Category: Rafters

We finished off installing the rest of the “H” rafters outside, on quite a balmy day, on the shortest daylight day of the year!

Tomorrow, we will try and get some of the “P” rafters up before we have to stop for Christmas. We will see how things go and whether we will do some work on Saturday too.

This morning, we ventured outside to install as many rafters in the “H” section of the roof but could only do two in the end before lunch! It was a tight corner of the building and our tower needed to be juggled into position. We got the two rafters up and installed, only to discover that we managed to get our tower stuck in among the rafters! We had to dismantle one top end of the scaffolding in order to make it slide out from under the rafters, and back into a more spacious area!! Eeek!

Then after a quick lunch, we resumed the task of creating the batch of “P” rafters we have prepared and we were successfully able to complete all eight rafters – Phew!

Tomorrow, we will spend all the daylight hours installing as many of the rafters as possible and then return back in the workshop to slice the bevelled angled cuts on the new ones we have done today. Those final rafters, we will put up on Friday and possibly Saturday too – double phew!!

Today, after a fairly long delay where we were recovering from an injury but also doing the Oak timber Survey and Ordering, we resumed our task of creating more rafters for the roof. This time, it was the turn of the “P” section over the Great Room. We chopped up the collection of CLS timber lengths we had in the workshop and produced 12 individual pieces to do P5 through to P10 and P16 through to P21. Then, the large pile of plywood webbing strips were also cut and sliced including cutting in the notches on all 12 sets and ended up with a collection of webbing, ready for the assembly.
Then it was the usual job of bringing in polystyrene foam strips, 12 of them, then cleaning up the workshop and refilling the glue dispenser bottle too.
By the end of the day, we managed to complete three rafters, P5, P6 and P7. Tomorrow, we will take outside as many of the “H” rafters and get them installed up into the structure before lunch and then continue in the workshop to carry on making the remaining 9 “P” rafters during the afternoon and avoid the short daylight hours. We should get the rafters for both “P” and “H” all installed by Thursday and Friday and that will be it for the rest of the year as we can relax and celebrate Christmas and New Year and start fresh again in January!

Today, we entered into the joyous task of assembling the 13 rafters that will see the completion of the “H” section of the roof (the right hand side of the house over the Utility Room, Back door and Bedroom 3).
The first run was to put together the four smallest rafters and then a further three sessions were completed before we had a problem! Shaun suffered a twinge in his lower back and had to “go slow”, see Back Muscle Twinge but we managed to finish off the final session.

These 13 rafters are now done and waiting for the next job of having their bevel ends cut and next week, being installed into the roof.
The rest of the afternoon was spent calculating the quantity of CLS timber we would need to build up a pile of material to do the “P” section, this being 10 and 9 lengths of 89mm and 63mm CLS timber respectively and a further 24 strips of the plywood webbing. Stephen brought these into the workshop to acclimatised, ready for slicing and chopping to required sizes next week.

These last two days has been the task of making various bits and pieces to continue manufacturing more rafters, the main task being slicing up a further 24 sheets of 8 foot by 4 foot plywood boards into our 400mm wide strips. This was yesterday’s job, having to break into our second pile of plywood sheets, unwrapping several layers of protection: one tarpaulin outer cover, then a plastic “bag” and loads of Clingfilm off the pallet containing 75 sheets and removing 24 of them and, hey hoe, wrapping it all up again!
Today, we proceeded to chop up five lengths of 63mm CLS timber plus 7 lengths of 89mm CLS timber, to produce enough material to create thirteen individual rafters to build the “H” section of the roof, having seven of them cut with the usual bird’s mouth notches, a further three with half bird mouth notches and the other three just being single bottom flanges only. Then, using all the various left-over pieces, we went through them all to make 28 wide 89mm CLS diagonal noggings, a further 61 63mm diagonal noggings and loads of straight one (just over a hundred of them!). We only needed 24 straights, 9 wide 89mm diagonals and 18 narrow 63mm diagonals to do our “H” rafters, all the rest went in the garden shed for the next section “P” and “N” and so on.
We turned to the next task of slicing down a heap of webbing plywood strips to their required sizes, putting in the wall notches in each pair as we went along and also using further left-over pieces to try to recover more of the “waste”.
The day came to the conclusion with us cleaning the workshop of all the saw dust etc. and then filling up the glue dispenser bottle so it is all ready for a fresh and quick start in the morning on assembling and making these “H” nine rafters plus some four “odd” ones.

This morning, in bright sunshine but chilly air, we finished installed the last two middle rafters on the “H” section of the roof.

Then we spent the rest of the day measuring up the various sections of the roof on either sides of these middle groups of rafters on both the “H” and “P” sections. The “H” was pretty standard but the “P” had an extra O Ridge to take into account and we measured all of the positions to make sure all the sizes were known and we didn’t give ourselves any surprises. There are a total of 17 rafters on the “H” and 21 rafters on the “P” sections. These are the top few largest sections so is likely to take the whole week to prepare and manufacture for the “H” and another week for the “P” sections. We will see how we go!

P.S. Here is the picture of the P rafters we installed on Saturday (It was dark when we finished)

Today, in a quiet and chilly but with lovely sunshine, we got most of our rafters we had manufactured up and installed into the roof  structure.
The “L” section is now complete, all five rafters were done before lunch.

Then the “P” section was finished as the daylight faded away at 4pm (no picture, too dark!)
And finally, two of the four rafters for the “H” section was installed in total darkness, apart from our powerful floodlight shining down on the scene!

On Monday, we will finish off the middle portion of the “H” section and then we can measure up the necessary distances to start manufacturing the filling in set of rafters for both the “P” and “H” triangular portions, either side of the middle bit we have done today.

After repairing the Bevel Slicing machine, we proceeded to finish off the final two “L” rafters to have their bevel ends sliced in. So we now have five “L” rafters plus one odd pair of flanges (to fill in a large gap right up near the steel I-Beam end of the K Ridge) all ready.
To finish off the day, we went through the nine other rafters we had already constructed and tidied up the ends, especially the wall ends where our webbing wasn’t cut deep enough to keep clear of the noggin and the wall’s top-plate.
We have other commitments tomorrow (Friday) and we hope that Saturday will warm up and have melted all the snow and be dry so we can put up our 14 rafters we got ready!

After finishing the preparation work this morning, like filling up the glue dispenser bottle, cutting some more straight noggings as well as eight little “filler” noggings too, then collecting 14 polystyrene foam strips and finally sweeping the whole workshop, we were ready to start assembling the nine rafters in nine separate sessions.

And amazingly enough, we managed to do all nine rafters in one day! We are definitely speeding up our technique and procedures and now can turn around a long rafter in about 30 minutes on average – wow!

Tomorrow, we will look at our Bevel Slicing Machine and repair that. Also look to see where the leak in our garden shed roof is plus improve the coverings on our various timber storage stacks too. Then, we will Bevel cut the two remaining rafters and dress the nine rafters we did today to tidy them up and leave them all ready for Saturday to be installed outside.