Blog

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.

This morning, we buried three sets of concrete blocks to support three legs which will soon be in place to brace the Front Porch.

We didn’t put up the new 7.6metres (25feet) long beam as the glue was still slightly tacky (the temperature isn’t warm enough for speedy curing) so we left it alone to finish strengthening up.
Instead, we brought in a half dozen more 89mm CLS timber to make the elements of the side door porch. The long beam is only 4.65 metres (15 feet) long and the second “arm” which comes out of the middle of the “H” section of the wall is 1.4 metres (a bit over 4feet) long. We glued and screwed together two sets of three layers of the timber in the workshop (we could fit these beams inside this time!) using our structural PVA glue (the workshop is warmer than outside – nice!).
after lunch, we created another tool to help with a tidy-up task on the top of the wall, see Top of Walls Slicing Jig.
Finally, to finish off the day’s work, we needed to cut into the top of the “H” wall to accommodate the sticking out “arm” (which is labelled the “G” section of the roof and the side of the porch) by removing a segment of the cement board and also the top layer of the top-plate framework of the wall.
And back in the workshop, we chopped another CLS plank to be glued together to make a supporting internal extra leg from the bottom-plate to the top-plate and there will be a heavy duty metal angled bracket to go over the top and down the leg to reinforce this new “G” arm to the wall, this is just in case someone drove into the porch’s leg (the drive way is right beside this section of the house) and knocked it away, leaving the over-hanging porch to hold itself and the weight of the small section of the roof and tiles until we got the leg back into position again! – quick!!
Tomorrow, we can start joining these various elements together and put in temporary support legs to brace the porches while we are building the house and then later on, put down proper foundations with steel legs and Oak timber to provide the final legs for the two porches.