Category: Build Progress

Today, in glorious sunshine, we proceeded to installed our fifteen new rafters we made on Tuesday and got them glued and nailed into place on the Front Porch to form the “C” roof section and completed the two side “B” and “D” sections of the roof too.

As you can see, all went quite well this time! Oh yes, we moved the scaffolding tower from inside the Porch before we put up the rafters .. as it would have been trapped! We moved the tower around the corner to the position where the Side Porch will be constructed.
And we transferred our scaffolding platform over from the tall tower to our shorter tower so we could have a platform to work from when we start constructing the framework for the Side Porch.
The rest of the afternoon was spent indoors creating a “cut-list” drawing so we can start on generating the framework pieces in the workshop tomorrow and Saturday.

The day was spent on updating the drawings to finalise the design and measurements of the real world outside, so the Side Porch and the Conservatory “dormer” roof framework are accurately representing what we will need to do when we come to cut, slice and plane various pieces of timber to form these structures.

The new timber came this morning, slightly thicker (we couldn’t get hold of our original size in small quantities) and we will start generating the “parts” in the workshop on Friday and Saturday.

While it was raining on and off all day today, we worked on on the task of recycling some of our C rafters from yesterday and make fresh ones to make a grand total of fifteen rafters which will complete the framework for the Front Porch roof.
We sliced down C9 rafter to become C10, then C10 down to make C11 and so on to the final one of C12 being made into C13. We took outside (in between showers) C13 and it fitted much better this time around!
Then we made a fresh C9 and continued making new ones for C6, C5 etc. down to C1. The only complication was the 20degrees bevelled angle cuts was not possible to do in one go in the chop saw so we had to do it in two separate stages. Not so bad after we have sorted out the puzzle of which way round to put things and made another jig!

After lunch, we went outside to measure the four rafters for the small side portions of the porch roof, two on the B section and two on the D side. Using our large right angle framing square, we managed to project across from existing rafters to find the correct position where the upper ends of the new rafters will meet the hip diagonal rafter. Back in the workshop, we proceeded to put in the Bird’s mouth (after adjusting the jig template to 33 degrees) and then sliced a very acute angle on the top ends. This angle is 20degrees and we used our large Bevel Slicing Machine again for this task!

Hopefully on Thursday, weather permitting, we will get all these fifteen rafters up and have this porch finish. We then will start making the framework to build up the extension to the roof for the Side Porch, extending sideway the E section of the roof (going towards the garage) and producing a gable end so the wall can be extended upwards too. We have new timber arriving for this job soon we hope.

This morning, in glorious sunshine, we were ready to put up our newly created “C” set of rafters to build up the framework of the Front Porch roof. We drilled a series of clearance holes for our fixing screws and then started installing them, the longest one first. This one, C8, went in very nicely and seated good and firmly into place. We proceeded with the next two rafters, the C9 and C10, and it seems to be ok as well so those two were glued and screwed into place too. It was only after this, when we went on to the next rafter, C11 (getting shorter), that we noticed that something was wrong. This rafter was angled somewhat off the vertical line and questions started popping into our minds. We measured the bottom separation (on the C beam) and that seems to be ok at 611mm distance between C8, C9 and C10 but at the top end, they were definitely diverging and we could not understand why this was happening. The spreadsheet had the two measured distances for C8 and C12 and the middle rafters (c9 through to c11) calculated but something was wrong. It was only after we tested the last rafter (C12) that we finally found the “Mistake” .. the position for C12 was 100mm off!! Somehow, reading the measuring tape, we had managed to get an extra 100mm further along the C beam away from its neighbouring rafters!
This completely explains why our rafters weren’t fitting AND also why our smallest one, C13, wasn’t fitting too. So we unscrewed and took back down the last two rafters (C9 and C10) but left behind C8 because that was truly an accurate and measured and it is correct.

We will scrape off the excess brown glue after it had set with a razor blade. These rafters are too short to go anywhere else, including the other side (matching C5 down to C1) or on the Side Porch. The only solution is to reuse them again for the C4 through to C2 rafters by losing about 500mm off the lengths as waste but keeping the Bird’s Mouth ends that are already done. We will have to recreate a new set of rafters for C9 across to C13 and try again. The spreadsheet has now been corrected with the true number (the measurement for the ill-fated C12 was really 566mm instead of 510mm) and it shows how much difference it makes!!
We are only glad that we had the mind to spot this error before the brown glue set and as it gave us the opportunity to make amends! Phew!!

This morning, we finished off cutting and preparing the two long diagonal Hip Rafters for the Front Door Porch roof. We sliced a little bit off the end at the top, drilled a couple of clearance holes and then sliced the Bird’s Mouth notch in the exact position, following real measurements outside using a short template pieces so we can get a more accurate distance from the Bird’s mouth, up to the top where it meets the apex of the roof. One more drill hole put here and then both went outside to be installed up into place.

It went in very well indeed, thanks goodness!

After lunch, we got on wit the job of creating the 12 “C” Rafters, to go with the one already created and installed out there, The C7 Rafter! Firstly, we marked out regular place settings at every 611mm so that for a whole 8feet sheet, there will be a 4mm gap to allow for thermal and moisture expansion throughout the year. Then, we measured the length of C8 and C6 rafters plus C12 and C2. These numbers went into our spreadsheet to calculate the intermediate lengths of the other rafters. We grabbed five more lengths of 89mm CLS timber and after putting on the bird’s mouth notches on the end of these five CLS pieces, we proceeded to cut down to the required lengths. It was a a complex operation, having to cut the exact length right angles first, before putting this end into the chop saw that has our complicated template to allow us to slice a 61degrees cut one way and at the same time, slice a 20degrees tilting angled cut to form the bevel end to marry up against the diagonal Hip Rafter. We had to fiddle with lots of test pieces before we had a consistent and repeatable setup to produce accurate shaped ends.

In the last half of an hour, in the deepening dark, we took outside several of our new C rafters to test fit them and it seems to be ok, apart from the diagonal Hip Rafters having a bit of a bow in their length (which we can draw it back straight again when we screw and glue our new C rafters on to it) but also the very smallest one, the C13 one, seems to not fit quite as well as the others. We will analyse further on Monday when we had a rest and our brains have warmed up and recovered ready for sorting that out!! Smile!

Today was the day of working out and implementing a method that will produce a set of two rafters, that will form the diagonal hip support beam from the point of the C wall and down to the gutters in the corner of the porch roof over our Front Door.
But first, we took out our “C7” rafter we made last night and got that up installed, glued and screwed to await for the next parts to made.

So back in the workshop, the first task was to set up the big planer machine so we could pass through the top edge of the manufactured hip beam and get two different sloping angles along the length. We made a wooden jig out of plywood and some blocks of wood to form a sloping support at the required 55.6 degrees angle, to guide the timber into the planer. The other angle we needed was a much shallower angle at 10.8 degrees and we could use the metal fence mechanism that came with the planer itself.

We made a test piece which we cut in half with a 32 degree angle on our chop saw. Then proceeded to cut a very, very shallow angle by hand, measuring at 17 degrees, using lots of muscle power and pencil lines to remove a large thin slice off.

(As you can see from the technical drawing above, it is quite a complicated finished piece of work)

To check our finished test piece, we took it outside to compare it against the C7 rafter and it’s not too bad, not bad at all, if we are allowed to say so!!
After lunch, it was time to tackle the big job of taking our 5.5metres long timber and getting it through the planer machine but we had some difficulties in getting it to just plane at all in the first place. The nature of the planning machine, as it is designed to do, is to plane flat any piece of timber and remove curves and other deviations and our long timber pieces had a slight curve in them. We didn’t mind these slight warp off the true straight line but it meant that the planer couldn’t do the work we wanted done! So back to plan A, which was to use our mobile electric planer instead, and after clamping our rafter to the edge of the work-tables, we managed to get the two sloping angles cut into the top edge of the two rafters.
Finally, to finish off the work for the day, we got our Bevel Slicing saw machine out and set this up to cut that very, very shallow angle, using the old templates (re-adjusted to fit these new rafters) and proceeded to slice the ends off the top of the rafters.

This almost concluded the work on these rafters, tomorrow, w we will cut a little bit off at the top ends and then cut the Bird’s mouths in at the exact measured distance and this would finally see the completion of making these complicated rafters and get them installed out there!! Phew!

This morning in lovely hot sunshine and no winds, we concluded the job of covering up the gable end of the Front Door extension that will have the porch coming out.

We used up our remaining pieces of cement boards and created lots of triangular left-over parts in return, some of which will be used on doing the gable end up inside the Side Door Porch later on.

After lunch, we set out to create the first rafter to form the “C” section of the roof, this being the steeply pitched roof on the front of the porch over the Front Door and Entertainment room area of the house. we had to reposition the guides on our Bird’s Mouth gig so it will cut the 61 degree angles for the end and the notch bitten out to form the Bird’s Mouth itself.
We also had to make an extended angled support fence on our chop bench saw so we could slice the very acute angle off the end of the timber. The machine can only go up to 45 degrees but we needed to get up to 61 degrees, hence the funny extra adaptations added to the chop saw!

After several test runs to prove to ourselves that things are coming out correctly, we went out to climb to the top of the C wall to measure the distance from the very top point and down to the new horizontal beam out on the arms of the porch. We double checked this measurement several times and then prepared for real, a length of 89mm CLS timber and proceeded to slice and chop it down to the required size. As it was getting dark, we took it back outside to see how well it fitted in the real world and hey presto! It Fitted!! Grin!

Tomorrow, we will glue and screw this rafter, which is actually labelled “C7”, up in place and then work on the even more complicated piece, the two diagonal Hip rafters that also goes from the top point of the C wall and down to each corner of the porch roof but they have two sloping edges on the top surface, a double cut ends and a bird’s mouth in it too of course! Phew!

Today, we first continued in the workshop to glue the other set of wide beam rafters, this time for the side door porch where we have a 89mm and a 63mm wide CLS lengths of timber, joined together with our biscuit joining method.
While that was drying, we went outside to mount up the “arm” for the side door porch, using our metal bar bent at right angles and then screwed down both on top and down the length of the leg.

We then decided to use a couple of ready made diagonal struts to help support this arm and the other sticking out arm at the other end of the porch so we can avoid having two legs getting in the way of our building equipment and perhaps finally have proper posts or maybe indeed design and have a neat proper diagonal bracing strut, made with Oak and not have any legs at all. This is likely to be the outcome as our driveway will be right alongside and everyone would feel happier moving cars around without the extra worry of colliding with two legs!!
After lunch, we hoisted up the long horizontal beam and glued and screwed that into place to conclude the side door porch framework for the roof elements to sit on.

While those jobs were drying, we sorted our meagre collection of 10mm cement boards and sliced a groove in one of the full size sheets, ready for going up on the front door gable wall. We will have to order another ten sheets so we can do the same for the side door gable wall and the conservatory wall too.
Next was to analyse how we are going to get these very heavy cement boards up three metres (ten feet) up the wall and we settled on building another scaffolding tower, just three segment high and borrowed the wooden platform from our other medium height tower inside the house. It just fitted up under the front door porch framework and we managed to start the task of placing the cement boards up on the wall.

We had the sensible idea of slicing the full size sheet (2400mm by 1200mm, approximately 8feet by 4feet) in half and make it much easier to man-handle these pieces up to the tower. We had been thinking of ropes and pulleys when suddenly the light bulb shone in our minds!

We concluded the day’s work by managing to get up two of these half modules, all glued and screwed down before it got too cold to work in and losing the light too!
Tomorrow, we will carry on installing more of the cement panels and then go back to making the diagonal hip rafters for both the front and side door porches.

Today, after doing some analysis, calculations and measuring outside in very, very chilly winds, we started the task of joining together two lengths of CLS timber. We fetched in six lengths of 89mm and two lengths of the 63mm CLS timber and then got our heavy duty planer machine to remove a few millimetres off the edge of the wood to form a flat surface for gluing. It was only by positioning the machine right beside the main doors, we could just about slide the full 4.8 metres length from outside on the driveway and feeding the timber through the machine into the workshop. We did all eight lengths of the timber we brought in.

After lunch, we played with our new toy, a biscuit joint cutter machine, which we had bought on clearance offer somewhere several years ago ! The machine cuts shallow curved slots which are filled with a glued-in oval shaped ‘wooden ‘biscuits’, if two matching slots are made in opposite side of the joint then this aligns and strengthens the joint.

After doing some successful tests, we then proceeded to make our first set of two extra wide planks, made out of two 89mm CLS timber and fortunately, we had plenty of larger sized clamps to squeeze the joint together for this 5.5metre long piece.

Tomorrow, we will glue the second set (made of a 89mm and 63mm wide parts) and then start looking at the cement boards to build up the face of the gable wall on the front door porch.