplier will store the units until we can install them) Phew!

31 October 2020
Cleaning and Polishing our New Windows

On Tuesday, in lovely sunshine, we went around cleaning our new windows, on the outside surfaces. We will do the inside later on after we have sealed the inner glass to frame joints.
So having a large bucket of hot water and detergent, we proceeded to cut into the dirt and dust on all twelve windows. We could see a faint shadow of a large circular effect on the glass, which we assume was caused by the giant suction cups the glass factory was using to grab and lift the completed glazing unit. There were also smaller circular ones too, from our own rubber suction cups attached to our handles that was used by our cohort during the installation session two weeks ago.
We did some research on the web and apparently, one can remove them by using a very fine scouring cream, like the traditional Windolene Cream glass cleaner and scrubbing hard. So this is what we did and went around again to all twelve windows, scrubbing, wiping, drying and polishing.
But we made a disappointing discovery, we found defect marks in the glass itself.

Some were surface effects like little splatters of metallic looking droplets, a tiny air bubble embedded inside the glass but most seriously, scratch marks, three of them so far on three different windows. All look very similar, a bent line, coming down vertically and then sweeping sideways, the whole thing about 70mm long.

Window-H-Scratch

Two of these scratches are on the inner surface of the outer pane of glass so we cannot possibly be the culprit and the third one is so similar that somewhere in the manufacturing process, the same “mishandling” caused these scratch marks.
We decided that we will wait until after we have cleaned the inside surface of the windows before compiling a full report and decide whether we can live with them or not. To this goal, we went around with a black PU sealant to seal the glass to the aluminium framework to stop any water and dirt from dribbling into the joint.

On Saturday, we had a moment in the morning to go around and wash the windows on the inside this time, now that the sealant have hardened nicely. This allowed us to really inspect the glass, looking for defects.
Here are a gallery of photos showing these defects ..

Window-A-Scratch-From-inside

Window-C-Scratch-From-inside

Window-H-Scratch

Window-H-Bubble

Window-I-mark

Window-M-Bubble

We did some research on the web, read an industry’s document of expected “allowable” defects and even compared to that document, the scratches we found are classed as unacceptable. Therefore, we will be raising an issue with the glass suppliers on the strength of the poor quality.

24 October 2020
Oak Beadings and Wings Installed

After the glass was installed into the twelve windows, we spent the next two weeks putting on the Oak Beadings and Wings to finish off each window.
Each window has the normal four Oak Beadings (see Oak Beading Created) and each piece is held into place by a collection of special plastic clips. There are eight clips for each beading, plenty enough to rigidly hold the wooden finishing decorative strip in place against the glazing unit, squeezing the rubber seal up to the glass surface itself. We did have to do a little bit of trimming first, removing the excess sticking out bit of the glazing pad we 3D printed (see Manufacture of Glazing Support Pads) beyond the triple glazing units because they interfered with the Oak Beadings or would have done so if we hadn’t done anything. We just used a chisel to cut the plastic off next to the glass. The brown ones are the straight 90 degree regular clips and the black ones had the extra 6degree angle added to accommodate the slope of the sill. There were, in total, just under 400 clips to screw into place, using up nearly 800 stainless steel round headed screws.

Clips-in-place

Then each Oak Beading was trimmed to fit exactly each window in turn, using our chop saw and then our very sharp guillotine to slice off very thin slivers at exactly 45degree angles until each beading fitted in, nice and tight. The range of lengths were from 1613mm to 1616mm high and, for the larger windows, 1650mm to 1648mm in length. The narrower windows were pretty consistent at 1040mm and 830mm wide. We had to carefully hammer each strip down tight (using a shaped piece of oak with a rubber sheet material stapled to it) and work each beading down to the glass. The rubber seal was carefully teased straight before applying the final tap home.

First-window-bead-in-place

All-the-beading-on-a-Window

In our second week, we tackled the Oak Wings that goes on either sides of each window itself, to cover up the Larch cut ends. We had made them over the last twelve months during disruptions to other tasks and they have stood ready for a while since February this year. So at last, we proceeded to finish off the last stages of creating these Wings, by setting up the chop saw with the 6degree angle to slice the bottoms of each piece, making sure we had a set of “left” and “right” handed ones. We swopped around several pieces to select the best looking ones and finally arrived with a set of 12 pairs. The left over pieces (three of them) were bundled together, along with the remaining Oak Beading strips and stored away for any future needs like doing repairs.
Then we went around to each window in turn, and measured the precise height of the vertical sides, recording the left and right numbers. Using this data, we carefully sliced the length on each wing (after confirming the method on the first piece and testing outside on a window). Finally, we bevelled a small 45degree chamfer on the ends to clean up any splinters and also soften the visual joint when the Oak Wings are installed. The whole lot was vigorously sanded smooth.
The next task, a tricky one, was to place each piece into our template for making the T-slots we got in our window frames, and this time, using a router with a small 3mm diameter cutter, proceeded to make pilot holes for the locking stainless steel countersink headed screws. These screws provides the “key” to slide into the T-slot “holes” to lock each wing onto our window frames to form sideway flaring wings, shaped in the octagon scheme we got around the whole house.
The tests went well, making slight adjustments to our template and making lots of test pieces (short 6inch ones) and checking them outside on a window frame, before committed ourselves to doing all the other 24 pieces. That done, we could finally take each pair outside and install them to the eleven windows. The only one we didn’t do is the Q window that is in our Conservatory. In that room, the walls are left uncovered, no cladding etc. as we wanted to build the whole Conservatory first before deciding on the final wall coverings. So that pair of Oak Wings have been also stored away.
The wings were fixed into place with mushroom headed stainless screws, just like all the other screws fixing down the cladding and Oak Corners. We had to slice up lots of 25mm dowel pieces to fill in the gap between the wings and the Larch cladding, to make the whole thing very rigid and have plenty of air circulating around behind the timber pieces to keep them dry and free from wet rot.

Wings-on

Spacer-behind-the-wing

The last task was to smooth off the joint, that is overlapping with the frame of the window, using a mini planer and our new battery powered orbital palm held sander and then giving everything a good dose of timber oil, the first of many coats, to protect the timber from aging in the Sun and weather.

Windows-All-finished

That pretty much finishes everything we have to do to our exterior of our house (at last!!) and we can move on to starting to building the interior structure etc. The first job is to do the Entertainment Room, putting up its concrete sound-proofing shell.

17 October 2020
Twelve Triple Glazing Units Arrives and All Are Installed
Very very early Friday, with all the alarms waking everyone, we staggered up to get ready for the arrival of the glass which could arrive as early as 8am!
What we are expecting is as follows:
- Nine large units, each weighing 118kg
- Two medium units weighing 75kg
- One slightly smaller one weighing 65kg.
We had our troupe here by 8am or soon after, under a very heavy cloudy sky and swirling winds. We passed the time having a much needed hot drink and fortunately, it wasn’t too long to wait. The van arrived at 8:47am.

The-Glass-arrives

12-Triple-glazing-units-waiting-to-be-unloaded

The-edge-of-a-Triple-glazing-unit

We carefully unloaded each unit, using four suction pad handles and transported each one on the adapted trolley to near each window position around the house. We put the glass on a narrow piece of polystyrene sheet to both protect the edge of the glass and keep it clean from the damp sandy soil.

Preparing-to-lift-a-unit-off-the-van

Moving-the-heavy-glass

Unit-ready-to-install

It took us 50 minutes to complete this task of moving well over 1.2 tons of glass. We had a much needed cup of tea and a slice of cake before resuming work!!

Then this is the big moment, will the glass fit?
And yes of course it did!
All of them!
We proceeded around the house, with one person inside taking off the wax protection paper off the sticky tape and four lifting up the glazing unit up and slotting it into the framework and then screwing several plastic beading clips against the glass to secure it into place.

Holding-unit-whilst-tape-is-uncovered

Glazing-clip-being-installed

Glazing-clip-installed

We started this process at 10:30am and got the last one done at 12:30pm.

We all had another much needed break to recover and enjoy lunch!!
So that concludes the installation of the Triple Glazing units, all Twelve of them! This makes us pretty much weather proof! Yahoo!
The final step to do next week, is to fix well over 300 of these plastic beading clips, cut the oak beading strips to length, mitre the corners, add the rubber seals and slide them onto the plastic clips. After that, we need to finish off doing the oak “wings” that covers up the ends of the larch cladding on either sides of each window. At this point we will be finished Phase 4 (The exterior of the house)!

Windows

Reflections
2 October 2020
Preparation of our Windows is all Done

Over the last ten days or so, we have been preparing for the arrival of our triple glazing units for our twelve windows in our main house. This was a mixture of taking down the temporary plastic polythene sheeting off the windows, removing the wooden strips that were holding them up. Then scrubbing and removing the old glue we had on the aluminium framework (from a failed attempt to attach polythene to the windows). Next was to paint the inside of the same aluminium surface black to stop it glittering in the middle of the window through the glass.

Another task was to construct a vehicle to help transport each glazing unit around the house to various locations. It took our small four wheel flatbed trolley and mounted a vertical padded framework to hold the glass while it was moved. This was sorely needed as the nine biggest glazing units weighed in at 120kg (265lbs or 19 stones ) each!

Glass-moving-rig

We also made a rain shield “tent” like structure just in case we were hit by the predicted Storm Alex that would be running across northern France and along the English Channel.

Rain-Protection

By Tuesday, we had some indication that our glass would be delivered Friday (2nd October) sometime, so we continued with the preparation task and went around the windows to stick on the double sided high strength security tape onto the aluminium strips, all ready for the glass. We left extra tails of covering paper which we folding to the inside of the window to allow easy removal after the windows was in-place. We decided that it was worth the risk of this getting wet in the frequent showers of rain we have been having all the while but it turned out ok because all the rain just came down straight and wasn’t blown into the windows etc. But we did discover that we were missing a roll of this sticky tape, we had originally ordered four 20metre rolls but couldn’t find the fourth one anywhere! We can’t prove that we were short-changed in the original order (because we ordered 6 months ago), so we had to dash to the computer and order an extra roll with an overnight morning delivery option. This was Tuesday lunch time!

Tape-Covering-Tails-

In the meantime, we took our homemade plastic glazing pads (see Manufacture of Glazing Support Pads), and went around sticking them on to the sill of each window, four of them for a large window and two for the smaller ones.

Frame-ready-for-glass

The drama with the double sided sticky tape was not over, because the courier had some issue and failed to deliver our roll before noon Wednesday as ordered. We phoned the supplier and they chased down the courier. We could see that our package was sitting in Norwich and had been since 6am Wednesday morning but it wasn’t until 1pm on Thursday before it finally arrived. Just typical that when we wanted a real speedy delivery, something goes wrong and when we don’t care, it always turns up promptly! Phew!
Anyway, we finished off the final three windows that afternoon and then went around with a straight metal “ruler” to test the level of the pads to makes sure that they were all flat and synchronised and did some swopping out of one or two pads for thicker ones and in one case a couple of thinner ones.
All is now ready for the glass!
The final concluding piece of information is that we learnt that the glass will be delivered first thing Friday morning, between 8am and 10am. We informed our cohort of helpers of this shocking news and set our alarms for 6am – Eek!!

1 October 2020
Manufacture of Glazing Support Pads

We resumed work after our so-called holiday on two separate streams of work, one to develop the automation infrastructure and Development Environment (see Creating The Automation Development Environment) and this stream where Stephen needed to manufacture specialised plastic pads to support the glazing units. Our units are triple glazing with 6mm thick glass separated by two 16mm wide gaps filled in with Argon gas. Hence, the total thickness of our glazing units are 50mm. We couldn’t find these to buy on the web and we had a special requirement because our window sills have a unique shape. We wanted the slope to go under the glass a small distance to ensure that any rain water will be encouraged to run out again if any got in or leaked pass the glazing beading strips.

Window bottom cross section

There is a flat area of 35mm wide and then the slope starts which goes all the way to the front of the sill, this means that our plastic pads had to grow thicker to accommodate the slope (The Pink bit in the above picture).
Here enters our 3D printer!!

The-3D-Printer

We had our 3D printer for a few years now but it is the first time we are using ABS type of plastic, ABS being a much tougher material and also offers a very long lifetime resilience, especially for the outdoor environment of rain, sunshine, insects and dust!

Stephen started to do some printing with ABS but it was not very successful, the plastic was not flowing well out of the nozzle and as the printer has to work at higher temperatures to melt this type of plastic, Stephen decided that certain parts of the printer needed upgrading.
The first thing to improve is the heat retention of the base plate that all the plastic objects are created upon. It is normally heated but we found that it wasn’t getting the temperature high enough to keep the ABS plastic steadily hot so that it does not warp by cooling too quickly. The improve this we glued the heater to the base plate (it was just placed against it before) and a piece of double corrugated cardboard was placed on the underside to insulate and retain the heat longer. It works very nicely now!

Improved-build-plate

The second upgrade was to the roll holders at the back of the machine, where the plastic filament rolls are stored. The large rolls are quite heavy and the weight was causing higher friction which gave problems to the feeder motor that was trying to pull the filament into the melting chamber. The solution was to make a conical plastic holder with a ball race bearing fitted in it. We printed two new pieces, using our 3D printer of course, fitted the bearing and threaded both on a rod with wing nuts.

New-spool-support-cone-with-bearing

New-filament-spool-holder

In the meantime, we had ordered a replacement all-metal spring loaded mechanism to improve the grip strength of the feeding motor, the old one being plastic and unsprung and we felt that the quality of feeding the filament into the nozzle was important to maintain a good pressure and flow of melted plastic.
The new extruder needed a lot of fiddling, filing, buying longer bolts etc. to get it to work well.

New-Extruder-motor-unit

The final part of puzzle was realising that the temperature of the extruder nozzle was not as hot as the machine was saying it was (It should have been 230°C and was actually below 200°C). I added extra insulation around the heater but it did not help so I just told the machine to heat it to 270°C to get an actual 230°C temperature.

Now we could start printing in earnest and we successfully printed a support, but we had parts where we still weren’t getting proper extrusion, so I slowed the printing speed down and got much better results. But each pad was taking 55 minutes to print. This was mainly because we were printing layers only 0.2mm high (50 layers for the print), I increased the layer height but found I couldn’t extrude fast enough with the fine 0.4mm nozzle so I bought a 0.8mm nozzle. This allowed a print time of just 20 minutes with 0.5mm layers, so I could print 3 supports at the same time in about 1 hour.

The-final-printed-supports

Printing-spacers-1

Printing-spacers-2

We only print supports under the actual glass panes and leave hollow elsewhere. So after 2 weeks of fiddling and upgrading we had all the supports made (with a few spares).

All-the-supports-printed

25 September 2020

Measured Windows and Ordered Glass

The task we did next, was to measure every window again, using a framing square and precisely get all the data that describes the state of our framework, with all the wobbles and skews! All this went into a spreadsheet and analysed all the numbers. We have concluded a final set of sizes for all 12 windows as follows ..

A.Great Room	1640mm by 1598mm
A.Kitchen	1640mm by 1598mm
C.Entertainment	1640mm by 1598mm
F.Utility	1030mm by 1598mm
H.Bedroom 3	1640mm by 1598mm
I.Bedroom 3	830mm by 1598mm
K.Bedroom 2	1640mm by 1598mm
M.Bedroom 1	1640mm by 1598mm
N.Great Room	1030mm by 1598mm
O.Great Room	1640mm by 1598mm
P1.Great Room	1640mm by 1598mm
P2.Great Room	1640mm by 1598mm

We managed to arrive at a fairly consistent size, by making adjustments to the clearance gaps between the glass and the framework and having slightly different thickness for the pads that the glass will be sitting on. We are having to make our plastic pads ourselves on our 3D printer because our glazing units are tripled glazed and they are 50mm thick, three 6mm panes and 16mm warm bridge spacers. Even if we could have bought them somewhere, our window sills had the slope starting only 40mm from the back edge, which means the plastic pads needs to get thicker at the front. So we will use our supply of ABS plastic strand (we first doubled checked the structural strength of this type of plastic and discovered that it is way strong enough!), design and print a 55mm wide by 100mm long pads with it getting thicker after 40mm from the back.
And finally, the glass will be stuck firmly on to the aluminium bars using double sided security tape which is 3mm thick by 12mm wide.

We placed the order for the glass today at a cost of about £5000 (To buy 12 oak windows would cost at least £12000).

28 August 2020

Oak Beading Created

These last five days have seen the creation of the Oak Beading strips that will hold the triple glazing units into the window frames.
The beads are held in place by clips are specially designed to grip the timber piece without having to use screws or nails and making a very neat finishing covers around the edge of the glass.

Window bottom cross section

This means that the Oak strips needed lots of steps to produce the required slots and gaps, using our router. But before that, we had to make a collection of planed strips ready for that complex task. We took all our prime oak timber out of storage, 2metres planks at 29mm thick and widths from 100mm to 150mm. We swopped one or two of them when we discovered that they were a bit too wobbly.

Then, using the similar process we used before, we slice a straight edge using our Track saw, and then pass each plank through our table saw to make a pile of 33mm wide by 29mm pieces. We produced 56 of them, eight more than what we required.
The planer machine and its two long support tables were assembled and we proceeded to plane all the strips on two edges to get them clean. Then through the thickener stage to end up with smooth finished battens measuring 25mm by 27mm.

Now we are ready to use the Router to remove wood material in various ways, using various router bits (three of them!) in a total of seven passes through the machine to achieve our neat and hopefully elegant beadings.
We used up a fair number of test pieces, trying different techniques and different styles before settling on the final method and final finish we like the look of.

Window-beads-Router-setup

Beading Routing order

1 The front visually exposed surfaces had a 22.5 degree angles sliced off
2 Then the top was removed to create a gentle slope down and a slope up, to meet in the middle
3 The narrow slot for holding the rubber glazing seals was cut using a very fine 2.3mm wide blade, going 5mm deep.
4 Another fine slot, again a 2.3mm wide but 9mm deep this time.
5 Then an area 12mm high and 2.5mm deep was removed. This is part of the plastic clip, the vertical part.
6 Finally, the bottom gap was created, a 19mm wide by 5mm deep removed off the bottom of the oak strips, done in two passes.

It was a very fiddly job to do, but with lots of patience, with lots of help from using clamped on oak strips and springy fingers, to guide each of the 56 pieces through the machine, we got there in the end.

Window-beads-Finished

Window-beads-Detail

We are now ready to order the glass! See next report!

26 August 2020
The Last 8 Oak Covers Created and Installed

Following the initial progress we made on sorting out the Oak timber last Saturday, we resumed to produce the Octagon Covers for our seven inside corners to hide the plastic downpipes plus the special cover to hide the downpipe just right of the Side Door.
All the steps and methods were essentially the same as last week’s work on the nine outer corners, apart from the edges didn’t need the 45degree slopes.

Internal-Corner-pieces-ready-to-install

The installation process, on the other hand, was different this time, because every corner is slightly different and we had to custom fit each one. The procedure was to put up the octagon cover into place and then measure the gap between the surface of the oak to the plywood support strip inside. Every corner is slightly different so we had to slice off a variable amount each time using our battery circular saw, following a drawn line along the long edge.

Cutom-fitting-a-corner

Then we marked off a regular set of screw holes approximately every 200mm. Four of these holes were the real ones with full clearance, and the other ones just had pilot holes to grip the screw in place as there is nothing behind the oak.
None of the eight pieces had their height adjusted so we got that one correct!

The-MN-Corner-before-covering

The-MN-Corner-after-covering

So that concludes the task of covering all the corners with the ends of the Larch cladding and the pipework, all 17 of them! Phew!

Some-completed-cladding

20 August 2020
Oak Covers Created for Nine Outside Corners

The last 9 days or so have been spent on processing a pile of Oak timber pieces and generating nine finished covers to hide the cut ends of the Larch cladding.
The rough oak planks were 3metres long, 29mm thick and a range of various widths from 100mm to 180mm. We wanted to end up with 27 planks, split into 2 sets of 90mm and 110mm widths and all at least 2800mm long (the longest length going up a corner).
The first job was to ‘straighten’ each planks by slicing one edge using our track mains powered circular saw. This removed any wobbles and bends. Then after that, using the main table bench circular saw this time, and using the 2.4 metre fence to guide and control the width, we sliced these 27 planks into the 2 sets we needed.
So the next task was to set up the planer with its two input and output support tables, rigged up to our high air flow rate vacuum system to draw away the shavings and then proceeded to smooth off one side of all the planks. We do multi passes on each planks until we judge that there is enough of the surface planed to ensure that it will work reliably during the thicknesser stage. It is a compromise because we may find ‘more’ room to plane the other side and achieve at least one completely smooth finish. Any rough spots can be left hidden on the inner side of these Corner Covers.
As mentioned already, the second stage of the planing process was the thicknesser, and we worked our way through all the planks, flipping some over to remove more of the rough spots and eventually, we finished up with 18 smooth 110mm wide pieces and 9 90mm wide pieces.
Now after tidying away that machine, we brought out the table bench saw again, this time with the saw blade set to an angle of 45degrees and sliced the 18 planks (the 110mm wide set) to end up with one edge with a slope and a flat face of 90mm wide. This now matches up with the other set of 90mm planks.

Parts-for-the-outside-corner-covers-Planed-and-Sawn

The next piece of machinery to come into play, is our router with the special 22.5° tongue and groove cutter bits, to create the joints to allow us to lock together the three planks (2 of the 110mm wide ones, fitted on to the 90mm middle piece) and form the half the octagon Corner Covers. We sorted out all the planks, checking for maximum length of finished surfaces and arranged 9 sets of three planks. We then knew which edge to cut and in the proper order. The last quick router task was to trim a small quarter rounded edge along the sharp 45degree slope to avoid future splinters and cracking.

Parts-for-the-outside-corner-covers-Joints-made

The final sawing job is to slice little angled off both ends of each plank, the bottom ends (nearest the slates) had a 30degree angle and the top ends had a 45degree slope. But the precise length of each set of the three planks had to be measured from the real world (we walked around our house and measured all nine corners and wrote down the numbers.

Sample-Outside-coner-section

At last, we could, and did, stick together each set (using Polyurethane glue) for the joint and we used lots of duct tape to pull together the tongue and groove joints and held the shape tight while the glue cured.

Piles-of-glued-up-Corners-1

Piles-of-glued-up-Corners-2

Then it was time to install them! Hurray!
We started with the six easiest corners and thought we would tackle the nearest corner (the ‘OP’ one) to the Great Room which is where we are working these days, but only to discover that the wall along the ‘O’ section does a funny little wiggle at the bottom. The batten that holds up the Larch cladding had been bent outwards by the concrete blocks, without us spotting it. This meant that the Oak Cover has a large increasing gap between the Larch planks and the Cover piece (the Oak being nice and straight of course!). After skipping that corner to do the opposite corner, the ‘NO’ corner, which turned out to be much closer and even, we decided that we would make adjustments to the Larch cladding planks, rather than living with the gaping ‘hole’. So we undid the screws and pushed in ever increasing thicknesses of plastic spacers behind each Larch plank and then retighten the screws back down again. We use a long spirit level as our straight edge to achieve the proper and correct adjustment.

Straigtening-the-OP-Corner-1

Straigtening-the-OP-Corner-2

With this done, we now can go and make lots of wooden spacers to go behind the Oak Covers to allow plenty of air to circulate and keep everything dry and clean, to avoid any potential wet rot etc.
We decided to buy round wooden poles, and found a set of Eucalyptus broom handles on the web, an inch in diameter and about 1.5metres long. We got our drill press machine out and rigged up a little holder to hold short lengths of the round rods, and drilled a centralised clearance hole down the middle. We then slice the rod up into lots of 5mm thick discs, thus made our spacers with a predrilled hole, ready for going between the Oak and the Larch and screwed down.
Now the next task was to find an old waste length of oak strip and mark off distances of 200mm up the length and guide us to try and keep an regular spacing for the fixing screws. But before that, we snapped together a metal placement template for the drilling of the clearance holes in the Oak, positioning the template on the 45degree slope and get consisted alignment up all the Corner Covers.
So the procedure for putting up these Covers, was to drill the first clearance holes at the bottom, 75mm off and then screw it on to the corner. Then using the marked guide stick, drilled clearance holes at approximately every 200mm, only making adjustments to ensure that the fixing screw sinks into solid portions of the Larch timber. Then taking the Cover piece down again, taking it indoors and glue on our little wooden discs using 5 minute PU glue. While that was curing, we took out the next corner to repeat the process of doing the clearance holes. After that, the Oak Cover piece would go back outside to lay on a set of trestle tables and proceeded to get a thorough coating of the timber oil treatment, on both sides but most especially the hidden interior side. While that was soaking in and dripping excess off, we got on with the third corner in doing the clearance holes. Eventually, the oil had soaked in enough for us to handle it and actually install the first corner piece which we did!!

Corner-with-spacers-attached

The-Staight-OP-Corner

As you can imagine, this logical collection of programmed steps was repeated several times over until we got all nine corners done.

The-AP-Corner-cover

The last three corners, two on the Front Porch and one on the Side Porch, had a little adjustments made to the tops of their covers, to allow us to go around the main support beam sticking out the house, and for the Side Porch, an additional adjustment to clear the diagonal metal bracing arm too.

Shaun-tightening-the-last-screw

The-EH-Corner

This is the complete process of taking rough sawn oak timber and ended up with nine finished Oak Covers, all in about 9 days. Not Bad!
Now we repeat the whole process over again, but this time, for the Inside corners, to cover up the plastic downpipes plus our odd one in the middle of the ‘H’ wall. But that is another story and next week’s work!! Actually, We have already started the process and we have got out all the 2.6metres oak timber pieces and sliced them up into the required 26 planks, and even got most of the planing done too! More in Next week’s blog report!

14 August 2020