Category: Fascia

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!!

This afternoon, the task of passing our Oak Timber through our Planer Machine to produce one straight flat edge continues. The remaining pieces (about 20 lengths) were completed.
Then the next task is to slice each plank to a set of required widths. But before we can do that, we need to know what the minimum size each Oak piece is. We built a measuring gadget

This is slid along the new flat edge of the Oak and the two arms are pushed against the opposite edge, but the second arm (underneath)is left behind when ever the width increases again. this means that the second arm will measure the smallest or minimum width and this value is recorded, ready for the actual rip sawing task later on.

The task continues today of processing each Oak timber piece to regularised them into flat and straight consistent planks of wood.
The smaller widths are now done.

But the wider set is proving more difficult to handle as the weight of these 2metre long planks can be quite heavy (upto 20Kg!) and we discovered that this is causing a slight distortion within the planer machine itself (like the little castor wheels were bending, and the latest, the metal flat input and output tables are also being deflected slightly too). So we are finding solutions to handle these oak planks, including buying more rollers on legs and putting the machine on blocks of wood.

There are hundreds of Oak pieces we have bought for all sorts of jobs around the house, which we will need to plane and regularise so we are going to invest some time and thought to build a sturdy framework, possibly extending the input and output tables to help support the heavier Oak timber and create a factory like setup to consistently and accurately do this job properly.

Today was the day where our Oak Timber started the process of being regularised. The first process is to plane one edge straight, there are 90 pieces to process and 35 of them have been done.

It was a case of learning the technique and making sure the finish edge is flat and straight.
Once this edge is made flat, we can set aside the 32 planks to slice in the circular saw to achieve the desired width of 90mm which are for the four pillars to form the corners of the Conservatory and 11 planks of 175mm wide to make sills for the garage windows.
The rest is for the Fascia which needs to be 150mm wide and some of them will need two pieces glued together, in order to get up to this width.

Yesterday and a little bit late this afternoon, we have started processing a some of our Oak Timber to create the Fascia Boards for our Roof.
We brought (yesterday’s shorter work day) into our workshop all the planks of the 40mm thick Oak and have it all laid out on the floor. It adds up to about a ton of timber!

Then, today, we started the task to plane all the planks, using our big planer machine, on one edge to establish a flat straight edge. We noticed that the width of the rough sawn timber is not parallel and there is some variation. We didn’t have time to do many so we will learn more tomorrow to how this variability will reveal itself in the bigger picture and change our calculations of which planks of Oak will be put aside for other part of the building etc. We need about 80 metres of 150mm wide boards to do the Fascia and the rest will form parts of the conservatory and Garage Windows.