Blog

All Larch Timber Scorched and Chemical Dunk Trough Built

The last two weeks saw the completion of scorching all the Larch cladding timber. A total of 596 planks of varying lengths from 3metres, right up to 5.7metres and different widths of 75mm, 100mm and 125mm. They all had a position in a list that describes how much scorching each had, from level zero (not touched by any flames) to a deep burn at level 5. We eventually, after having to do running repairs and improvements to the Scorching Machine (a new Motor driver heatsink amd replacement snadpaper on the drive rollers), processed all 441 Planks that needed scorching. Our canister of Butane gas, had 19kg of gas at the start. This went down to just 2kg at the end so how about that then?!

Replaced-sandpaper-on-drive-drums

New-Heatsink-for-motor-drive

All-the-scorched-planks

The next task was to do a grand tidy up of the whole area, moving the scorching machine over to be stored away in a corner for emergencies, sweep up the brown “charcoal” dust that was produced by the scrubbing process, probably about good bucket load and a general sweep right across the middle of the building, another 2 buckets of mostly sand.

Pile-of-removed-burnt-wood-dust

Then, we sorted out all the scorched planks into two main piles, one for fire treatment; these planks are destined for the back of the building nearest to the boundary and the side next to the garage too. The other main pile is earmarked for the front of the building and only going to have the single treatment of being oiled. The two piles are quite similar in size.

The last day on Saturday was spent building the basic structure of our dunking trough to apply the necessary treatments. It is a long trough nearly 6metres, 160mm wide at the bottom and the two sides gently fans outwards to a height of 100mm. Then a 4foot wide draining board was constructed all the way along one side so we can position the freshly dunked planks up on the slope and reclaim the dripping liquid and recycle it for the next planks.

Dunking-tank-on-Saturday-13th

Dunking-tank-on-Saturday-13th

Next week, we will seal the trough with plastic layers to retain the liquid and then start treating the Larch timber.

13 June 2020
Scorching Machine is Complete

It took another three weeks to finish off tweaking the design of the scorching machine, with many iterative changes as we test and adapt the machine (As usual things take much longer than you expect, but I have enjoyed the change of work).
We started by moving the machine into the house (after cleaning up a bit), we then made a extension to the input side to guide and support the plank entering the machine.

Input-rollers-on-the-machine

We did some test runs, and we can vary the amount of “burn” from a black highly charred finished to a gentle pale scorching. We have selected 5 levels of speed, all the way from a very slow 10mm per second (very highly burnt) to a much quicker 40mm per second to produce the pale finish. We also have the option of no scorching at all and this being our sixth level.

Our-six-scorch-levels

We put up a block of different burnt timbers on our house wall in the full sunshine to examine it and decide on what patterns we might like on different walls, taking into account their compass orientations, the windows sills and headers etc.

First-set-of-graduated-boards-on-a-wall

We-decided-to-flip-the-bottom-rows-

The next job was to build a spreadsheet of all our walls (fifteen of them), with their compass orientation, whether it is under a porch, then divide the wall up into three vertical sections (under the windows, beside the window itself and lastly above) to allocate what level of scorching is desired and then find solutions to the pattern of plank widths to fit into each section. This resulted in a table of quantity’s vs plank width and scorch level.

We started to process the wide planks first (they are nearest) and we had lightly scorched (#1) some planks when a plank got stuck. Shaun was running the machine whilst Stephen was wire brushing the finished planks so We did not notice for a while until Stephen looked over and saw the smoke poring out! We shut off the burners and when we examined the machine we found one of the motors had sheared it’s flexible connector…

Drive-adapter-sheared-off

We repaired the machine and carried on but a few planks later we had a jam again (the plank sometime wanders off or bends), we caught this one earlier and no damage was done. At this point we decided (being nerds and all) that we would add sensors to the machine to detect any stall and sound an alarm. In hind sight we should just have carried on whilst keeping a good eye on the machine as getting sensors to work reliably took 2 weeks (but that’s hindsight for you)!
The machine needed to know 3 things – When the plank enters, when it leaves and if its moving. The first two should be simple just put a switch near the plank to be pressed when the plank is in. The movement detector devised initially was a metal wheel on a shaft which had a sensor measuring the shaft rotation, the shaft being mounted on a pivot which kept the wheel in contact with the plank.

Input-plank-sensor-switch

Rolling-encoder-mechanism

So having built the sensors and fitted them it took a day to write the software to run the machine and start testing. The metal wheel did not run very consistently on the plank even after filing some ‘teeth’ on on it so after a while a new system was devised to put encoder disk and sensors on the pinch rollers which force the plank against the drive rollers (an all together better way but you don’t always think of the best way first). This was fabricated, installed and worked reliably.

Encoder-disk-and-sensor-on-a-pinch-roller

Protecting-the-plastic-encoder-from-the-heat

The next problem was that when we turned on the burners the output switch got too hot! Again a different system was needed, we needed to get the switch away from the heat so various pivoted arms where fabricated, tried and modified. But after a long time trying to get them to work reliably we gave up on this idea as well.

Wheel-lever-output-switch

A non contact sensor was needed and a light sensor placed just below the plank would give different readings to show when the plank was present or not. This was fabricated and fitted and worked! We finally had a working machine and just a bit of fine tuning of the software was done. On the last Saturday a revelation was had! in that there had always been a lever to activate a switch built in to the machine from the beginning. The output flame guard was hinged on a rod which come out the side of the machine and this rod was turned when the flame guard was pushed up by the plank. This rod happened to have a bent end which was ideal for pushing a switch so we fitted a switch so now we have two output sensors which work…

Optical-output-plank-sensor

Output-switch-using-the-flame-flap

So we finally have a machine for processing the planks, which will probably only take a week!

Final-Control-board-and-wiring

30 May 2020
Berm All Finished

The task of rebuilding the Berm continued over Monday, Tuesday and finally Wednesday. We wanted the Berm to be high enough to stop the majority of the rain water that comes down our Loke so we decided that we would lay down a complete line of bricks again, just like we had before, but this time, using double the number of them. we broadened out the pattern, to three and a half bricks wide at one end near the raised flower bed and narrows down to two bricks wide at the other end. Then scooping all the extracted driveway “hardcore” material back all over the bricks (to fill all the gaps between the bricks with plenty of sharp bits and sand) but most of it went to form a gentle slope up up to and down away the bricks on both sides.
The whole thing was compacted down using our heavy petrol powered vibrator.

Driveway-berm-finished

It is flatter and wider but not perhaps taller than the old one, so hopefully that will allow our visitors and their cars not to run the risk of damaging the bodywork underneath. It will do the primary job of holding back the rain water most of the time and only during the 100-year events that seems to be occurring every 5 or 6 years where it is likely to overflow again. We have other plans in place to increase soak-away capacity at the bottom of the Loke and also let the water into the school field too!
So that 2 week job is finished At Last! We can get the car out again! We were running out of food!! Grin!

13 May 2020
Larch scorching machine progressing

You may remember that we have decided to lightly scorch all of our larch cladding to give the walls more texture both visual and physical.
We are using an ancient Japanese technique called “Shou-sugi-ban Yakisugi”, although we are not burning the wood as deeply.
As we have over 2300 m (7500 ft) of timber to scorch we decided to make a machine to automate the process (and of course because we’re nerds). We made a start on the machine back in March (Article), but we now have bought the motors and electronics to carry on.
So over the last two weeks Stephen has been working on this whilst Shaun does other things around the house.
First part of the job was to build the computerised controls for the motors so we can select the burn rate and pattern. This was completed by the end of the first week after lots of programming and learning about motor control feedback.

Control-Board-and-Motors-Day-1

On Monday of the second week the motors were installed to the machine and testing of wood through the machine revealed some problems… the wood was moving a bit irregularly and had difficulties at slow speed. Lubricating all the rollers did not improve things enough and it was concluded we needed bigger motors! On Tuesday we remembered that we had some bigger motors bought for use in a giant CNC machine (which will be built eventually!).

Comparing-Motor-sizes

So it was back to the electronics bench to rewire and reprogram the controller for the quite different motors. By the end of the next day everything was mounted and working well.

Control-board-and-larger-motors-mounted-to-machine-Day-3

The next step was to improve the way the torches were mounted as we needed more control of the flames, so we made two rails with T slots in them then we clamped the torches by the tubes leading to the burners. The torches are mounted to pairs facing in opposite directions allowing maximum adjustments.

Torch-mounting-system

Gas-burners

As expected the flames started to burn the plywood sides of the machine, so we made protective barriers comprising glass fibre insulation wrapped in foil behind steel plates, and added hinged steel plates across the wood to protect the drive rollers.

Burning-machine-Day-6-Inside-

Then we made a stand for the machine to make it stable and allow the use of roller stands to support the long planks of wood.

Burning-machine-Day-6

It was time to burn the first plank! This worked quite well so we needed to wire brush the loose char off. So of course we needed another machine …
We bought an adaptor kit for a angle grinder but found it did not fit any of our angle grinders so we had to adapt it! So a quick bit of drilling and welding later we had a powered wire brush drum.

Drum-adapter-kit

Gaint-wire-wheel-to-clean-burned-planks-1

Gaint-wire-wheel-to-clean-burned-planks-2

So we brushed the plank off and had a quite nice result.

First-burned-plank

Next week we will complete the machine with some extra rollers and guide to make it easier to use.

10 May 2020
Widen and Flatten Out the Driveway Berm

In a very disrupted couple of weeks .. we had steady rain all last week from Tuesday to Friday and some on Saturday afternoon too (a total of about 25mm of rain) .. Whilst Stephen worked on the Larch Burner Shaun got on with a task that we have been meaning to do for a while plus also take an opportunity to eliminate the ton of wasted slate bits and pieces.
Yes the Berm across our driveway that has been protecting us from flood water that comes down our Loke. It is currently constructed using a line of 2inch by 6inch planks held vertically and a line of house bricks on either sides to form a sharp hump. Unfortunately, it proves to be too sharp and some vehicles suffer scraping damage to their metal and plastic underbelly. Also during the heaviest rain falls, the water still gets over and floods our driveway.

Loke-Driveway-Berm-1

So we surveyed the Berm and discovered that the line of planks dips down in the middle by three or four inches but otherwise it is pretty level. We have marked the fence post and the brick wall of the raised flower bed to the height of the existing Berm and we will use a string pulled taut to build the hump to the required height and level.
After removing the old planks and about 140 bricks and sweeping aside the sand to one side, we are left with the original driveway material (made from recycled motorway tarmac and granite chippings).

We then cut down through this layer to the sand underneath and pulled apart the driveway skin to form a trench a few feet wide and 4inches deep. We calculated that this trench will be spacious enough to take all the slate waste, crushing each slate into tiny pieces to avoid forming slippery layers.
But first, before we get to that part of the job, we dug out all the weeds in and around the flower bed end of the Berm, removed two paving slabs which were relocated to the middle of our yard to provide a new incinerator venue so we can get on top of getting rid of the wooden rubbish we have been collecting for the last few months.

Driveway-berm-excavated

Shaun then got smashing! (We welded some bits of metal to the base of the metal thumper to help break the slates) Over a last few days all the waste slates were placed in the trench and smashed.

Driveway-Berm-All-the-scrap-slates-smashed-up-in-the-trench

We now just have to add some more material to make the ‘hump’ of the berm and replace the driveway material over the top.

9 May 2020
We are Weather tight! All Window Frames installed and “glazed”

Continuing from Wednesday, with the guttering job done, we got on with installing our oak window frames. Over the next three days, we took each frame, test fitted it (making any slight adjustments to the wall when necessary but not often), sanding down all the surfaces (of the hole in the wall) to make sure the glue will stick with maximum strength. Then the next step was to charge the cleaned surface with our grey PU sealant glue all over the area being covered by the window frame (about 70mm wide) pressing the glue into the grain and any gaps holes etc. and then lifting and inserting the oak frame in. We had our 60mm spacers to put at the outside top to ensure that the frame didn’t go too far inwards and then it was wedged in place from the inside. Finally, more sealant was applied around the perimeter, filling in our small triangle chamfer and any gap around the outside to ensure strength to resist any rain water that may get blown in and then finished off inside with more sealant for maximum grip and protection. Sometimes if the gap was over few millimetres we inserted a foam strip into the gap to give the sealant something to fill against.

Larger-gaps-are-backed-with-a-foam-strip

This task took almost 40 tubes of sealant (Stephen’s hand was tired of squeezing the sealant gun)

For the last window task, we bought some thick heavy duty clear (well not very clear actually – about 60% transmission) polythene builders plastic and used double sided tape to attach pieces into all twelve windows to keep the wind out which keeps bringing in sand and dust into the house. Oh Yes, to stop the rain too of course!

The-P1-window-installed-and-glazed

The-glazing-is-Translucent

It is only temporary while we wait for the COVID-19 lock down to be lifted and we can get extra people in to help us install the nine large windows which will weigh a ton .. well actually 115kg or about 17 stones (or for our Americans cousins, 253lbs!). It might be quite a while hence the reason for putting in these plastic windows.

We finished mid-afternoon on Saturday and for the remainder of the day, we started a complete and thorough “spring” clean of the house! At long last, we won’t get any more sand and dust (and foxes) coming into the house and dumping their loads!! Over the last couple of years, we probably had swept up a good dozen builder’s buckets worth of sand and now, with all the holes, all fifteen of them, blocked off, we can do a thorough job and it will keep relatively clean for longer .. until we come along and mess it up of course!

25 April 2020
Finished Bringing Gutters Back to Fresh Colours and All Oiled

We started the week with the continuing task of cleaning the gutters and fascia. After being exposed to the sun and weather for at least 5 months and in some areas, well over a year they are rather discoloured. We ground off the affected surface using our angle grinder with a 40 grit abrasive wheel and then the orbital sander to smooth it off somewhat. We then oiled the wood to give it the initial coating and we will then come along with our back pack tank with a battery to spray on additional coats every week or so, just a thin layer at a time.

Gutter-refurb-finfished

We did the sanding and oiling using three of our original platform modules that had been cut down so the guttering were at chest height. Occasionally, we had to spread out the platforms to reach both ends of a straight run of guttering in one go and this meant that we had to step over small gaps (about a foot) but fortunately, we had screwed edging strips on all the modules to give us tactile feedback when shuffling along, concentrating on the task, and would know that we had reached an edge.

21 April 2020
Inspecting the Gutters, Sealed the Metal Mesh Edge and Starting to clean and oil them.

We started our week on a Tuesday after having a day off for Easter. We finished off applying the black yukky mastic stuff to the top edge of the Slate Skirt and it is now done right around the whole house. We also have been moving the excess Slates from the long time storage location beside the Loke to our swimming lane, to get them out of the way and tidied up under cover. The crate of slate was slowly sinking into the ground soil and an army of nature’s creatures have been living in between the layers of slates!

Then we decided to get on with the inspection of the guttering and finish off checking the sealing of the rubber membrane at their ends. We also sealed the metal mesh edge to the front vertical part of the gutters. They are clamped down using a thin oak strip so we applied some clear silicone sealant inside the joint and screwed it all tight again.
This will stop the rain water from leaking through this joint and dripping down on to the ground. The water has a habit to cling to the metal mesh and rolling down towards the clamped joint and work its way through. Also, there is a strong possibility that the same water would catch any holes or the edge of the rubber membrane and travel backwards under the rubber and back into the gutters. We found one or two sections having rain water underneath the rubber membrane so we had to lift it up and suck out the water. The worse example of this was the “M” section and we found that the rubber edge was barely on the top of the oak vertical timber piece.

Working-on-gutters

Sealed-gutter-cap

On Wednesday afternoon, we went around the complete circuit of the house and painted behind the fascia board, making sure it was nice and neat down to the bottom of the fascia. Most of it was done when we sprayed several weeks ago but we had a mobile barrier to protect our guttering against accidental splatters.

Black-inside-of-the-fascia

We finished off the day with the excess slate moving task, finally having got all 2600 of them into our swimming lane for long-term storage.

Spare-Slates-stored-in-swimming-lane-1

Spare-Slates-stored-in-swimming-lane-2

So on Friday, we started vigorously sanding the oak gutters, first trying our belt sander but found it too heavy to hold upside down and it wasn’t quite getting into the corners plus also the flat bed design couldn’t cope with the uneven timber. So we switched over to our angle grinder with a very course 40 grit sanding disc. This was very much better at removing the grey colouring in the wood caused by exposure to sun and the weather. Our orbital sander then came along to smooth off the surfaces, with occasional hand sanding.

Gutters-after-a-year-of-weather

Sanding-the-gutters

Then we applied the timber oil treatment to the naked oak surfaces using a 4inch wide fluffy woolly roller and left it to soak in and dry.

and-after-sanding-and-oiling-1

and-after-sanding-and-oiling-2

and-after-sanding-and-oiling-3

We also oiled our first window frame too to see how it fares, see how often we will have to oil it and see how it rubs down.

H-window-oiled-1

H-window-oiled-2

Our last day, Saturday, was a rather wet day with a steady rain falling all day but we did take that opportunity and go and check the guttering to see if we had any water dripping over the gutters. The conclusion was .. much better! It was difficult to tell to which drip was rain just landing on the gutter itself or coming from water running down the mesh but we carefully watched these drips and it seems that our sealant is working! Hurray!
Also the freshly oiled surface of the gutters was resisting the water and making it bead up and run off more efficiently. Another Hurray!
So we worked indoors on the gas flame burning mechanism, a couple of electric motors to drive the rollers that will guide each larch timber plank through the charring machine. We want to establish a uniform speed so the pattern of charring is smoother and more consistent. We will experiment with deliberately changing the motor speeds and see what unusual patterns we might get.

Next week, we carry on cleaning the gutters and oiling them and then we carry on installing the other eleven windows.

18 April 2020
Slate Skirt Complete

By Tuesday lunch time, we had finished gluing up all the Slates that forms the Skirt on the wall running right around the house. Some 300 slates were stuck onto the polystyrene padding layer so two thirds are above ground and the remainder is in the dirt.

Slated-along-O-and-around-the-corner-to-P1

Over the remaining days of the week, we were grouting the slates in sections using a anthracite coloured (dark grey) cement based grout, which we used up 17.5kg of grout. We had to order another 10 kg because we had not realised to how much more grout these slates took to fill the joints (the bevelled edges were facing backwards so had a hollow to fill up). The new supply arrived very quickly on Thursday morning. After each section was grouted we went along and removed any excess grout with a wet sponge, then as each section matured and hardened overnight, that section was scrubbed with a rough ‘scotchbrite’ pad and washed using our garden hose connected to a brush to provide a constantly running clean water.

Slates-before-final-scrub

Grouted-corner

We had a side issue to deal with on Thursday with the repair of the garden shed’s roof, see Garden Shed Repair
But in the afternoon, we managed to fill in all the way along the front of the building, pushing the sandy soil back into the trench and level off the area in front of the slates
So by Saturday mid-afternoon, the whole Slate Skirt was all grouted, all washed and the soil pushed in and levelled. Also half of it had the non-drying black mastic applied to the top of the skirt to seal it off against any chance of rain water getting inside behind and perhaps freezing during a bad winter and causing damage.

The-finished-skirt-1

The-finished-skirt-2

The-finished-skirt-3-

The-finished-skirt-4

The-finished-skirt-5

The last few hours of work for this week was to install one of our window frames with our newly arrived grey PU sealant. We made wedges to help jam the frame into the house holes when they are in the correct position and a couple of spacers to make sure the top edge, the header, is held at the right distance away from the wall.
We first charged all the surfaces (after brushing off all the dust first) with a thin layer of the sealant and then slid the framework into the hole. Then all the outside exposed joints were thoroughly filled in with more sealant and scraped smooth at a slight angle to improve the bulk strength and make it long-lasting. We had allocated three tubes (standard 300ml size) to each of our twelve windows. We had about a quarter of a tube left so instead of using more of the grey stuff, we decided to use some older white PU sealant to put a thin bead around the inside joint.

First-window-framed-installed

Detail-of-frame-sealant

That concludes our work for this week! The last of the mastic application will be put on the next week (we couldn’t do it immediately because the washing operation left the slates and walls still wet) and we will carry on installing more oak windows frames as well.

11 April 2020
Garden Shed Finally Gets its Roof Repaired!

On Thursday, we had noticed that the old roofing felt on the Garden Shed was loose and flapping about and this prompted us to decide that we ought to finish the job we started 6 months ago when we recovered all our temporary building roofs with brand new felt last year (the original felt was installed in 2012!).
So we spend the morning and a couple of hours after lunch in laying on five new full sized strips and two narrow strips, all glued with bitumen horrible sticky stuff!!
We also straightened up the guttering by jamming in a couple pieces of wood so the rain water will flow along the gutters instead of tipping out the side.

Refelted-shed-roof

This will probably be the last time we deal with the roof as the life time of the felt is five years and we hope to have the house all finished by then!! Cross Fingers!!

9 April 2020