Roselea

Category: Rafters

  • Created Five More Rafters for Roof

    This afternoon, we resumed work on creating the last couple of dozen of rafters for the roof. We did Five more today before Shaun’s back had enough and didn’t want to overdo things.
    There are seven more to do in this current batch, which will finish off the roof area over the Great Room and leaves ten more rafters in the “K” section over the Bedroom Two area.

    Tomorrow, we have the delivery of our “nice” plywood coming from Diss (only about 30 miles away) and we hope it will make it with the snow arriving from Russia!! In the meantime, we will carry on with a few more rafters.

  • Assembling of “O” and “N” Rafters begins

    This morning, we switched over to our latest and last angled cuts, the 45degrees angles, for the webbing. These were for the “O” set of rafters, all six of them, plus two top-flange only ones too. All these rafters have sticking out eves so they have the bird’s mouth notches and also this end of the rafters are fitting onto the walls which means they needed the clearance notches done too.
    After lunch, we took the old P2 rafter (the mistake) and chopped off about 200mm off the end to turn it into a N9 rafter instead.

    Assembling of

    Rafter-offcut


    You can see the internal structure of one of our rafter, with the insulation in and the layers plus also how acute the bevel cuts has to be too!
    Then sorting out the pile of webbing, and organising the order of which combination of rafters will go into the template and at the same time, remove the piece of wood from the bird’s mouths that have been half cut up to this point.
    Finally, after cleaning the whole workshop and bringing in 23 strips of the insulation to fill the 14 rafters we are doing, we were ready to start the manufacturing assembling step of producing rafters.
    But with Shaun on light duty at the moment, we did only one session with two rafters in our template and got them all glued and nailed up. Tomorrow, in the afternoon, we will do a couple more sessions, limited by Shaun’s back and get the rest done on Thursday.

  • “N” and “O” Rafters Being Prepared

    Today, while it was a damp horrible day (and also Shaun is restricted to light duties!), we worked in our workshop to cut and prepare the material pieces to build more rafters. We made more noggins (both straight ones and diagonal 45 degrees angled ones), using up lots of odd left-over length of timber we have lying around and made enough to complete all the remaining rafters to build (both “O” and “K” sections).
    Then, we chopped up a series of CLS timber pieces to have ready the top and bottom flanges for the “O” rafters (we had already made a similar set for the “N” rafters last week!). Finally, we paired up all our remaining plywood webbing and sliced the 40 degrees angles that are for the “N” rafters.
    Tomorrow, we will do the “O” plywood webbing which have a 45 degrees angled ends so we will need to modify our templates and get those webbings sliced too. Hopefully, we will also get to create these rafters too and allow them to dry overnight before we take them outside, if we get a lucky break in the weather and installed them up and finish off the roof over the Great Room – Hurray!

  • The Final “P” Rafters Goes Up!

    With a very lovely sun shining down upon us, we proceeded to install the final set of “P” rafters up into the roof framework. The four rafters that goes up into the very far corner (left back corner of the Great Room) and the first two rafters of five that goes into the front left corner of the building.

    The Final

    Rafters-P1P3-and-P4


    But we discovered something wrong with the length and angle of the rafters (P4, P3 and P2). We did P4 first and realised that the angle of the Bevel cuts were incorrect, much too steep compared against the diagonal LVL hip rafter going down into the corner. We had to put in extra spacers to help fill in the gap and provide suitable structural connection. Then P3 rafter was too short by about 120mm in length and Disaster Number One, we seem to have a situation! We have a mismeasurement! When we originally measured this corner, we measured P4 and P2 and put the data into our spreadsheet and that where we got the numbers from to build these rafters. But we did something wrong somewhere and soon, we found it! the length of P2 was in error. We made the P2 rafter 1040mm long via the bottom flange but we realised that the distance from the LVL rafter down to the wall leg was actually 1400mm!! We Found It! A keyboard data entry error or perhaps a lithography error (writing into notepad!) or something! It is really the first time we have made a big mistake with a measurement during this roof phase or indeed other phases of this building project. So we abandoned P2 and finished installing P3 by inserting a large block of wood 62mm thick to fill in the gap and glue plus screws to hold everything together.
    The Final

    Spacer-for-P3

    The Final

    Rafters-P16-and-P17


    We then went onto doing the front left set of rafters and this time, we managed to get up two more rafters (P16 and P17) before the next Disaster Number Two occurred!! See Tower Crashes Down! and this put an end to our day’s work. This was about 4:30pm!

  • Preparing For “N” Rafters

    This afternoon, after a interruption to our work flow due to other meetings, we first went outside to verify the measurements we made last week on the “N” section and updated our spreadsheet. We then started the preparation job for building the next batch of rafters, this time for the “N” section of the roof. Using the new updated spreadsheet (showing the calculations as a result of our verification task earlier) and proceeded to slice and chop up a half a dozen of CLS timber to go towards the heap of material we will need for making another eight more rafters.

  • “N” Rafter Installed and Measurements taken for “N” and “O” secitons

    This afternoon, while we had some nice weather, even though it was quite chilly, we went and got our odd “N” rafter (the middle one, which is number 6) up and installed. We had to plane the end a fair bit as it was a complex shaped ends and we had wondered whether we had removed enough in the workshop. So it was a case of removing more until it fitted nice and tight.
    We then measured the next subset of rafters on either side, these being the triangular sections going up to the steel I-Beam and down to the outside corner. These are now in our spreadsheet!
    We did also the same for the “O” section and took measurements for the similar shaped triangular sections for the 45 degree sloping roof too.
    We now have finally collected this data and we now have the means to continue working in the workshop while the weather is bad outside and try not to lose too much more time due to the weather!
    We hope!
    Grin!

  • Bevels Cut On Latest Rafters

    This morning, while we wait for the delivery of our Oak Timber, we got on with the task of cutting angled bevelled ends on the latest batch of rafters we made yesterday.
    These have quite a sharp angle, very deep, at 53° and almost 100mm deep. Our slicing Saw machine performed very well! And this second version which has a new electric motor on board, is a better quality unit and doesn’t get hot at all, only the gearbox! It is also much better at cutting the wood without burning the material as we are able to turn down the speed of the saw blade and that helps considerable in controlling this burning effect.
    So we have now a growing pile of ready-to-install rafters to go up, all the remaining P rafters and one N rafter. We are just waiting for a day of no falling wetness, whether it is snow or rain! Phew!

  • Created Four Rafters

    Today and yesterday, we resumed our factory production line to produce the remaining rafters for completing the “P” section of the roof, as well as the first one of the “N” section.
    It was amusing to see us racking our brains for all the steps of the procedure of making rafters, getting all the tools, equipment and glues out and get ready.
    We finished today at about 4pm and it is snowing outside so that’s the end of our work for the moment!
    We will see when we can get them up, weather permitting but also our Oak Timber is scheduled to arrive tomorrow too!

  • Six “P” Rafters Go Up!

    Before the rain arrived (about 3pm ) we got out there to get up and installed the six rafters we had made way back before Christmas, into the “P” section of the roof.

    Six

    Rafters-P5-to-P10


    These rafters were simple straight ones coming down from the O Ridge beam to the “P” wall, four of them had full eves sticking out and the last two didn’t.
    Then after tidying up all our tools, under the steady patter of rain, we went and measured the last P4 rafter position so we can update the spreadsheet and then have the sizes for the last 4 rafters (P1 through to P4) to finish off the whole “P” section of the roof’s framework, covering the Great Room and alongside the conservatory.
    We also measured on the other side for the middle rafter in the “N” section coming down from the O Ridge to the corner of the N and M walls. This particular rafter the only straight one in this group of rafters and it is situated in the metal bracket on the O Ridge so once that one is made and installed, we can measure alongside this rafter, on both sides, and get more measurements for the spreadsheet and we then can calculate what we would need to make the “N” rafters.
    Finally, we returned back into the dry workshop and drilled bolt holes and sanded little slopes on the webbing so they can slide onto the leg and spread out the glue better. That concludes the work for today and the rain can do it worse. Hopefully, we can see dry weather tomorrow or else, we will be in the workshop and start preparing for those final P rafters!

  • Bevel Ends Were Cut on P Rafters

    This morning, a slight change of plan as the weather has come over wet again, so we got on with the job of cutting the bevel ends on the rafters going into the near corner of the Great Room near the front of the house. There were six in all, 5 were the full size rafters and the last one was just the top flange piece.
    We dusted off the Slicing Saw Machine and got the template out of the shed and proceeded to slice the angled ends on these rafters.
    And that is it for the day as the weather is now hailing frozen blobs of water so we will have an afternoon off and resume in the morning when we can start to put up these rafters and the others into place at last .. .. weather permitting!!!