Yesterday and today, we spent some time sorting out our pile of timber to bring out the 95mm by 45mm treated timber and reorganise the other timber pieces that we are not using straight away and have access to the 63mm CLS timber. We then picked out nine length’s of the 63mm CLS timber that were pretty straight and not warped.
We got out our heavy duty planer machine and vacuum waste collecting unit, brought them out to our house so we could plane the nine lengths and have room to get each plank in and out of the machine (each plank is 4.8metres – 16feet long so you need 32 feet of space!). We sliced off about 1.5mm off to remove the rounded edges and then cut them into various length pieces so we could put together two sets to make the two separate halves of the ridge beam (one piece about 6 metres and the other one being 7 metres long) with a “finger” joint in the middle (overlapping by 150mm) in the mid-point.
We also used our biscuit machine to help us align the three layers so that they all lock together and pull straight out any slight bow in the length.
We managed to get one set all glued and fitted together, tightly clamped with a dozen clamps before the end of the day.
Today, before the rain came, we dealt with the second set of timber pieces to create the other half of the ridge beam, doing all the biscuit joints and then gluing all three layers together and clamping it down tight.
New-ridge-beam-made
We covered it up with a tarpaulin to protect them (we moved the other beam we did yesterday to be near our new one) from drips from our roof.
On Saturday, we will start processing all the other timber to make the rafters and the rim structure (using our 95mm by 45mm treated timber) and cutting and slicing various angles etc.