Roselea

Category: Build Progress

  • First Set of Oak Timber Joined

    This afternoon, after lunch, we finished off planing the various pieces of the Oak Timber so they are ready for the job of gluing them together to form wide enough Fascia strips (needs to be greater than 150mm wide). Then using our biscuit jointer tool to help align the pieces, we proceeded to glue and join together five planks.

    First-5-Glued-up-Facia-boards

    First-5-Glued-up-Facia-boards

    We used a fast acting PU glue so we don’t have to wait eight hours to get maximum strength, this glue will reach working strength after only 30 minutes. We are planning to be able to clamp nine set of pieces together in a session and by the time we have done the last one, the first one will be ready to be unclamped and we can carry on with the tenth set and so on. Hopefully the new clamps will come tomorrow in the post! – or else!
    After the twenty sets are glued and cured, we will very slightly plane the finished surface again to remove any trace of glue and any very slight misalignment’s, and then all forty pieces will be put through the thicknesser part of the planer machine (this planes wood to a fixed thickness) to get a final set of finished Fascia boards – at last!

  • Oak Timber Still Continues to be Processed

    These last few days have been somewhat disrupted with various external meetings and other commitments and the work on sorting out, planing and processing the Oak Timber have been patchy. So far, after today’s full day, we have selected  32 narrow pieces and sawn them to 95 mm wide, then selected 11 pieces just over 180 mm wide. These pieces have now been put away back on the Oak Storage rack outside for later in the project.
    The rest are the 40 mm thick oak is being processed into more than 75 meters of Fascia boards, we need 40 pieces of oak  which are 150 mm high, we have enough planks to make 20 pieces from whole wood and parts to make another 20 from two narrower pieces glued together.

    Oak sawn to size, 32 pieces@90mm and 20 pieces @155mm

    Oak sawn to size, 32 pieces@90mm and 20 pieces @155mm

    Oak-for-garage-window-sills-11pieces-@-180mm

    Oak-for-garage-window-sills-11pieces-@-180mm

    Oak-for-gluing-together-to-make-another-20-@-155mm

    Oak-for-gluing-together-to-make-another-20-@-155mm


    All of the pieces have now had one flat surface planed (60 pieces in total). Now we are planing the narrow edges to ensure that they are right angles to the processed face. On Monday, we will finish that task off and then start gluing and joining together strips.

  • Oak Timber Sorted and Being Processed

    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.

    Sorted-oak-ready-for-slicing-to-size

    Sorted-oak-ready-for-slicing-to-size


    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.
    Table-saw-with-new-Fence

    Table-saw-with-new-Fence

    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!!

  • Oak Timber Work Continues

    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

    Width-Measuring-tool-1

    Width-Measuring-tool-1

    Width-Measuring-tool-2

    Width-Measuring-tool-2



    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.

  • Final Five Inside Corners Trimmed!

    The last task of the day was to adapt our template that we have been using to trim the top of our cement boards on our walls so we can trim the five remaining inside corners. It was a bit fiddly as any inside corners are awkward places to get a ladder into and to make it more complicated, there are sticking out eves as well to get in the way too!!
    It took longer to go around to each of the five corners and it was quite late before it was all done! Phew!
    Anyway, that concludes the trimming of the cement boards (both the top of the walls and the vertical edges for the nine outside corners) and when we get there, the roof boards now can be laid flat on the rafters and go all the way to the Fascia smoothly without hitting anything!

  • Planer Machine Has Been Extended

    Today we finished off the task of building two extension tables for our Planer Machine. On Saturday, we had our double thickness OSB boards all set from the gluing and it was sliced down to required size. Then a clearance hole was made in one of these OSB platform for the large knob sticking out the end of the metal table platform (this knob adjusts the depth of cut the planer does) and also we made four wooden legs with an extra plastic cabinet adjustable foot fitted and glued up inside the end of each leg. Today, we mounted these legs to each extension table, bolted on two metal arms and assembled the table to the end of the planer. While we were adjusting the height and level of the new extended table, using our 6 foot spirit level, we noticed that the wooden surface wasn’t quite flat and had a bulge here and there. So we spent the next hour or so sanding the high ridges until it was all flat all over. We did the same with the second extension platform and then proceeded to set each one into place, using glue and screws to fix the wooden bases to the metal arms (plus using several clamps to hold it together while the glue dries).

    Planer-Extension-Table-made

    Planer-Extension-Table-made


    We now have a 3.4metres (11feet) long platform (1.7 metres, a bit over 5½ feet, on each side of the planer blades) and this will, We Hope, Fingers Crossed(!!), bring a much better and more consistent results of achieving a straight and flat edges and surfaces on our Oak Timber!! Tomorrow will reveal all! Grin!

  • Planer Machine Grows Longer!

    Today, we settled down to analyse the planer machine to learn what is happening when we try to plane larger pieces of Oak timber and why it is coming out with a slight dip in the middle. We wondered whether the heavier pieces was causing a slight ‘bending’ of the metal platforms that guides the timber in and out of the machine but carefully putting a series dumbbell weights and watching the surface against a steel rule (using a bright LED torch to shine through any gaps opening up) but nothing happened even after we put 17½ kg load on the very end of the table. The machine has 500mm long input and output tables and reading more about these types of machines on the web, we were concluding that the long pieces of timber is too long for the machine. The cylindrical rollers don’t give enough support because they only hold up at one point and as soon as the timber slide pass, it loses support and ‘moves’ which is part of the problem.
    This means we needed to extend the flat tables to provide a much longer surface to keep the timber on the straight and narrow and the planer then can do it job on removing the excess material that is causing the bow or dip.
    So this afternoon, we created two thick wooden platform made from two layers of 18mm OSB board, measuring 300mm wide by a metre long and these were sanded smooth and then glued together. Next we got out of our metal supply two lengths of 50mm wide by 3mm thick steel strips, both being more than 2metres long. These were cut to form four 1metre pieces. Then a triple set of 8mm holes were drilled in both the steel strips and also into the sides of the metal (aluminium) tables. Finally, we drilled a series of 5mm holes down the other end which will allow us to screw our thick wooden platform pieces into place. We will slightly enlarge the steel holes (the set of three holes) so we can wiggle up and down the whole extended platform so it becomes dead level and aligned up with the rest of the machine. Finally, we will put on two legs underneath to help support these extended guides as the whole machine will suffer and tilt over when it tries to handle heavy and long Oak timber pieces.
    This is taking quite a while to analyse, design and implement this necessary modification to our planer machine but we want something that will be solid and long lasting so we can deal with all our Oak timber for the whole building project. So just a couple of days of work here will save many, many days of frustration and problems later on!

  • Oak Timber Continues Being regularised

    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.

    Stack-of-Edged-40mm-Oak

    Stack-of-Edged-40mm-Oak


    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.
    Trying-to-get-planer-to-work-on-larger-pieces

    Trying-to-get-planer-to-work-on-larger-pieces


    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.

  • Walls All Trimmed Almost!

    The task of trimming the tops off the walls in between the rafters continues today and now the majority have been done with only the inside corners left to do (these were more awkward and needed a think to how to do it). All the outside corners were done with little difficulties.
    Then swopping over to our big brother router machine, we then went around to trim all the outer corners where the cement boards had overlapped each other and was sticking out proud. It was something that we needed to do since last year but we knew the opportunity would present itself and today was the day!
    Tomorrow, we will adapt our template with a new design to allow us to trim the tops of the walls at each of the five inside corners and that would be that.

  • Cement Boards Get their Top Edge trimmed down to the Rafter Height

    Today, the task of trimming the tops of the walls has started, where the excess amount of the cement boards sticking above the height of the rafters is sliced down so all is at the same angle and same height.

    Top-wall-trimming-Jig

    Top-wall-trimming-Jig


    Using our medium sized router machine, our template we made a couple of weeks ago and the tall step ladder, we proceeded around the edge of the building to run the router back and forth between the rafters and trimmed off the unwanted cement board material.
    Trimming-cement-boards-1

    Trimming-cement-boards-1

    Trimming-cement-boards-2

    Trimming-cement-boards-2

    Trimming-cement-boards-3

    Trimming-cement-boards-3



    Tomorrow, we have about a quarter to go to complete the circuit and that will be that!