Category: Rafters

After a slight delay to the start of the working day, we proceeded with the preparation task for the collection of rafters over the front extension of the roof. We brought in 16 more plywood strips and cut the new 33 degree angled ends on them all. Next, on half of them, cut the notch clearance for fitting onto a wall.
Then, we chopped all the pieces of timber to their required lengths and collected 12 straight noggings and 8 diagonal noggings plus also 7 strips of the polystyrene foam and finally cleaned up all the saw dust and rubbish to finish off the preparation work.
After lunch, we then proceeded to assemble and glue and nail together the four rafters in the usual fashion and got them all done in record time. We are managing to get the time down to around 40 minutes per rafter which is rewarding especially when we first started, we were running at about 60 minutes!!
Tomorrow, after the rafters has dried, and the weather being hopefully good, we will go and installed them up into the roof and then measure the next set to fill in the triangular sections up to the steel I-Beam.

For the start of the new week, we start dealing with the 33 degrees angled roof sections, namely the “B”, “D” plus the “J” and “L” sections that makes up the area over the front door and Entertainment Room extension and the area going back extending over Bedroom 2. We spent the day converting our templates for the new angle and also for the eve only sticking out a little bit less (about 20mm less), chopping up lots of internal diagonal noggings (60 pieces of the 63mm CLS, and a further 32 pieces of the 89mm CLS) and then chopped up whole load more of the straight noggins too.
Then, we went outside to measure the five rafters we are going to do, two on the “B” wall and three on the “D” wall. We measured from the top of the walls, up to the C Ridge beam and recorded the various numbers for our spreadsheet.
This resulted in us requiring to make three extra-long top flanges with a scarf joint so we did that too (to allow the glue to dry overnight) and finally got the bird’s mouths cut into three of them (B8, D3 and D4) and put half bird’s mouth ends of the other two lengths. Oh yes, we also brought into the workshop, five lengths of the 63mm CLS timber (ready for the bottom flanges) so they could warm up and dry off any dampness.
Tomorrow, we will bring in a heap of the plywood webbing and get them prepared and after that, it would be pretty much all ready to build these new rafters and off we go again!

In quite strong winds, we concluded the job of hoisting and installing the remaining rafters to complete the “E” section of the roof.

Well, actually, there is an additional bit of the “E” section to do but this is part of the porch extending over the back door over the Utility Room and that will be done when we got the roof boards laid down first.
The next job is to measure and make the long rafters that forms part of the “B” and “D” roof sections, over the Entertainment Room and Front Door, this will be the next stage of the roof construction, switching to the 33 degree sloped roof sections. These are the C Ridge and K Ridge extensions, these two being the front door, hallway, stairs and the entertainment room and then all the en-suites, bathroom and Bedroom Two going back out of the building.

We started this morning on the “E” section of the roof and proceeded to install five rafters from E5 to E1 going up the diagonal beam over the Entertainment Room. We then managed to get a single one E9 up and installed before lunch.

Just as we were finishing lunch we had to rush outside to rescue all our tools, especially the electrical ones and the nail gun because it suddenly started raining quite hard with big drops! The forecast in the morning didn’t have any indications of this rain but now the forecast says rain is due to come at 4pm and 5pm but still not at 2pm! We shrugged our shoulders, got in our tools and covered up the electric winch motor and retreated back into the dry for the day.

We tackled the task of completing the “I” section of the roof by installing the eleven rafters we made these last few days. It was a bit of a juggle to get the two towers in place so we could hoist up the longer rafters and get to the other end to screw the bevel ends onto the diagonal beams.

By lunch time, we had finished the upper section (doing I7 to I12 rafters) and took down the winch support pole to move it along to deal with the other group of rafters (from I5 to I1).
After lunch, we managed to get the one tower into position to install I5, I4 and I3 and finally used the ordinary ladder to get right into the corner of the building (this is in Bedroom 3) to finish off with I2 and I1 in total darkness.

Well, actually we had the floodlight on so we weren’t totally barred from doing our job!!
Tomorrow, we will move around and tackle the “E” section and have them installed in a similar manner and time – we hope!

This morning, we finished off the task of slicing the bevel ends on all the rafters that are filling in the final gaps in both ‘I’ and ‘E’ sections of the roof. Using our homemade Bevel Slicing saw, we did the ones that needed an angle of 46° and then onto the ones that needed a 52° angle.

This is a total of 20 individual rafters of various sizes and now they are ready to be installed up into the roof structure, hopefully this will be tomorrow (today was a short working day).

This morning, we finished off the preparation work for the rafters to fill in the “E” section of roof, by slicing the 32 degree ends off all the plywood webbing strips and then cutting the correct lengths to achieve the required combination to create our nine rafters. The last task was to cut either a wall notch or a steel I-Beam notch at one end of each rafter. We brought in eight polystyrene foam strips and finally tidied up the workshop just before lunch time.
So after lunch, we proceeded to nail and glue all nine rafters in five sessions, having 2 rafters in the template at the same time and the odd one (the longest one) in by itself.

We now have a large pile of completed rafters for both the “I” and “E” sections of the roof, with just the finishing task of slicing the beveled ends on those we haven’t done yet which we will do on Monday and then on Tuesday (weather permitting) we will then install all of them up into the roof framework and that would be all the “32 degree” rafters done – phew!

Today, this morning, we finished off creating the last five rafters that makes up the “I” section of the roof, to add to the six we made yesterday. we also sliced the bevel ends on those six rafters so they are ready to go up when we get a window in the bad weather coming this weekend.
So after lunch, instead of going outside, we started organising the bits and pieces to make the next batch of rafters for the “E” section of the roof. We brought in 5 lengths of 63mm CLS timber and 6 lengths of the 89mm CLS plus also 22 plywood webbing strips, and finally a 2 trugs full of various noggings too!
We began preparing the CLS timber to put on the 32degrees ends, the bird’s mouth notches and cut them down to the required lengths.

We now have 9 bottom flanges and 10 top flanges all measured and ready for the next stage of manufacture after we have prepared the webbing plywood strips that we will do tomorrow.

We finished off preparing the parts to make up the rafters to complete the “I” section of the roof this morning. This included cutting the Bird’s mouth into four of the top flanges (the 89mm CLS timber), and then slicing all CLS timber down to the required lengths, bringing in 12 polystyrene foam strips and finishing off the morning by cleaning up all the saw dust rubbish everywhere.
After lunch, we started the process of creating the rafters, in pairs in the template and we managed to do 3 pairs by the end of the day. We stopped slightly early as we needed to fill up the glue dispenser bottle but we also needed to make a stirring tool to mix the glue inside the 25 litre bottles to make it smoother and run without lumps and blobs. We took a thin strip of metal and twisted it in the vice and bolted on a shaft and proceeded to spin this homemade contraption inside the bottle. It got bent a bit more by the force of working in a very stiff liquid! But the end result was a much smoother and easier running liquid and we filled our dispenser nice and quick!
Tomorrow, we will finish off the remaining five rafters in the morning and then get the finished ones sliced with their bevel ends and installed outside onto the roof.

We cut the bevel end on the remaining rafter left-over from yesterday, namely M17. We are still trying to work out why our Bevel Slicing Machine is trying to pull off line but we have managed to subdued this tendency and hopefully for the future slicing tasks, it will behave itself!
So we took out the four completed rafters to finish off the “M” section of the roof, filling the gap over the Great Room’s roof.

Then after lunch, we started the preparation work of getting all the webbing and flanges cut and sliced ready to make the rafters for the “I” section this time. We brought in 24 strips of the plywood webbing, plus 7 lengths of 63mm CLS and 6 lengths of the 89mm CLS timber. All the plywood strips has been sliced with their 32 degree angled ends plus also the notches in appropriate ones where there are either to fit over a wall or the steel I-Beam.

We finish off the day by chopping the 32 degree ends on all the CLS timber lengths and on Thursday, we will cut these down to their proper lengths.