Cleanup and little stuff

Heading out of the country for a week, so returned my friend's sawmill and cleaned up some little stuff prior to the trip. 

We've had a little red fox that likes strolling through the construction site, looking for a meal. Susan saw him on the woodpile yesterday, and I caught him on camera heading up the road. 

We pulled up all the levelers, and pulled the sawmill out for the trip home. There's probably still a good foot deep pile of sawdust to use in the garden as compost to keep the weeds down and moisture in. 

What a mess from the sawmill. 

Chad and I framed in the garage door openings yesterday. The doors will be 9' wide and 8' high. 

The purlins have a line of braces to the girts, but they are on the wrong side of the girts. Braces work in compression, but don't really do anything in tension. The braces were all set up in tension, probably to assist in the raising of the purlins into place with a gin pole. I had three choices for fabricating the tension rods, which are fourteen and a half feet long. Option one was get some #4 rebar and 1/2" all-thread, and have the all-thread welded to the rebar. This would blend into the antique beams pretty nicely. Option two was two sections of all-thread and a coupler - no real fabrication, but also wouldn't blend in too well. Option three which I chose, was to get mild steel rod, and thread the ends. I purchased the rods, and then took them over retired 92 year old Don Brown to have him help me thread them in his machine shop. They were too long to chuck up in his lathe, so we had to put them in a vice and use a little more muscle to get the first threads cut, then it was just count 52 rotations of the handle for the die to get four inches of thread on each end, with stops about every 1/2" to give it a few drops of cutting oil. I worked up a little sweat cutting those threads.  

Even though the house is a couple hundred square feet bigger, the garage is starting to dwarf it, even without the rafters hung. 

What to do with the extra pallets, now that they aren't being used to air-dry the lumber? How about a nice little three bay compost center to make some compost for the garden and flowers. 

I was thinking of removing most of the attic joists and having a cathedral ceiling in the woodworking shop, but with the views up here, I'm considering a small loft to have a sitting area and have a cup of tea. It might also give me some space to store dry lumber for upcoming projects.  

I laid a few more roof boards out to build a work area to use a stepladder to secure the peaks of the rafters when we lay them in place. 

Quite the mess from the sawmill to clean up. We'll have plenty of sawdust for using as mulch in the garden. 

I asked Tom about what to do with this floor joist. I was concerned about the crack. Tom examined the repair and the hand wrought nails, and said that the joist has been holding with the repair since the building was first erected over two centuries ago, so if it would make me feel better, put a couple timber locks in it and call it good, so I did. 

Posts and Purlins

Friday was the big day with the crane. Now it's finishing up the rest of the timber frame.

Monday we added interior posts and some 4x4's on the gable ends to provide more support for the second floor and attic. I also had a girt fracture, so repaired it with a 4' long 1/4" steel plate, like it's sister girt that we repaired on the ground.

Tuesday was supposed to be a light shower or two, but we were pretty much washed out with rain. I got a couple new floor joists in the former chimney area, cutting new seats in the girts.

Today we installed most of the attic joists and set the two purlins for the rafters.

 Trying to move beams with the come-along.

 Using the commander to remove an attic joist.

 Starting to set the purlin posts.

 Attic joists in place and purlin posts in place.

 East purlin set.

 Chad building a catwalk on the attic joists so we can set the purlins and rafters.

 Pegging the west purlin.

South view looking at the purlins in place on top of the attic. Next up is the rafters. 

North view of the building. We set 4x4's on the two sides of the north door, which will be a 4' barn door. 

North west view of the frame.

Timber Frame Raising

When Tom and I started five weeks ago, he said if things go well, we could be ready to raise the frame in two or three weeks. He had originally said a couple months when I bought the frame last year, but it is going way faster.

Tom and I had Noel Dydo out with his crane to lift the timbers into position.  My stepson Chad was out from California, and a couple friends from church, Bill and Larry helped, along with my brother-in-laws Ed and Mike.

The building is a four bent building with two gable ends and two intermediate bents.

We started with the South gable end of the building. Here is this first bent going up in the air.

With the bent in position, Tom then used his beam level to plumb up the bent, and we set some tags to hold it plumb. A normal level won't work on hand hewn beams, because they aren't flat, so the beam level has a roller on each end to register on the beam.

Using the crane, we did have to climb a ladder to pull off the straps after every lift. 

Between the bents, intermediate tie beams are placed to tie the adjacent bents together.

Here's the second bent going up in the air.

With two bents up, it's starting to look like a timber frame.

Tie beams being set to tie the second and third bent together.

Bent number three being set into position.

Three quarters of the building raised.

Lots of spectators - my mother-in-law (back row) was the chief cheerleader.

Second time we're putting up this tie beam. Fortunately, it didn't hit anyone when it fell out, though it did put a serious dent in the pine sill. 

Starting to set the floor joists after we pulled the rack out of the building. When it was first set, it leaned about 5" to the west, but a little come-along work and it was back to plumb east-west as well as north-south.

Starting to look like a floor system - now just need some boards down to get around up here.

Why carry boards up one at a time when you can bring up a full 4'x4'x16' bundle in one lift. Only problem was the weight stressed a girt, so I've got one more girt repair to do this week - but pretty easy to do before the floor is all down.

Starting to set the west tie beam - the right tie beam is already set. 

Setting up a come-along to pull the tie beam into final location.

All tied together - the core timber frame is now assembled.

The rafters have a support mid span known as a purlin. We didn't set them on their posts, but did have them lifted up to the attic to make setting them easier. We'll be able to lift them the last 3 1/2 feet with a come-along strung off a ladder.

We brought the attic joists up with the crane, and the strap got stuck underneath the bundle, so I removed one end and let the crane pull it out.

We also had the crane bring roof boards and rafters up to the attic to save carrying them up one at a time.  I also tested to see how roomy the garage was with the Tahoe parked in it.

Lots of empty pallets to repurpose now that the lumber is distributed around the building. 

Cutting Rafters

The original rafters were hand hewn from smaller trees, and generally were round on two or more sides. I decided to make fresh six by six rafters. I had milled out enough material, but most of it was going to require a splice at the purlin. Tom encouraged me to use full length rafters. I had five from the initial milling, but needed 13 more. I had two logs left, both too big to get on the mill without a lot of assistance.

We used my brother in law's log truck to drag the log to the mill and try to lift it on the mill with the combination of the mill hydraulics and his grapple, but the log wouldn't go. This was after cutting the log from 20 to 18 feet. Next step was to use a chainsaw to slab off material from two sides of the log. This diet got it to the point where we could get it on the mill. It still took creativity to turn the log to get it to a usable cant.

Sitting on the mill after the rough chain saw diet.  I did get a bit more useable lumber from the slabs cut off laying on the ground.

Squared up to a 25" x 22" cant. Note the size of the cant versus a standard framing square.

We needed 13 rafters, we got 12, but also got two 3x6's that can be glued to make the final rafter. All total the log produced about 935 board feet of lumber, despite cutting off 10% of the log and hacking more off with a chainsaw.

Finished rafters after I shaped them based on one of the originals.

Building Bents

The primary building block of a timber frame building is a bent. A bent consists of two posts and at least one girt (crossmember), and typically braces. My gable end bents included two girts (second floor and attic level), and four braces, and 9 or 10 second floor studs. The bents for the center of the building just had two posts and two girts. The members are pegged together with trunnels pegs, or trenails,

For the project I sawed up almost 200 maple blanks, and had a few oak blanks around as well. I then used my table saw to square the blanks, and joiner to make them into octagons.

Some of the maple pegs I made.

The first bent we assembled. This will be the last one to be raised, and will be the North gable wall of the building.  

The two central bents assembled on top of the first bent. They will be the second and third bent to be raised. 

The stack of bents was getting too high, so we built the last bent, the south gable wall on the slab. It will  be the first bent to be raised by the crane.