Category: Build Progress

This morning, in a bit of a stiff breezy and chilly wind, we took out our first of the two rafters we completed on Saturday, but before that, I just remembered, we sliced off the bevel angled cut at the top end of the rafter (the end that fits into the metal bracket up on the I-Beam).
We shoved the scaffolding towers around, connected up the hoist and winched the IJ rafter up into the air and got it approximately into position. It looked good so we got the glue out and prepared the IJ corner leg with the glue and did the same up at the metal bracket too. Then we slid the rafter into place and with encouragement from our club hammer, managed to get it to fit nice and tightly!

We finished the morning off by tidying up all the equipment and wrapping up the winch motor again to protect it against the forecast rain (which duly arrived!).
After lunch, we started preparing the bits and pieces for the O Ridge rafter (this is the bent one with the metal elbow joint in the middle of it). We doubled checked the distances of the NO and OP corners against the I-Beam and the bracket at that end point, which turned out to be also pretty much on the spot too! So with this reassurance, we proceeded to cut and slice the LVL timber (we brought in the correct set of 4 lengths before lunch) putting a 6.5degrees angle on one end of the set of two LVL pieces and then cut the same 6.5 degree angle off the end of the webbing plywood bits too. Plus the usual internal noggins too. Everything was sanded to clean the surfaces and that concluded our day’s work.
Tomorrow, we will first vacuum the prepared bits and then glue and nail the rafter together, and after that, weather permitting, we will put up the other rafter, the LM rafter to get that one out of the workshop! Lovely!

Today, resuming where we left off from the very short morning’s work day yesterday (which was cutting the legs for corners IJ and LM and then measuring the distance from these legs up to the metal bracket at the point up on the I-Beam meets the K Ridge, which turned out to be 5860mm and 5855mm and only 10mm and 15mm off what the drawing indicated – not bad!!), we got on with the job of assembling all the bits and pieces (10 strips of the 423mm wide plywood webbing, 5 strips of the polystyrene foam strips, 4 LVL timber lengths, and a heap of noggings – some angled and some straight). We spent the morning preparing each of these bits with the correct angle slices (24.2° to be exact) for all the LBL timber pieces, the 8 strips of the plywood and 4 noggings. Then we sanded everything to clean up the surfaces for maximum gluing strength and finally adjusted the template to handle these 423mm wide rafters.
After lunch, we went into the task of vacuuming all these bits and pieces, putting each into the template, and as usual, gluing and nailing the webbing on each side, flipping the rafter over and doing the other side. All this repeated again for the second rafter and .. oh boy .. we finally finished quite late just before 7pm!

It is good that we got these two rafters done so they can dry and be ready for installing on Monday first thing (after we have sliced the bevel on the top end first!!) and then we can get on with doing the O Ridge “elbow” rafter and tackle the final section of the specialised roofing job!

Today in the pleasant sunshine, we tackled the job of hoisting up the next two rafters, which are the rafters going into the corners JK and KL. After fiddling with the tower and the winch, we managed to lift them up separately into position and glue and nail everything together!

It is slowly coming together, the roof skeleton framework, we have two more diagonal rafters to do for this section of the roof and then we will have only the O Ridge complex over the Great Room to do and that’s it! Well, at least, these LVL special rafters will be done, after that, it will be building and installing dozens and dozens of “regular” rafters to fill in between all these skeleton hips and valley rafters! Phew!!

Today, we carried on with the creation of the rafters for the corners where wall J and K meets and again for walls K and L meet, all part of the extension where Bedroom 2 lies.
The usual construction is done, the webbing had their ends sliced with a 28.6degrees angles off them and cut-away notches removed at the other end. Then the LVL timber chopped with the same 28.6degrees angle too and the bird’s mouth notch cut as well.
The whole lot was sanded and then vacuumed before piling each layer into the template and applying the glue and then nails.

These two rafters are now drying overnight before tomorrow, we will hoist them up and install them into position .. weather permitting!!

After lunch, we resumed the task of creating the next rafter, this time, the JK diagonal LVL going from the K Ridge and down into the far outside corner of the Bedroom 2 extension. We double checked the measurements outside now that the K Ridge is up. The corner leg was pulled out of the stack and sliced down to 2382mm high and and then measured from that point back up to the metal bracket up on the K Ridge, which turned out to be 4912mm distance. The other task we did outside, was to cut the corner cement board away and a piece of the top-plate too, to make a receptacle for the bird’s mouth on the JK rafter to slot into.
Back in the workshop, we sliced 28.6 degree angles on the end of four pieces of the 455mm wide plywood webbing strips and then proceeded to do the same to the beginning of the LVL timber and also one noggin 89mm timber piece too.
That concludes our day today! Tomorrow, we will continue with this rafter and also start preparing for the KL rafter too.

This morning, we resumed the battle with the K Ridge Rafter!! We first applied Plan K by slicing off the sticking out webbing down on the wall end of the rafter.

This then allowed much more freedom of movement. But even then, we still had to cut away a little more of the webbing so the top flange could fit on and slide into the bird’s mouth. We even had to cut away a small piece of the webbing and internal noggin at the I-Beam end to get it to swing downwards into the bracket and avoid the I-Beam flange! But we FINALLY got I it in!!

We glued and nailed both ends plus also we doubled up the webbing at the wall end to reinforce the connection to the vertical post. It is now very, very solid and it ain’t going anywhere!!

This afternoon, we changed our work schedule and skipped over the operation of lifting up the heavy K Ridge for another day as the morning was wet and had other commitment anyway. So this afternoon, we started the preparation task for doing the next two rafters, the JK and KL ones that goes right to the outside corners of Bedroom 2 and connecting back to the K Ridge.
We spent the time slicing up all the polystyrene foam sheets into the required pieces and strips to finish off all these special LVL rafters (9 strips of 240mm wide, 6 strips of 217mm ones and 3 strips of 197mm wide ones) and with the other strips we had already done last week, we now have all the polystyrene foam inserts to complete the job.
Then we went outside and took the opportunity to weigh our K Ridge rafter while it was sitting on the ground and sitting the bathroom scales under each end in turn, we got a total weight of 127kg! Yes Heavy man!! No wonder the K Ridge has been a beast to handle! Phew!
Finally, we unwrapped the LVL timber pile to pull out the next four pieces and brought them into our workshop. We concluded the day by putting together a snapshot of the required part of the drawings so we had a print out of the JK and KL rafters to hand to know what to measure etc. etc.
Tomorrow, weather permitting, we will resume the task of lifting the K Ridge into place and hopefully we have worked out a solution to which way to lift it so we clear all the obstacles and get it seated into position – at last!

Today, we tackled the big job of lifting up our Bent Rafter, the K Ridge that has a 45 degree bend in it’s length. It was tricky because the middle of the rafter at the elbow joint is the heaviest part but we needed this to go up first into the air and it wanted to keep flicking over as it naturally wanted the heavier bit lower down! We first tried lifting the rafter using just one motorised winch and even though we managed to get the wall end up and over the wall, we couldn’t lift up the other end high enough to get it engaging into the metal bracket on the steel I-Beam!!
We recorded a short video sequence of this Fun and Games we had today!

We brought in our second tower into play and tried to help lift but we were struggling with the whole length of the rafter being just too long to go in straight! Also, the control box is on a short lead so we decided to abandon the day and bring in the motor winch to extend the cable with 10metres of 5-core mains wires so the we can try again on Monday and have both of us being near each end of the rafter and also keep our finger on the control box buttons to lift or lower and we push and heave the rafter around and get it in place!! We have also other ideas that would help us in the long run, a backup plan!

We never did weigh this rafter but it’s jolly heavy!! Smile!

We had a lovely day of sunshine and we assembled our two part K Ridge into one solid piece with a 45 degree bend on it, ready for the final preparation tasks and lifting it into place tomorrow.
The two parts were carried out and placed on four trestles so we had plenty of room to fiddle with the metal elbow brackets to get them all lined up etc. Once we got that done, we brought out the long 6 metre steel strips and proceeded to put one at the time, along the edge of the rafter, including bending half way along around the elbow joint and then drilling pilot holes into the wood and finally drilling clearance 8mm holes for the 80mm coach screws to be inserted and tightened up.

After lunch, we finished off the other steel strip (bending that one too and doing the drilling tasks again). We had to use a heavy club hammer to bash the steel strip to make it bend around the 45degree corner so it was as neat and sharp as possible.

Then, it was the messy job next .. the glue! Leaving the two steel strips attached to the two parts of the rafter to hold it all aligned, we removed the two big elbow brackets so we could clean them and apply a layer of glue on both the metal surface and the wood surface too. We decided that before we started gluing, we would do a bit more sanding of the surfaces of the plywood as they didn’t quite have the same thickness and there was a small step. Then all the dust was vacuumed up and now we could do the gluing! We used a notched trowel to spread the silicone glue evenly over the contact surface (both sides of the rafters etc.). Then we juggled to get everything back together again! It wiggled back easily enough and we got it all bolted together very tight indeed!
The next job was to remove each steel edge strip one at a time, to clean them, apply the glue and then put it back and tighten down all 32 bolts and squeezing the glue out! We did the same on the other strip! All the excess glue was tidied up and put into gaps here and there to make a smooth and neat finish.


Tomorrow, we will paint the bare metal surfaces with the metal rust protection paint and then lift it up and slot it into position .. just like that! We will also measure the weight of the whole thing to see what the finished article weighs, probably about 100kg – thank goodness that our motorised winch can handle up to 250kg – Phew!!

This morning, we planed the top and bottom edges of both part of the K Ridge Rafter. We wanted to make sure that these surfaces are clean and smooth to get maximum contact area to the metal strip (coming later on) and the wood and have plenty of glue connection to maximise strength. We also planed the middle joint to clean up bumps etc. caused during the manufacturing process.
After struggling to get both parts laid flat on the work bench, pushing one end right into the shelf to the wall – phew and the other end sticking half way out the main workshop doors on a roller support leg! We managed to join them together so we could lay down one of the metal bracket piece that makes up the elbow joint element.
We then put in pilot holes where the bolts are going to go, and using a portable drill press and our electric powered drill, we drilled 10.5mm holes through the flanges, all eight of them. after that, we managed to get both metal bracket pieces bolted together and tightened up.

It is only a half day of work today because of other commitments so tomorrow, we will have to resume work outside as we just don’t have enough room inside the workshop! The other part needs to go in and have its own test fit too. Then the long narrow metal strips (5mm thick) will go along the top edge and bottom edge and bent at the elbow joint corners. Having done all this, everything is glued up and screwed and bolted all back together again!