# I'll need something to put my tools in...



## Dandan

Hello all,
I'm a newcomer to woodworking, but I've been a long time lurker, so I know some of the incredible stuff that you lot get up to, i've read all 25,390 pages of Steve Maskery's workshop build so I'm under no illusions that i'll be blowing your minds with my construction skills but thought you might like to see my build anyway. (mostly so I can ask you all lots of questions I should imagine)

I want to get into woodworking as a distraction therapy from messing around with cars, I got a bit tired of laying on cold driveways hammering ineffectually at bits of rusted metal so I wanted a hobby that was a bit more intricate and precise but still hands-on. I thought it might save me some money too until I found the Axminster website...

As a man who can't put down a tool catalogue until every page has been turned, i've already started a collection of hand tools and a few power tools, so I thought I had better build somewhere to put them, and maybe even one day use them!

I can't post pictures until I have made 3 posts, so I thought I should start with a question, the workshop will be timber frame on a slightly raise concrete slab with larch cladding, insulation and ply internal cladding, should I get the carcassing timber pressure treated or not?


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## rafezetter

As long as correct precautions are taken, like a proper DPC 'tween slab and framework base and sealant on the slab fixings to reduce the wicking effect of moisture in the slab travelling up the bolts / embedded threaded rod etc and into the wood, then within normal reason and how close you are to the sea, you should be OK without it.

However having said that, if you would prefer it for your own peace of mind, then there would be no harm caused to do so, but make sure you treat soak any cut ends.


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## Fitzroy

I found treated and untreated to be so similar in price I would have saved about £30 out of the £900 I spent on timber for my build. Figured for £30 to have all the timber treated it was one of the easier decisions to make. 

Comparably a tough decision was glasswool or kingspan (type) insulation for the floor and walls. The difference runs in to the hundreds of £. Then the cladding, rough sawn local larch boards or planed T&G Siberian slow grown larch, the difference was nearly a grand! 

Good luck with the build, look forwards to the pics. 

Fitz.


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## Phil Pascoe

http://www.secondsandco.co.uk/?gclid=CK ... GwodocALiw
are well worth a look for your insulation.


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## NickWelford

Dandan":1xt1nelc said:


> so I wanted a hobby that was a bit more intricate and precise ........



Obviously haven't seen my dovetails then.........


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## Dandan

Thanks for the responses, more information there than I had any right to expect!
You are probably right about the treated timber Fitzroy, it is pennies different to untreated so probably worthwhile, I wish you hadn't told me there is a cheaper alternative to Siberian larch though..!
Just one more post and I can put some pictures up...


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## Dandan

I made some more progress over the long weekend, which I should hopefully now be able to show you with pictures...


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## Dandan

Ok I don't know what I did to upset the preview function but it's not keen on showing my pictures. Was it something I said?

Quick test: Can anyone see this picture?


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## AndyT

Hi Dandan,

It looks like you are trying to share an image on Flickr. I think Flickr has its own quirky method of sharing, to make sure that there is always a little advert for Flickr included every time. You need to look for a sharing option within Flickr that says it's for bbcode or forums.

I can't see your image. The best I can do is provide this link, which leads to your wobbly shed:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/29179217692/


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## Dandan

Aha!





Thanks AndyT! I moved to Flickr from Photobucket because it seemed to be full of pop up ads, turns out Flickr has it's own little foibles too...

(That's my old garage by the way, not the new one, and I was clearly stood with one leg in a hole when I took that one)


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## Dandan

Ok, so I started with an old, but reasonably sound and perfectly useable (and not wonky) garage as above. ^

Which was clearly no good whatsoever, so I knocked it down.













To be fair, it was far too small and was right up to the corner of the house, so if you wanted to get into the back garden from the driveway you had to circle around the whole perimeter of the garage, which was a bit of a pain.

Here's the view from the back of the house, you can see there is quite a lot of ground beyond where the old garage was so I'm planning to partially overlap the old garage location and build out towards the back and side fences, giving me a bigger workshop, better access from the drive to the garden and less wasted/hidden space behind the garage.





Next up was my favourite bit so far, excavating! I have trouble explaining my love of diggers but I just can't get enough of them, I was literally on this thing from dawn until dusk, here is a moment when I actually let my dad have a (brief) go:





Man it was hot that day.

The levels in the garden aren't as flat as all that so there was a bit of messing about with measuring heights and such, i'm stuck with the finished height of the workshop because I want to lay a new slab directly over the old one (read: can't be bothered to dig up 5 tonnes of concrete) but we wanted to make sure I wouldn't be wasting time laying bricks in 5 foot deep trenches. We ended up with two steps that you can see in the back of the picture:





I put the profile boards up and marked out the final size, it will be 2 metres from both fences at the back left corner (my datum), which means no building regs required, 30 m^2 finished floor space which means no planning required. As long as I keep it under 4 metres in height it meets all the criteria of permitted development. I intend to build it as if I *was* working to building regs however, just because I don't need to meet a standard doesn't mean I shouldn't strive for it anyway.

You can see in the picture above how the footprint overlaps the old garage, I wanted to keep this under the new workshop because it is solid as a solid thing and seemed a shame to dig it all out. I've chiselled into the old base to make a small groove to lay my brick outer wall into, this will come as high as the slab (or maybe one brick higher) before I start building in timber. The triangle of old base left outside of the new workshop is going to stay too, it squares up the side of the patio nicely and is perpendicular to the house, i'll turn it into a fixed seat or make it a raised planter or similar.

After some annoying cancellations (concrete companies don't care about 1.5m^3 projects it seems) I finally got a strip foundation in:





This weekend I was able to lay some bricks!





A friend of a friend is a bricklayer and offered to come help set up the corners, I want to be able say i built this workshop myself, but couldn't say no to a bit of free experience. He came armed with a laser level and loads of tips for a noob bricklayer like myself, so if this thing doesn't end up flat and square then I have absolutely no excuse, it's level to a millimetre and square to 7mm across the diagonals, that's less than 0.1%

He also showed me how to point the mortar, so now I have to try to make the rest of the walls look as good as this:





Good old reliable August weather drove me inside at the weekend so this is where i'm at:





4 corners and one half of one wall, only 450 bricks to go...


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## Aggrajag

Great work there - keep us posted!


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## Dandan

I made a little more progress at the weekend as Monday was gloriously sunny, I have one finished wall!





I'm getting through the sand and cement at a fair old rate though, i'll need half as much again to finish I reckon. Remind me not to enter any brick buildings constructed by the salesman at the Builders Merchants...

It also seems I have mastered the art of following a piece of string, this looks suspiciously like a straight line:


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## AndyT

It's always nice to watch someone else working hard. Keep up the good work!


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## sundaytrucker

I get the impression I am going to be jealous come the end of this build, good work so far.


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## Dandan

I have 2 walls!





I was only able to lay bricks in between other commitments this weekend (and I can't do anything in the evenings as I work away from home) but i'm definitely getting faster, this wall went up at a decent rate.
Thats the meat of the walls done, I have 170 bricks left out of 620 so hopefully I can get that all sorted next weekend, although we do have a wedding to go to, and it's an overnighter, that could well limit my productivity...

I had a quick look at the 'Mikes Shed' sticky and i'm glad I did, the section he has drawn is almost exactly what I'm planning to do, it's good to know i'm going in the right direction. That reminds me, I must change the roof beams to 6 inches thick on the plan...


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## Bm101

I know your mate did the corners, but if that's your first brickwork it's excellent. Kudos to you. Even got the tonny bag over the mixer lol. Are you sure you're a mechanic?!?


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## Dandan

Oh, well thanks very much, I'm just following his advice really, the bit of string and the spirit level are doing all the hard work.
The ton bag was another of his top tips, so I can't even take credit for that, I'm just a good student!


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## Paul200

A great read! Jealous as hell of your brickwork (that's why I stick to timber!). Looking forward to further instalments


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## Dandan

Thanks Paul, maybe I missed my calling...

So can anyone point out any glaring errors with this?





It's basically Mike's shed section modified for my particular slab/brick combo.
Issues I may have uncovered whilst sketching this:

- With an air gap and 20mm cladding, my finished walls move 45mm closer to the boundary, my bricks are already exactly 2m from the boundary, so if someone were to ever complain and send someone round to check I was within permitted development, would 45mm be an issue, is that an allowable level of error? Could I minimise that air gap perhaps?

- I thought I'd have a ridge inside the building where the frame sits on the brick (as per diagram) but now I've just realised that I was using 112.5 for a brick width instead of 102.5 (without mortar, durr) so I can ignore that, I thought I might need to line everything with 18mm ply to overcome the width difference! Never mind.

-Mike used the bottom beam of his wall frames as a wall plate, rather than having a separate, half-lapped wall plate all around, can anyone comment on this? I thought the purpose of the separate wall plate was to be able to get it all level without having to shift big wall panels around, As he is a proper builder and I'm not, I think I might go with the separate wall plate to be safe.

Another question I have been mulling over, what is going to be my best bet for getting a decent finish on the concrete slab? I was hoping to use it bare as a floor and put rubber mats in areas of use so I'd like a decent, sweep-able finish.
Should I learn how to screed and hire one of those big bull floats? If so should I paint it afterwards?
Could I do a rough screed and get the dried slab polished?
Before anyone says, I know there is no insulation under the slab but I'm stuck with the existing sub-slab base and overall height limits and I don't want to build up the base any higher than it already is so I'm going without. I live in the south of England and I'll have power for heaters or possibly even a small wood burner so I can't see it being a huge issue.


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## Fitzroy

Dandan":29ckabfl said:


> - With an air gap and 20mm cladding, my finished walls move 45mm closer to the boundary, my bricks are already exactly 2m from the boundary, so if someone were to ever complain and send someone round to check I was within permitted development, would 45mm be an issue, is that an allowable level of error? Could I minimise that air gap perhaps?



I've made precisely the same error, although mine is compounded by the fact that the closest wall has a hug bow in in and approaches the shed by about 10cm more. However seeing as it is my neighbours trees causing the bow I plan to argue the case that the wall no longer represents the boundary. 

I have a few other issues like this, eg. my roof is 20cm wider than on my planning permissions, as i had not included the width to overhang the cladding. And the front edge of my roof is 10cm higher than on my planning permission as the garden is not level and falls away, which i didn't pickup on when I drew the plans.

I will have to submit a formal completion certificate and I am petrified about an inspection picking these things up, no idea what the outcome would be.

Regarding the floor, one option would be a floating floor ie 20mm thick boards on a 20mm insulation layer. You have the damp-proof layer so no need for air gaps. This would steal 4cm from your roof height but an insulated slab floor will be very cold.

F.


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## rafezetter

For the floor you might wish to consider an electric heating mat embedded under a screed of some kind, this would help to reduce the cold feelign and also help fight the dreaded damp on expensive machines and tools.

Doesn't have to be run very warm, just enough of a trickle to keep the edge off, and a small stove heater for when you are working in there.


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## biskit

Great work Dandan =D> don't you just hate those massive holes in bricks :shock: they take sooooo much compo.


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## Dandan

Thanks chaps, no progress to report this week I'm afraid, I had a wedding to attend at the weekend (not mine) which was apparently more important than bricklaying...
I've done a bit more on the design in CAD but it's a long way from finished, I will share some pictures and sections from the CAD once it's closer to the finished product so I can get more feedback, I'm really keen to get the wall and roof sections right so that the building will last decades and not years.


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## Dandan

I have 4 walls!





I'm pleased with the wall, it all came together nicely, and do you know what the worst bit of brickwork is on the whole thing? One of the corners laid by my professional bricklayer friend! I know he knocks out 500 bricks on a good day so you can't get too hung up on perfection and get a level on every single brick, but his top outside corner brick looks like the bus from the Italian job, it's tipping downwards so badly! I'm tempted to chisel it out and put another one in, but I figure the mortar under the wall plate will take up the slack and the bottom of the cladding will hide the jaunty angle. If I try to chip it out i'll more likely damage further bricks and end up with a right mess. 

I also backfilled the trenches inside and out, moved everything out of the centre and started to level the ground on the inside, I didn't quite get finished but there's only an hours worth of digging left. It was dark before I though to take a picture though, sorry!

So, before I put my hardcore in, is it worth getting a whacker plate to stabilise the dirt, then whacking again after the hardcore, or can I get away with one hardcore whacking session? (not a euphemism)


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## Dandan

I made some more progress this weekend, I actually came home from work a day early so I had Friday to play with as well. Considering I had 3 days available, I suppose really I didn't do that much, I had provisionally planned to pour a slab next weekend but I'm not ready for it yet so it will have to be the following one at the earliest. I feel like the weather may start to interrupt things soon so I'd like to get this slab down.
I finished getting the dirt levelled inside the walls, and got a compacter plate on it:





You can see my helper, Derek, in this picture, I say helper, there's only so much use a slobbery tennis ball dropped at your feet can be, but he means well.

Then it was Tetris time, I had a whole mess of rubble that I wanted rid of, and my wallet wanted to spend as little as possible on expensive imported hardcore, so I got busy slotting the rubble together:





Now I don't know if this is the right way to make a base, or whether it should really be graded hardcore all the way through, instead of the broken remains of all my other DIY projects, but I've told my plan to a quantity surveyor, a bricklayer and an electrician and nobody has raised an eyebrow yet.
I'm also not entirely sure what I expected would happen once I'd put all this rubble in place, perhaps I was hoping to channel the spirit of an Egyptian mason and end up with credit-card thick gaps between blocks and the height correct to 2 decimal places, but alas, my clairvoyant robes were in the wash, so I ordered a ton of actual hardcore to fill in the gaps, but it won't arrive until this coming weekend. I'm now thinking I might order 2 tons, there's a fair few gaps...

My electrician friend came by on Saturday and gave me a lovely coil of 32amp armoured cable, we just about managed to force it through the access pipe I had laid under the wall, I had no idea it would be so thick so I only put a small pipe in! He also gave me a huge floor mounted box so I can have some sockets in the centre of the floor, I was going to buy a single socket with little flappy lid but this is much better, with the added advantage that the plug is sub flush too so I don't risk running it over when moving the table saw, nice.





I'll make a little square shuttering for this and mount it after the floor has been laid, i'll only get it covered in concrete if I try to mount it directly into the slab.
The electrician is also going to unload a bunch of LED lights that he has acquired as overs from various jobs in the past (that's what he told me Your Honour) including some really diffuse wall mounted lamps and a huge 600x600 roof panel that I can mount right in the middle over the table saw.


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## Dandan

Using the power of CAD (Computer Something Something), I'm able to extract the crazed jumble of thoughts from my tiny mind and bring my dream workshop one step close to reality!





It's nice to be able to visualise the potential end result, it's also good for spotting little issues before you cut any wood. Things like roof beams lining up with studs, spacing things out, whether to overlap this bit or that bit, it should save me a lot of ad-lib adjustment when it comes to the actual build.
It's also great for measuring up for materials, now I can massively over-order with confidence!


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## jnw010

Looks like it's coming together nicely. Have you thought about using the area above the rafters for storage, or do you have other plans for it?


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## Phil Pascoe

rafezetter":18mqdxwk said:


> For the floor you might wish to consider an electric heating mat embedded under a screed of some kind, this would help to reduce the cold feelign and also help fight the dreaded damp on expensive machines and tools.
> 
> Doesn't have to be run very warm, just enough of a trickle to keep the edge off, and a small stove heater for when you are working in there.


The problem there being that there is no insulation so your heat can perpetually drain downwards. You're not just heating the screed, but the ground underneath.


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## Dandan

jnw010":3he6mh9g said:


> Looks like it's coming together nicely. Have you thought about using the area above the rafters for storage, or do you have other plans for it?



Thanks, yes the plan is to have raised ceiling joists to give just over 2400mm ceiling height so I can move and store full length boards more easily.
I'll board above the joists to make a storage area but I will exclude the first and last joists to leave a gap either end to access the roof space and to let light into the main area from the eaves windows. I'll have a significant ridge beam to account for the two missing joists.
Incidentally, those eaves windows will be made from a 40mm thick extruded polycarbonate sheet like that found on conservatory roofs, it has similar insulation and security levels to double glazing but is a fraction of the price. As I only want light from those windows and don't need to actually see through them, it seemed like a no-brainer, plus I can cut it to any shape I like so could potentially omit the middle window frame beam, giving one big triangular window each end which might look quite nice.


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## Dandan

No real progress this weekend, I got home to a ton bag of scalpings in the front garden, and it seems that it's been a while since I was up close and personal with a ton bag of anything, because just like Mars bars and packets of Walkers crisps, I'm sure they used to be bigger.
I remember shifting a ton of gravel to the bottom of the garden when I was about 12, and aside from raising questions about my dad's attitude to child labour, my lasting memory was that it took me most of a day and I felt like I had shifted a literal mountain of material.
Skip forward a couple of decades and I had it shifted in under an hour and I hadn't come even close to filling the foundation, or breaking a sweat. This was pleasing in the sense that it was nice to know my body had improved since I was 12 (even if my mind hasn't), but it was disappointing that I had managed to so massively under-order.
I got on the phone and ordered 2 more bags plus 2 bags of sand for the blinding but they wouldn't turn up until this week, so that was that for garage building. It did mean I was able to get a bunch of other odd jobs done about the place, sorted some bits of guttering, fixed a built-in wardrobe, so it's good to have them out of the way.
The news from home this week is that the 4 bags have turned up already, although they have stacked them 2 deep, so quite how I'm going to shovel from the top bag into a wheelbarrow remains to be seen. I'm loathe to cut a hole in the bags as they seem so potentially useful, although I do have 6 now so could probably afford to waste a couple...


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## Dandan

Progress this week!
I got all my hardcore and sand in and compacted, i'm glad I hired the compactor.
I thought I could probably just stomp around in my workboots to compact it all down but the compactor does an incredible job, it flattened the sand to such a degree that I didn't even leave footprints in it!





Then I got my ludicrously oversized membrane on and tucked in.





I also placed all of the old concrete prefab garage panels onto the membrane for two, well, three reasons. First, it reduces the amount of concrete I have to order by nearly a cubic metre, second its a good way to get shot of 30 massive panels that were in my way, and thirdly, it was my Surveyor friend who suggested it so I can blame a professional if it goes wrong.

Concrete is ordered for Friday, exciting times!


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## Dandan

The slab is down!
Not without a bit of a fight, but it's solid and (mostly) flat which is the important bit.

I calculated that I would need 2.6 cubic metres of concrete, it was a slightly complicated calculation because I was putting the old garage sections into the base to save money, but I was very surprised to unload the full 2.6 metres and still apparently be a long way short of filling the base! Myself and my dad were on wheelbarrow duty while my father in law was doing his best to spread the material out, so we didn't get a chance to start tamping the slab straight away. Well I needed to finish the slab so the guy just kept pouring us more concrete and we kept pouring it in until it looked filled, I ended up using 3.2 cubic metres, which is a hell of a miscalculation!





It turns out, when you only have 3 people on the job and one of them with a bad back and you don't tamp the concrete as you go, it's very easy to end up with what looks like a flat slab of concrete when it is in fact quite a bulging pile of material.
My calculations were pretty spot on and we had to shovel probably the full extra 0.6 cubic metres back out, I now have a step base in front of my shed, a 300kg hot water tank shaped lump of concrete, and an entirely unplanned 2m x 1m slab to one side of the workshop.
It's annoying because it was a huge waste of effort barrowing the material in and then shovelling it back out, not to mention the extra cost, it could all have been avoided if I'd had one more person on site to help out, ah well.

I hired a bull float to try and get a decent finish to the surface, wow those things are good. I floated it while it was still very wet (and there was still daylight left) and got a pretty decent result on the first pass:





I made another pass when it had set a little, trying to improve the finish further, unfortunately this required floating it by headtorch, as it was now 9pm at night. It probably wasn't the smartest idea I've ever had, it's a toss-up as to whether that pass helped or hindered.
I wanted to do a final pass with a magnesium float once it had gone off further, but due to the autumn weather, it was setting very slowly and I wasn't prepared to go out at 1am to do it, by the morning it had gone off enough that no more floating was possible, it's a pretty decent finish generally with a few scars here and there, but should look fine when painted. It doesn't quite meet my vision of a perfect, polished slab, but it's ok for a first go I reckon.

I set a little shuttering in the middle to accept my floor mounted sockets, I may have forgotten to cover it before the rain came in...





You know what this means though, the next instalment might involve some wood!

Oh, I also got some awesome freebies this week, my dad moved into a new house and the previous occupant left all sorts of gear behind, I bagged a load of new electrical cable, a 110v transformer (in case I ever end up with a 110v tool) and this little puppy:





(it has a compressor too)
It's a little tatty but in perfect working order, I never planned to have air tools in the workshop but it would be rude not to now!


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## lee celtic

Looking great.. I needed 12 cube for mine to make up for the slope..I had the bulge problem too and ended up adding a nice 'v' gully in the service passage under the house. It's come in handy since when we've had floods.. Nice score on the air tank too.. Air tools are really handy to have around, Aldi do some cheap air tools now and again. Best ones I've had from there are the tyre inflater/wax oil kit and die grinder.. great for that nut that won't come loose, just cut it off.. Also if you want to give upholstery a go an Air tacker is a must. Looking forward to seeing the wood going up.


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## Dandan

lee celtic":1koy2mzu said:


> Looking forward to seeing the wood going up.



You're not the only one!
I'm on holiday this coming week so I won't be getting my chop saw out for a couple of weeks yet, I'm trying to work out how I can get the wood ordered and delivered so that it's waiting for me on my return from holiday, without it being left out in the elements for a week...

I'd forgotten about those Aldi deals too, I'll keep an eye out for those, an airline will be a nice thing to have.


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## MattRoberts

Great progress! Exciting to see it taking shape. 

You could still hire a concrete polisher to flatten and polish the surface if you wanted


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## Dandan

It is tempting, especially as it would be a lot easier to do now before the walls go up, but I need to decide if it's worth the extra cost and effort when the finish I have should be perfectly suitable for my needs, am I just lusting after a completely unnecessary finish for the sake of it?
Based on my previous history, I imagine the answer is yes!


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## MattRoberts

Depends on the cost - if you can afford it, as you say now is the time to do it! Perhaps better to do it now and not regret it?


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## Dandan

You know what, I think I will get a grinder/polisher and run it over the slab, it's all sitting a little high of the surrounding bricks so there is some material to play with there, like you say, I think it might annoy me if I don't.

I've been on my holibobs, but I did manage to just tidy up a bit before I went, the site looks like this now:





I filled the central hole with sand for now to stop it filling up with water, I still covered it to stop our dogs digging all the sand out!
Next weekend I will begin with some wood, if the concrete grinding doesn't take too long...


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## focusonwood

That looks like the perfectly sized space.

I'm in a single garage at the moment and I've been eyeing up the bottom of the garden recently...


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## Dandan

Wood arrived!





I've had another think about the slab and done some research into hiring a polishing/grinding machine, the only thing I could find was either a hand-held device that was never designed to do 30 square metres, or getting in some industrial company to do the job, no doubt for many hundreds of pounds. So what i'm going to do is leave it for now, screed/fill any really offensive areas (Which there may not even be any bits that are that bad, i've not got down on hands and knees to look) and then use a high build resin floor paint, I think that should give me a more than satisfactory surface.

I didn't get much done this weekend as I was busy enjoying myself doing other stuff, but I did set up and make my first cuts!




(As you can see I have so far managed to not cut my thumb off...)

All that forum reading is paying off now, I used all the tricks I could recall, cutting all the same lengths together, using length stops to repeat cuts, even using a screwdriver to lever out the waste from the half laps, it almost felt like I knew what I was doing.

I cut and half lapped all the wall plates, I was going to mortar them in but I was busy for the best bit of the afternoon and it was only 6 degrees here today, I'll have to hope for more clement weather next weekend, as I think it's best to lay cement when its over 10 degrees, is that right?





I did test fit them, all looks ok, my slab hasn't ended up quite as exact as I first thought though, its 10mm out in some dimensions, I've not had a chance to re-check the diagonals yet. It is oversize though so at least I won't have an overhang and i'll just chamfer the mortar between the slab and the wall plate, as well as hiding the error in the back corner.
Also you may notice i've not cut a hole for my big front doors, as much as it's a waste of wood I was going to cut it out afterwards to help keep things square, I'll just 'spot weld' it with mortar for now and tidy it up afterwards. 

Walls next weekend!


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## Dandan

Wood!
After spending 3 days waiting for the mortar to dry under the wall plate, I finally got to make some walls on Monday.
It's great having the space to lay them out on the flat (ish) floor to get everything even and square, then with my new favourite projectile weapon, the nail gun, they go together in no time at all!





This was when the wall plate really came in handy, I'm so glad I read countless forum posts before embarking on this folly, I was working on my own and erecting the wall was as simple as lift it up, kick it into place and nail it down. No messing with levels and spacers and tape measures, just line it up, lovely.





Second wall went the same way, and the third, everything lining up beautifully, almost as if good preparation actually works, who knew?





My ridge beam turned up at lunchtime, holy bananas that thing is heavy. 8x2 and 7 and a bit metres long. I might be worried about getting that thing in the air but forums to the rescue again and I'm confident I can haul it into place single handed using vertical guides a la Mikes Workshop.





Unfortunately the intermittent drizzle combined with my fear of electrocuting myself with the mitre saw meant I decided to pack up for the day, which of course immediately resulted in no more rain for the entire day.





Wall number 4 next weekend, which is the interesting one with doors and windows and stuff. Which reminds me, I've scavenged some old double glazed units for my windows so I need to make my openings to fit, how much over the size of the glass should I make the stud frame? I was thinking 45mm all around to allow for a sill/edge and then a frame inside that, sound about right?


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## Fitzroy

Looks like great progress and will be a super space.

My frames turned out to be 43mm thick, with a 13mm rebate, the glass is 3mm all round smaller than the rebate, my frame is 5mm all round smaller than the opening (which I think is too tight should have allow 8mm). So glass + 3mm + 30mm (frame thickness - rebate) + 8mm = glass + 41mm. So unless you want very thick frames your 45mm sounds like plenty of space.

F.


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## kelsallcustombats

Looking very good indeed, wish i had the space in my back garden for a proper workshop like this.


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## Dandan

Right then, some more progress has been made despite the British weather's best efforts to thwart me.
Like all the best buildings, I though mine should have the full complement of four walls:





And the eagle-eyed amongst you might have spotted a ridge beam too:





Putting the ridge beam up was probably my favourite part of the build so far, it just went absolutely, exactly as planned. I could so easily see the erection of the beam being one of those jobs that you assume will be fine, but then when you actually get to it, realise just how awkward it is, how heavy it is, how high it has to go, and you end up taking hours and changing plans three times in the process and knackering yourself out. But not this time, oh no, I'd been at those pesky forums again, I was going to benefit from the mistakes of others and not cock this up. As a disclaimer, I did have my Father in Law to help me put this up but I could genuinely have done it on my own, it was that straightforward.

I got the beam onto the top of the walls one end at a time, stood it up in the right orientation and got it centred, then I nailed two vertical members to my studding either side of the beam, at both ends. Now the only place it can go is up in a straight line. I cut two lengths of 2x4 to the exact height that I wanted the underside of the beam (I nailed cross pieces to them too for a bit of safety) and used them to shove the beam upwards until my 2x4's were stood vertically below the beam. Voila, one beam in exactly the right place!





It was surprisingly sturdy at this point, I left it overnight to weather the mini storm we had and it was still standing in the morning.
I tried to crack on Saturday morning but I only managed to cut a couple of rafters before the rain came in and forced me to pack up. Typically it then immediately stopped and the sky cleared the second I had put the last tool away.





I had to go and win a climbing competition for the rest of the day, but I got back on it Sunday morning.
I put the front and rear pairs of rafters in place to check everything for length. As they sat directly on the front and back walls, I knew the length across the bottom would be right, so I just had to worry about the top end. They all seemed to sit in the right place so I nailed them on. I was then joined again by the FIL and we cracked on with rafter cutting, using the first rafter as a template every time, to ensure some degree of regularity.

We offered the next rafter up, it didn't fit.
It was a good few mm short, which was exaggerated by the angle that it makes with the beam so it sat very low against the beam. hmm, I didn't want a wonky roof.
Then I realised, my two long walls currently have nothing supporting them, and we had been leaning cut rafters against them, so they had bowed outwards considerably! We decided to do the middle rafter next, complete with tie beam that will make up my ceiling and we used a ratchet strap to pull the walls together to the correct dimension so we could nail/bolt everything together. This should hold everything straight so we could do the rest of the rafters. 
The middle rafters lined up perfectly, and, unsurprisingly, the rafter that was short was now the right length. We put another 16 or so up and every one fell perfectly into place, so my ridge now looks like this:





I'm frankly amazed that it's so accurate 4 metres off the ground, I made a shed a couple of years ago and it was further out than this after I'd built about 4 feet up!





So that's how it stands for now, over half the rafters done and a couple of ceiling tie beams too, I've received the membrane and roof tiles so theoretically I could have an enclosed space by next weekend...


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## Fitzroy

Awesome progress! Love the ridge beam photo. 

F.


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## Dandan

Back in September, whilst laying bricks under the scorching late summer sun, I thought to myself "I'll just get the slab poured this year and then wait until the spring before I build the workshop, I don't want to be out here in the winter, freezing my appendages off and trying to chisel with 2 pairs of gloves on.

Oh how I wish I had listened to summer me, that sweaty-browed fella knew what he was talking about, I spent this weekend freezing my appendages off and trying to chisel with 2 pairs of gloves on and it was as undesirable as summer me predicted.

Still, progress has been made, and it just makes the wood burner feel all the nicer once you are back inside, got to stay positive about these things.

Friday was prep day, I was a one-man band so I cut every piece of timber that I would need to finish the framing. I made noggins from the offcuts, then smaller noggins from the offcuts of the offcuts.
I made some half-lap diagonal braces as I decided not to rely entirely on the cladding for stiffness, especially when the frame becomes top heavy with a roof but no walls.
I cut all the bits needed to fix the overhanging rafters each end, by the end of the afternoon I had a neat pile of bits ready to go.

I got Team Dad on the job on Sunday, my actual dad and my Father-in-law were roped in to stand in the cold with me and freeze their own respective appendages off, we made some good progress and barely lost any limbs to frostbite, all the main frame is now complete:





Noggins and braces:









Front overhang which I'm really pleased with, it looks really nice:





And as you can see from the previous picture, we even got a bit of membrane battened down, I'd have liked to get it all on the roof but I refer you to the previous comments about frozen appendages.
I used another top forum tip for the battens, I made two capital 'I' shaped spacing tools so that I could measure between the two faces I was lining the tiles up to and not just the gap between the battens, especially useful as some of the battens vary significantly in width (+-20mm or more)





I couldn't find my staple gun to pin the loose bits of membrane down so i'll do that next weekend.
The metal roof tiles arrived last week, I've had a little nosey at them and I have to say they look fantastic, really nicely made and a really simple system, complete with ridge tile and gable end covers, fingers crossed I can get some on next weekend if the weather plays ball, mini heatwave, anyone?


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## Bm101

Great stuff. Excellent progress.


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## Sheptonphil

Awesome job. Well done. 

Can't wait to move to build my own new workshop.

Love th amount of photo to document it. 

Phil


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## Dandan

Thanks chaps, i'm thoroughly enjoying the process, as frustrating as it is to only be able to work on it at weekends, I think in reality it gives me a chance to recover between bouts of construction madness, so when i'm able to work, I get a lot done.

Speaking of getting lots done, this weekend was no different- at least visually- the workshop looks a lot different now than it did last weekend.

Friday afternoon I finished off the roof membrane and battens, the membrane gives a real false sense of security once its laid down, as soon as I couldn't see the void between my feet, I was dancing around on the battens like, oh, I don't know, Beyonce. But with a beard.
Luckily there were no mis-steps and I completed the job.









It didn't go completely smoothly, despite making spacing guides, and further despite putting ARROWS ON THEM, we manage to nail one batten in the wrong place





We did at least notice straight away and prise it off before we ended up putting all the rest in the wrong place, I'm not sure how to silly person-proof things any further to protect myself from, er, myself.

Sunday morning I was up at the crack of, er, 8.30 to be greeted by the first sunlight of what turned out to be a cracking day creeping over next doors fence.





We did 2 big jobs today, the wall membrane and the roof tiles. The pictures of the two are a bit mixed up so i'll narrate and then chuck all the pictures in.
Membrane was going well until I realised I was short by about 2 square metres, at which point my wallet was trembling at the thought of the waste involved in buying another 50m roll for that tiny bit extra and I was mentally flicking through my address book to see who might have a bit spare. Then I remembered that my shed has a membrane on it's roof and it's nowhere near 50m square, i must have a bit left over. A quick rummage behind the mower and sure enough, plenty of spare to finish the job, financial disaster averted! Although it is a different colour, i'm not sure how I feel about that...

The roof tiles were an absolute joy, I got Metrotile and they seem fantastic, we covered the majority of both sides of the roof in a couple of hours with no real issues and they look great.
The end tiles were a bit troublesome as they had to be trimmed down. There is a video on the metrotile website showing how to fit these tiles and it shows a guy happily trimming away at the edges with a pair of tin snips. No problem, thinks I, I have tin snips, i'll cut them with those.
Now my preferred pastime when not building workshops is rock climbing, so I have quite a good grip. I say quite good, go find a doorway with architrave, grab hold of the top lip with one hand, just the one, and lift your feet off the floor. I can do that for 10 seconds, it's my party trick. I digress, I don't know which circus they got the guy on the installation video from, but he's some kind of freak, I could not cut the tile with snips, not even close. I ended up chewing through a dozen dremel discs and fatiguing the tiles into submission, but we got there in the end.

I still have to fit the barge tiles and the capping tile but can't do that until I've fitted the barge boards, so that's job number 1 for next week.


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## Dandan

Right I have a dilemma and I'd really like some input from anybody with knowledge, I'll also accept hearsay, conjecture and baseless opinions.

I always intended to use kingspan style rigid insulation, but I've just priced it up from the secondsandco website that do cheaper reject boards, and it's far more expensive than I was expecting!

Boards would be around £700, whereas fluffly loft insulation would cost £150, is there really that much of a difference in performance to warrant the extra £500+ spend? Do I need another membrane of any sort to go with the fluffly insulation to replicate the foil backing of the boards? I'm just having trouble justifying that extra cost for a sheltered building in the south of England that will only get used when I choose to use it.

Thoughts?


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## sploo

Dandan":2hamicy8 said:


> Right I have a dilemma and I'd really like some input from anybody with knowledge, I'll also accept hearsay, conjecture and baseless opinions.
> 
> I always intended to use kingspan style rigid insulation, but I've just priced it up from the secondsandco website that do cheaper reject boards, and it's far more expensive than I was expecting!
> 
> Boards would be around £700, whereas fluffly loft insulation would cost £150, is there really that much of a difference in performance to warrant the extra £500+ spend? Do I need another membrane of any sort to go with the fluffly insulation to replicate the foil backing of the boards? I'm just having trouble justifying that extra cost for a sheltered building in the south of England that will only get used when I choose to use it.
> 
> Thoughts?


I can give you baseless opinion and conjecture  

I understand that some of the better board materials provide similar levels of insulation to much thicker layers of the "the fluffy stuff"; so I suspect it's mostly likely to come down to space vs desired levels of insulation.

There may be practical considerations too - if you're just laying it flat (like a loft) then it doesn't need to be self supporting. If it's going to be in the walls or at the roof angle then the boards will likely be easier to install.


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## Fitzroy

In my understanding you can't use bog standard glasswool loft insulation in the walls as it will collapse with time, you need the structured insulation batts, still cheaper than rigid board but more than loft stuff. mm for mm the rigid board is better than glass wool, so for the same thickness you get less insulation. However this just means you will just need a bit more heat to keep the place warm when you are in it, there are basic calculations you can do to work out how much more etc, etc.

I've in the same place as you, ie planning the insulation/internals. My plan is rockwool batts in the walls (for both thermal and sound insulation) and 100mm glass wool in the ceiling. Internal lining with vapour barrier, OSB, 10mm battens, then heavy weight acoustic plasterboard (i v. concerned over noise to my neighbours). My overall approach is reasonable insulation, but very good air-tightness, a dehumidifier and a good heater. Most of the time the place will be cold but moisture controlled (which is easy(ier) if it is reasonably air tight), then when I want to use it the heater and reasonable insulation will enable quick warm up due to low thermal mass.

Well that's my plan anyhow!

F.


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## mindthatwhatouch

It's all looking great.
About the metrotile cutting. I used Decra tiles (very similar and comparable product) and they cut easily with a pair of tin snips. Either way I do not understand why it is not used more in this country, fantastic system, lightweight, easy, speedy and good performance.
Have a look at the decra website, they have some good little videos on cutting and folding around barge boards, fitting ridge tiles etc.


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## Dandan

Some food for thought there, thanks guys. I'll try and find some of these batts, they look to be about twice the price of the fluff but still less than half the price of the board, could be a good compromise.

A wise pop singer once said that love, love changes everything. In my experience, a roof, a roof changes everything.
I was able to crack on despite some inclement weather now that I have something to shelter under, we boarded up all but one of the ground level openings to keep it (relatively) cosy, and I made a start on painting some of the fascia boards.





I need to put the gable end fascia boards on so that I can finish the roof, as the roof barge tiles nail to the gable end, then the roof capping tiles sit over everything. Should make for a nice waterproof roof, but it means I'm now held up waiting for coats of paint to dry before I can lay another tile.

That aside, progress was also halted this weekend by a single, innocuous sentence in the Metrotile fitting guide. "trim and bend the top row of tiles to size"
Sounds simple, sounds innocent, some tin snips and maybe a pair of pliers, job done, right?
Bending corrugated metal sheets is not fun.
Our first attempt, clamping the tile into a wide jawed vice and bending it in sections, resulted in a tile with both a helix twist and a banana bend! I should have got a picture, I'm not talking a touch out of line, this thing nearly curled back on itself.
Bending across the corrugations while retaining the basic shape of the tile was really tricky, our ultimate solution was to clamp the whole length of the bend between two metal bars, secure with 6-8 G-clamps, then pinch it up in the vice in the gaps between the G-clamps and bend it in sections, being sure to tighten all the G-clamps periodically, as if either end of the tile slips out, it bends out of shape straight away.
We had success eventually but not without casualties, I hope I have enough tiles to finish the job!

That put paid to getting anything else done, so I hope to make better progress next weekend.
Here's a gratuitous shot of my new interior space to keep you satisfied for now:


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## davem62

Hi I would use either kingspan or price up cavity batts which is the insulation in brickwork, loft insulation will sag and to work correctly needs to expand ie.150mm deep etc or you won't get the thermal value.I did all my roof and walls with an equivalent to kingspan from my local builders merchant and it was cheaper than the seconds, I will try to find the price we paid , but the difference is well worth the extra cash, not nice having a nice workshop and shiny tools but being to cold to use them and also I believe the hard foam is more soundproof
Regards David


Hi quick search http://www.insulation4less.co.uk/50mm-e ... -4m-x-1-2m 

£18 a sheet and free del over £300 , at a guess of 20 sheets for the wall and then you could use roof insulation in the rafters , my preference is to put celotex etc in the roof spars and over board with 11mm osb and leave plenty of storage in the roof


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## Roughcut

After purchasing a pack of Wickes Batts I found them to be poor quality, so I shopped around online and eventually ordered several packs of the genuine Rockwool Flexi-slab Batts for my shed and was happy with them.


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## Dandan

My insulation procrastination has yet to reach a conclusion but thanks for all your input, it's certainly helping me feel like I am making an informed decision...

More progress, some of it while I wasn't even there! My Father-in-Law is enjoying the build almost as much as I am so he sneaks around during the week and does little bits of work on it! This week I came home to find all the battens nailed to the exterior ready for the cladding, top man.





I went around and added bug mesh to the bottom edge, tucked behind the battens, stapled to the frame and the hopefully pressed into a reasonable seal by the bottom cladding panel.





I've already got spiders moving in inside so the sooner I can make the place mostly bug-proof, the better.

I finished painting the front and rear barge boards, the first coat had not dried well outside so I appropriated a small area in the dining room for the last coat, the ability to bring 3.5m boards inside was an unforseen advantage to having an open plan living space. Not one my wife would see as an advantage perhaps...





With those finished and dry overnight, I was able to finish the roof. I don't mean I was able to make it mostly weatherproof but i'll need to tidy up later, I mean it's completely finished. Every tile, every edge strip, I've even been round and painted over the exposed nail heads with the supplied paint and little pot of texture sprinkles. It's finished.
I know myself too well that if I leave the finishing touches until 'later', that later will never materialise and I want this thing done properly. If I've done it right, I shouldn't need to get back on that roof for a period measured in decades, so let's hope i've done it right.









The plastic panels for the gable windows arrived today i've been told, so i'll try to fit them this week (i'm heading home for the holidays on Wednesday night for 12 days of construction and maybe a bit of Christmas) which will make the building sealed all the way down to eave height. If the cladding ever turns up it could become mostly weatherproof very soon!

In other news, my wife had a surprise visit from a council lady today who wanted to inspect the workshop. Now I don't know if Mrs Curtaintwitcher over the way had nothing better to do than complain, or if the council just keep their eye out for new roofs (rooves?) popping up on the skyline, but from what I can gather, she seemed to arrive with the impression that the build wasn't quite Kosher, but after measuring everything and finding it within all permitted development regulations of height, area and distance from boundaries, she left saying it all seemed fine and she would send some kind of correspondence to confirm/refute that soon.
The worst case I can think of is that she deems it not within permitted development for some reason (possibly due to her dodgy tape measure, my wife lent her one of mine...) and I have to retrospectively apply for planning which should almost certainly get approved considering it was built in the spirit of permitted development. It's extra paperwork and extra cost if that happens but I don't think i'll be forced to tear it down any time soon...I hope.

Next episode - Windows!


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## Bm101

You'll be well proud of that roof I would think. :wink: Keep up with the updates, you're doing an excellent job fella.
Chris


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## mindthatwhatouch

Dandan":1ftx64aj said:


> I was able to finish the roof. I don't mean I was able to make it mostly weatherproof but i'll need to tidy up later, I mean it's completely finished. Every tile, every edge strip, I've even been round and painted over the exposed nail heads with the supplied paint and little pot of texture sprinkles. It's finished.
> I know myself too well that if I leave the finishing touches until 'later', that later will never materialise.........



Know what you mean, that reminds me to put yet another job on my roundtuit list.


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## Dandan

Good news everybody, there should be many more updates in the next week and a bit, having so much free time over the holiday season means only one thing - loads of mince pies. Oh, and more workshop building.

I got the remainder of the PAR wood for the fascias yesterday, got the two long side fascias measured up and cut, then stuck a coat of primer on them. I want to get these on ASAP so I can stick some guttering on and stop the rain splashing back to the lower parts of the frame, this is really my only risk from the elements now.
Something else that turned up yesterday, my cladding!





It does unfortunately look a lot like pine planks at the moment, so I hope it weathers to it's final silver grey colour sooner rather than later, otherwise the neighbours will assume i've built a Swedish sauna...
We started on the long, easy wall to get our eye in, I did some test nailing with an offcut to see if I could nail into the base of the tongue to hide the fixings, but it split the wood more often than not and the heads on the nails I had were too large to tuck in nicely. I decided to go for face nailing it, one nail per batten near the top of the plank, I think that's the accepted method? They are super duper treated, galvanised nails so they should survive fine, I also nailed them in with a guide block so that the spacing is nice and even, I've no problem with visible heads personally.





We got about double this done before we ran out of nails, it really goes on quick once the lower panel is sorted.

Today the weather has really come in, so we retreated inside. I'd cut the plastic panels for the gable windows yesterday, and we made a start on the frames for those. It won't be anything fancy, i'm not sure if I will even rout any ecorative profile into the edges of the frame, but they will be quick and functional hopefully. (as functional as they can be as my first window frame, that I am building by best guess)
Here are the panels, 40mm thick polycarbonate with 10 walls front to back, it has the same insulation value as double glazing for a fraction of the price. Cuts with a handsaw and the sections click together with an overlapping weatherseal, quite neat.





And here is the first outer frame test constructed, I'm quite pleased with it.





I know it's obvious, but I was still surprised to be able to sit on the apex with absolutely no flex in the frame. Good old triangles, eh?
Both frames have been cut and primed, if I can get these painted and fitted ASAP then i'll be really weatherproof. I currently have some DPM stapled over the prevailing wind-end of the workshop to stop rain spitting in, it works but it's not exactly pretty.

The plan for any free time in the next week is to put a coat of paint on anything that needs it, cut frames for all windows and doors, paint them too, then if i'm just waiting for paint to dry, stick some more cladding on. The cladding is definitely the fun job but i'm being sensible and holding it for when there is no painting to do, otherwise i'll end up with nothing to do in between coats. (i'm sure my wife would disagree)

Have a splendid Christmas everyone!


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## Fitzroy

Cladding looks good, what wood is it? 

Rueing the day I decided to machine all mine myself from sawn timber, god what a chore.

F.


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## Dandan

The cladding is Siberian Larch so it's (hopefully) self protecting and will fade to a lovely subtle grey colour. It can't come to soon if you ask me, I finished the big blank back wall today and its, er, striking. 

Lots more progress in the last few days, but i've been too busy to update the thread, being such a socialite and all that dontcherknow.
Important (boring) things first, I got the long edge fascias up and put the guttering on both sides, i'm really pleased with this as it means no more splashing on the lower cladding panels so less chance of any premature rot or anything nasty like that.
The downpipes are just propped up for now until I get all the cladding on to fix them into place.













You can see in that last picture that I finished cladding the long blank wall, the planks worked out really nicely, with the last plank just slotting under the roof beams without needing ripping. Lovely.
Also got the front finished up to where the triangle window is going:





Then the majority of the door side before the sun went down:





I started to get a bit swamped by having tools all over the place at this point, most of them placed tactically on the ground for maximum trip hazard potential, so I moved a later project forward and have built my first workbench:





It's my own unique design, i'm particularly proud of the bags of sawdust and leg supports. There is a slight issue with stability, in that it falls over if you stare at it too hard, but i'm quite pleased for a first attempt.

After the tools stopped being health and safety issues, I got the door side finished:





Quick bacon sarnie and on to the back side:





I placed the first triangular frame in place but ran out of time to start cladding around it. I'm really pleased with how it looks though. I do need to put a drip edge in, it totally slipped my mind until now, but i'll just hand cut it somehow. Ill make sure I cut the other frame before installing it, lesson learned.

So the exterior is looking pretty tasty now, just a little bit of (admittedly awkward) cladding to do, then I can concentrate on window and door frames!
I do need to do the soffits but I want to rout slots for ventilation so I will wait until I have some tools in place before I do that bit, it's only really cosmetic.





More to come at the weekend!


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## Sheptonphil

Is it OK to have 'shed' envy?

If it is, I have it, if it's not PC, then I'll pretend I haven't. 

A superb build and brilliant WIP. 

thanks

PHIL


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## Dandan

Thanks Phil, I think a bit of shed envy is healthy, in all honesty I'm constantly impressed with how good it is looking. I have to remind myself that it was me that built it!

I've now completely finished the cladding all around the triangular windows, I should have taken a few more photos to explain what I did really.
Basically, I sat the triangle frame in place and screwed it down to the top of the wall plate, then I screwed a piece of 2x4 to the top face of each angled side of the triangle, placed in such a way that it's outside face lined up with the outer plane of the wall. This allowed me to nail small strips of batten between the new 2x4 and the roof joists (which I intentionally aligned to the plane of the wall on the plans), giving me something to nail each small piece of cladding to.
The finished result is really sturdy, and I reckon it doesn't look half bad:









Happy with that.

I've also cut and primed the inner parts of the frame so this coming weekend I should be able to get at least one of the windows into place. As soon as those windows are in, I might think about moving some machinery in, exciting stuff!

In other news, I fitted my free poly insulation boards, that saved me £100 at least which is nice, I might even convince myself to do the rest in the proper expensive stuff...


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## Bm101

That window looks very smart. Adds a touch more class to an already impressive build. =D>


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## devonwoody

Coming along nicely, should be warm and cozy in there.


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## Dandan

The window is in!





Now i'll be totally honest and admit to not researching how to build this window in the slightest, I just went with what seemed roughly logical to me. It's simply a plastic panel sandwiched between two square sections, all surrounded by a frame. My only concession to any kind of style was to chamfer the outer sill (cill?) and the outer bottom square section to stop water pooling. I siliconed around the panel on the outside and that's about it. 
Please feel free to point out any glaring errors I might have made, I know there is no drip edge on top but I thought I could get away without that as they are tucked so far under the roof overhang. I also know that I need to add a drip groove under the sill, I'll just have to hand cut it now I think.

Anyway, it looks pretty decent, it lets a good amount of light through but it completely obscures any view through from either side, you can put your eye right up to it and still see nothing at all. It appears silvery or slightly reflective from the outside in all light levels.





I tried to get an image of how I mounted it from the inside, showing the small battens I fixed in to hold the cladding, I don't know if this picture makes that much sense...





You can see the 2x4 that I screwed down to the diagonal part of the window frame, if I was going belt and braces I would have made it full length but I had some shorter bits spare and it's still solid as a rock. The battens are nailed into the roof beams and then the ones that sit against the 2x4 are screwed into that. The gap is only about 170mm to the roof beam so it's very sturdy.

I've painted the inner frame for the other triangle window, hope to get that fitted this coming weekend, then I might start thinking about putting some stuff inside...


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## Paul200

I somehow lost track of this one so just been catching up. Wow! That looks so good. Your attention to detail shines through and I especially like the polycarb window - so much so that I may have to steal the idea. Well done sir!

Paul


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## Brian18741

Ah just read the whole thread, fantastic work! Need the next installment quickly!


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## Dandan

Ah well it's nice to know my efforts are being enjoyed!

Progress has been positively glacial this weekend, I'm at a bit of a weird point where I have several things I could crack on with and I'm not sure what order to do them, for some reason I've been really hesitant to buy any insulation, if I did that I could get on with lining the inside, but I seem to prefer to procrastinate!

Anyway, things I did do, I got the other triangle window in, I'm pleased to say they still provide a good quantity of light into the space, and it feels warmer in there already...





I slotted my central floor socket box into place, mostly so there isn't a foot-sized hole in the middle of the floor for me to fall into. I don't remember what my plan was exactly in terms of fitting it, as the hole I have formed is slightly undersize to the max size of the box, it looks like I will have to chisel a tiny bit of floor away on each long edge so the flanges can sit down lower, bringing the trim piece down onto the floor. It has chamfered edges so is ok to sit overflush like that but I'm sure the original idea was to have it fully flush. I really should write these things down.





I'll make a hardwood insert to go in the lid, it's designed for a carpet tile but I'm sure I can come up with something.

I also made a temporary hinged door that I can lock as I'm beginning to store things inside the workshop so need it to at least deter an opportunist thief, previously I left the tall window opening clear and just screwed a couple of battens across it. I bought big cheap hinges from BandQ which were only £4(!) so I'm happy to just chuck them in a drawer as spares when I'm done. I somehow managed to fail to buy a slide bolt so it is still currently screwed shut (don't tell anyone)





As mentioned I moved some items in over the weekend, I won't paint the floor until the weather warms up and I can perhaps move everything onto the driveway and under a tarp for one night, so I thought I might as well. Turns out the space is quite big, I put my full size tool chest in which is the same height and depth as a work bench and 5 foot long or so, then I stepped back to look at the space, to say it looks lost is an understatement!





My hand may be forced this weekend as to what I do next as my electrician is turning up! I may have power a lot sooner than I expected...


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## Fatboy

Great space to work in, I'd love to have that much room. Dare i ask what your costs have been so far to get to this stage?


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## Dandan

Of course, sorry for the slow reply, I won't bore you with the breakdown but I think I'm at around £6500 so far from the dirt up. Still to pay for is a mates rates electrical installation and materials for doors. I've managed to blah things where I can, free windows, bit of free insulation, stuff like that, but I've also splashed out on things like the snazzy roof and the larch cladding. My budget was £10k so I think I've done pretty well so far. Leaves me some money to buy machinery!


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## Dandan

Nothing like a deadline to get yourself into gear, my electrician friend was only free this weekend and then not free again until March, so I had to get the interior insulated, clad and ready for wiring up. Luckily, this was waiting for me when I got home on Friday:





A pile of what appears to be far too much insulation. I did the maths twice and looking at what I now have left compared to the area I have left to cover, I'm sure I'm going to be a fair bit over and I've no idea how. Not to worry, I'm thinking about making double skin insulated doors so it will get used one way or another.

So on Friday while the sparky started running wires here there and everywhere, me and the FIL began the cladding:





The fuse board and main switches will go here by the door, there will be 2 main light switches, an outside light switch and a loft light switch. The main light switches are very cool, they look like normal switches but they are sprung to return to a neutral position, if you press and hold, they work like a dimmer switch!

Lots of cladding and lots of wires, electricity is magic so I'm glad someone else was doing this:









The lights consist of 6 round LED lights and two 600mm square ceiling panel lights. They are all overs from a commercial fit out so very good quality, and really bright. I have 2 round on each long wall and 1 on each short wall with the two panel lights running down the centre.









The round lights fit quite luckily on the angled face created by my raised roof ties, pointing them more down and into the room, although they are very diffused anyway.

I also fitted some exterior lights on the garden side:





And a security light looking up the driveway;





By 5pm Sunday evening, we were all freezing our unmentionable off, but we managed to achieve this:





To say I'm chuffed with how they came out is an understatement, it's so bright in there, and I haven't even painted it white yet! The spread of lights means there is no significant shadow anywhere in the room so should be great for working in.
The price for the electrics was beyond cheap, it came to about 1/3 of the retail cost of the lights alone, and for that I got cables, switches, sockets, fuse board, fitting, everything.
I now have 30 places where I can plug something in and enough light to land a plane, lovely.


----------



## Fitzroy

Looks awesome, great progress!


----------



## Dandan

Small update, I'd promised to pay Mrs Dandan some attention this weekend just gone, to prove that she really is more important than my - and I quote - "shed".

How rude.

Anyway the upshot of getting some husband points under my belt was that I made very little progress, but I did secure a free pass to go and pick up all the big machinery next weekend! Exciting stuff, some kind of minor amputation is surely only weeks away.

I did manage to do a bit of internal lining, we got both gable ends finished:









We also put a couple of panels up higher up, between the joists. Cutting the slots fell foul to my general idiocy, I had spaced one joist wider than the others to accommodate the ceiling lights (which fit in the normal gaps as it turned out) so I managed to cut one slot in the wrong place, but with a filler piece and enough caulk it shouldn't be a big issue:





I have questions.
1. How should I finish my exterior cladding at the corners? I currently just have a thin gap at the corner where the cladding stops short, can I get some kind of pre-cut L-shaped trim piece? Should I rout my own? Should I glue and screw my own out of flat bits?

2. Can anyone draw me a really simple section of a basic wooden window frame? All I can find is complex, opening frames or PVC jobbies with convoluted extrusions, I just want the simplest way to sandwich a sealed, double glazed unit into a wooden frame. I've an idea what I could do but I'd really appreciate advice from someone more experienced (i.e everyone)


----------



## Paul200

This is how I finished the corners on my summer house build - and I think it's the 'accepted' way of doing it. 

http://www.thewoodhaven2.co.uk/viewtopi ... &start=250

The bit you need is about halfway down the page. I must admit that it took a bit of head scratching on my part before it clicked! :| 

This whole article is worth a read if you haven't seen it before but you probably need to set aside about a day :shock: 

As you've already finished your cladding tight to the corners I don't see anything wrong with either a quarter round timber infill piece nailed in place or a 'L' shaped cover - perhaps painted green to match the other paintwork?

Hope this helps

Paul


----------



## Dandan

Thanks Paul, I did indeed make some time to read that whole thread before I started the build, lots of good info to be found on there. Unfortunately, I can't put an infill piece at the ends of my cladding as not all of the planks are perfectly lined up, in fact in one corner a bit of miscommunication led to quite a wide gap opening up near the top. I reckon an L-shaped cover strip is the way forward, but it will have to be quite big to cover the variation in the cladding plank lengths. If only I had some proper machinery so I could more easily make my own cover...





I took a gutless hire van to Paignton at the weekend to meet the inimitable DevonWoody from this parish, he has decided that advancing age and power tools are a potential recipe for disaster so he is changing his attention to hand tools instead, meaning he had a whole workshop of gear up for grabs.
For a really very reasonable price, I picked up a table saw, band saw, router table with 2 routers, planer/thicknesser, belt and disc sander, loads of dust extraction equipment and 15 years worth of spares and accessories, fantastic.
The large machines are really impressive, probably higher spec than I would have been willing to buy new, but by spending that little bit extra now, I've ended up with a lot of quality machinery for what I'm guessing is probably less than the cost of just the bandsaw when new. (The bandsaw is particularly impressive)
A big thanks to John (DevonWoody) for the bacon sandwiches, the tea and for amassing such a nice set of machinery, I hope I can do it justice.

I have now filled my workshop with piles of random stuff though, a serious tidy is required and I need to plan a layout to get all this stuff organised. I still have half the ceiling to finish cladding, then I want to caulk and paint and add skirting before I make any fittings and fixtures permanent. I'm very aware at this point that I could easily end up with an *almost* finished workshop that is useable, but I want it done properly so I need to be strict with myself.

Next week - I'll be fighting the urge to try out all the new machines instead of getting the ceiling clad.


----------



## devonwoody

Dan it was a pleasure to meet both you and your father last weekend although there was some regret seeing your truck dissapear into the blue when you drove up the road on its way to its new home. My woodwork started 15 years ago (after years of DIY) and each item installed over that time gave me much pleasure and made a lovely retirement pastime for both myself and my wife, (we were both invited to Australia three times to visit the woodwork community there , in fact one visit was arranged for a 6 month stay)
So you can expect there is some regret, and even a few weeks ago I still got requests to spare another tissue box, that time to our local physiotherapy dept. 
I hope you have as much enjoyment from your hobby that we enjoyed and I am certain members here will help with any guidance requested by you as also myself, please take care and work safely.

John 

Devonwoody


----------



## Paul200

Wow!  :lol: =D>


----------



## whiskywill

mindthatwhatouch":d3wtza34 said:


> Dandan":d3wtza34 said:
> 
> 
> 
> I was able to finish the roof. I don't mean I was able to make it mostly weatherproof but i'll need to tidy up later, I mean it's completely finished. Every tile, every edge strip, I've even been round and painted over the exposed nail heads with the supplied paint and little pot of texture sprinkles. It's finished.
> I know myself too well that if I leave the finishing touches until 'later', that later will never materialise.........
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Know what you mean, that reminds me to put yet another job on my roundtuit list.
Click to expand...



That also reminds me. I built my own house 26 years ago and had a 40mm long piece of skirting board which butted up against a half newel on the landing. I held back on fitting it until it was painted. There is still a gap there.


----------



## eddieperkins

If you make those top windows opening you will be able to get long lengths of timber up into the rafters for storage.


----------



## Dandan

eddieperkins":34ht4bpw said:


> If you make those top windows opening you will be able to get long lengths of timber up into the rafters for storage.



Hi Eddie, that is technically true, although I would have to stand on a ladder in the driveway in order to push them through, those windows are quite high...
I've omitted two ceiling joists at the front of the workshop, giving me a shallow angle to slide materials up through, I can get an 8x4 sheet up there without opening the front doors and I have some 4m+ lengths up there already. The only thing I couldn't fit up there is my spare 6x2 joist which is nearly 6m long but I don't imagine I'll be buying many more 6m lengths of timber.

Also, how on earth would you make a triangular window open...? Answers on a postcard!


----------



## Noho12C

wow, that's a great work ! looking forward to see it fully equipped !


----------



## Dandan

Hello all,
Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been a bit busy with life outside of the workshop for the last month or so, so progress has been sporadic at best. 
We had a bit of a blitz of the garden a couple of weeks ago, to try to turn the building site back into something vaguely tidy, I had managed to spread my path of destruction far and wide so there was stuff everywhere. Six cars full of junk went to the tip and there is still a lot of stuff hanging about the place but it's considerably tidier, I can now even see the whole side of the workshop from the garden!





I now wish I had made more of an overhang at the rear, it looks a bit weird, and exposes the triangular window to more rain, I had a small leak last week which i've hopefully since sorted, but a bigger overhang probably would have prevented it. I was trying to be nice to the neighbours by not extending the roof too far towards their garden, ah well.

Despite the workshop being far from finished, I did have a little play with the new machinery, just, you know, to make sure it all worked ok...
I made a set of climbing holds for my little bouldering wall from scraps, it's nothing exciting but it did give me the opportunity to test out the planer, pillar drill, router table, bandsaw, table saw and belt sander! Who knew i'd need a couple of grands worth of machinery to cut some little blocks of wood 





But I digress, back to finishing the workshop, we finally got the interior cladding finished! I say finished, it all needs filling and painting which i'm sure will be days of excitement and untold fun, but at least all the panels and insulation are up, I ended up with 2 full packs of insulation left over, no idea how that happened.





I need to start thinking about layout to make the best use of the space. I'm pleased to say I can rip the long edge of an 8x4 panel on the table saw without hitting anything, so i've got a good amount of space but that's no reason not to use it wisely.
The current plan is chop saw station the length of the left wall with storage below and above the worktop. That should be enough cupboard storage to be going on with, then put my metal tool chest on the back wall next to the bandsaw and perhaps the router table. 
I'l build a bench for the back right corner under the window for hand work, then have space next to that for some kind of tall, upright storage along with perhaps the upright extractor.
What am I missing?
That still leaves me a lot of space by the doors for maneuvering large bits of work or materials.
I'll get sketching I think...


----------



## AndyT

That's a very professional looking build - more like a fashionable 'garden room' than a shed. 
If you ever have to move (I'm assuming it would have to be forced on you) I think that will be a definite plus point.


----------



## devonwoody

Dan, I was very pleased to see your latest post above and can learn my tools have gone to a good home. My hands were starting to weaken and that step of my life had to go forward at a more slower pace than the past on this very friendly forum. You might have noticed that local members have offered to prepare some timber for me if in need .
Look forward to seeing your furniture projects in the near future.

John, Devonwoody.


----------



## Dandan

Progress has been pretty glacial for the last few weeks, the better weather meaning that there is often something more enticing to do at the weekend than to sit inside a wooden box painting things white.
But then I don't have a deadline to get the workshop finished, I'm not depending on it's use for anything specific, building it is a hobby just the same as the woodworking I hope to do in it one day, so I'm not going to force it. Now that it's weatherproof I'm happy to go at a slower pace, just as long as it's completely finished before the winter and I think I can manage that.

I began the laborious process of painting the inside, why anyone would choose to be a painter and decorator I'll never know. This probably goes some way to explaining my slow progress, it's just so boring! 90 sq m of ply takes some painting, especially when a lot of it needs to be done by brush because it's fiddly, all the cutting in along with the ceiling joists mean there is a lot of surface on a lot of different planes.
I pushed all the contents of the workshop into the middle so I can at least get all the way around without having to keep shifting stuff, but it means I can't use any of the equipment until the painting is finished so I can't even distract myself by cutting soffits or window frames as a break from the mind-numbingly dull brushwork. gah.





Still, starting to look nice and bright at least...





I've *nearly* finished the undercoat and I can guarantee there will only be one top coat regardless of what the finish looks like!

In other news, I bought the hardware for my big doors, I'm having a 3 door arrangement with 2 bi-folding to one side and one opening normally. I got the hardware from www.runners-uk.com and have to say it looks well up to the job, really chunky and very nicely made and finished. The hinges particularly look great and were a very reasonable price. The only odd thing was that I did get them to price up some brush strips for top and bottom of the doors but it nearly doubled the quote! I'll just get some from screwfix for 1/10 of the price as I'm planning to modify them a bit anyway and I wouldn't want to start cutting up the (I can only assume) gold plated, titanium alloy strips from Runners...





I also bought some hinge drills which I have been meaning to get for a while, and a hole saw set ready for doing my soffits, I was going to cut slots in them for ventilation (covered with bug mesh) but decided manoeuvering 4m long planks over the router table might be more bother than it's worth with my current set up so i'll go with a series of holes instead.
I got some PPE from the in-laws as a birthday present too which should make life a bit more pleasant when the dust is flying.





Next up is to finish the painting, along with skirting, then I can try and tidy the place up a bit before I get back to hacking at bits of wood to make the soffits and door/window frames, then it should just be the doors to make and I'm pretty much there!


----------



## devonwoody

Dan I think you will have the cleanest workshop on the forum looking at your paint job. (hammer)


----------



## Ian down london way

Re diggers. And rather off topic, many years ago I took my kids to this place http://www.diggerland.com/

It was GREAT !


----------



## Dandan

IDLW, one of my secret dreams is to own enough land that I can justify buying my own digger, I could re-landscape every 6 months!

I had a sudden bout of enthusiasm this weekend after finding nearly a whole tin of undercoat/primer in the back of a cupboard meaning I didn't have to return to the nearest trade counter for a third time to admit to my woeful lack of judgement in terms of paint quantities required. To be fair, the second tin of undercoat I bought went on like frozen butter, the coverage was appalling and it dried practically clear, but I was kidding myself if I ever thought it would have finished the job.
Anyhoo, with my paint stocks suitably replenished, I grabbed a handful of gusto and went at it. I managed to get a top coat on all the way around up to ceiling height and everything else is undercoated bar the centres of the beams because all the workshop gear was stacked in the middle of the room underneath them. Having everything jammed up in the middle shrunk the room by a full 86.4%, it was horrible to work in, squeezing past the impractically large 8x4 temporary door, stepping over and under power leads that all run to chest height on the walls, remembering the spare roller was in the cupboard that was now stacked face-to-face with another cupboard, this is exactly the situation I wanted to avoid by building a hoofing great workshop!

It came as a huge thrill then to realise that I was ready to stick some skirting on and push some gear back to the walls! 





I just ran some spare bits of ply through the table saw and rounded the top edge over on the router table (I love having tools), I decided on a small skirting because, well, it's just a gap hider for the bottoms of the wall cladding panels and the lower it is, the easier it should be to push stuff hard up against the walls. I also decided to leave it bare wood, this was a completely aesthetic decision and laziness did not come into it at any point. No sir.





Then I had a half-assed tidy and a sweep, managed to decant a couple of cardboard boxes of bits and relocate a few items into more logical locations (I found planes in 4 different places, I only have about 6) and the place is looking a whole lot nicer:





All the tools are accessible again, so soffits are on the menu once I've finished off the last of the painting and skirting on the other wall.


----------



## devonwoody

=D> =D> =D> 

Dan you are nearly there.

:lol:


----------



## Born2bye

Very impressive work, top quality workmanship, I am dead envious


----------



## Superstrat

What a great workshop and it must be extra satisfying building it yourself. What's the internal floor area?

I have a 5m x 5m garage workshop but, like most people, would love a larger workspace. I'm in the process of rearranging it just now but I can't seem to get it quite right. A limiting factor is that one whole wall is taken up by the main garage door.

I'd be interested to see your planned layout when you have one. I currently have everything on wheels, thinking it would be more flexible, but this just seems to make things worse as nothing is in a permanent place but it does make trying different layouts easier.

Like you, I plan to use one wall for a mitre saw station and main tool storage. I'm waiting on the delivery of a table saw which will be sited centrally with an outfeed/assembly table behind. I'm currently in the process of getting 16amp sockets installed for it.

What are you planning for dust collection?


----------



## Dandan

Superstrat":20l0jscm said:


> What a great workshop and it must be extra satisfying building it yourself. What's the internal floor area?
> 
> I'd be interested to see your planned layout when you have one.
> 
> What are you planning for dust collection?



Ooh questions! I'm sorry I never saw this post, but if it's still any good to you I will reply anyway;

The internal floor area is as near as dammit 30m^2, I squeezed all the permitted development regs until they squeaked so the building is as big as it could possibly have been. So much so that the lady from the council that turned up (presumably on a tip off from one of my neighbours) went away looking very surprised that it met the regs, she was convinced it would be too big, but her tape measure told her otherwise. But hey, what's the point in having limits if you don't work right up to them?!

I'll be interested to see my planned layout too, as I have no idea how it's going to look! I'll put in the bits that I know I want, and fit everything else around that I suppose. Even just knocking up the odd thing here and there has helped me see how I might want things in certain positions and so far nothing has been bolted down. I will try to make a CAD version now that I have most of my machines so I can easily move things about and get a feel for how it may work, but I think the real insights will come from just using it, I'm not too proud to re-arrange at a later date.

Dust collection, when I bought the machines I got quite a selection of extraction equipment with it, again I'm going to suck it and see how it works best but I have quite a lot of choice, 3 individual 'sucking' units as well as a filter unit (which I assume I fit in the ceiling somewhere..?)
I like the way YouTuber Matthias Wandel uses a separate unit for each machine instead of one large unit with pipes everywhere, I'd like to do something along those lines ultimately.


----------



## Dandan

I've been making some occasional progress on the workshop, I wanted to have the actual building 'finished' by summer including windows and doors and that seems unlikely now, but I'd hope to have it complete before the weather turns again towards the end of the year.
The reality is that it's my little folly, my replacement for wasting money on fast cars, so it doesn't really make a difference if I am building things in the workshop or just still building the workshop itself, as long as i'm having fun. No deadlines here, no sir.
I used my first bit of hardwood a couple of weeks ago, after returning from a climbing holiday, I wanted to make a replica of part of a route so I could practice it in my climbing shed in the garden. One of the holds is a specifically sized, single finger pocket which it was hard to replicate with commercially available holds, so I made it instead. No idea what wood it is (you'll hear that a lot from me in the future), but it's almost too pretty to get covered in chalk:





I've been cracking on with the soffits, decided to drill large holes and then cover the back side with bug mesh for ventilation, it's a slow old process, even through soft wood my puny pillar drill takes an age to put a 51mm hole all the way through.





Then after reading some information on here, I decided to get hold of some linseed based varnish as a finish, I like the idea of using a more traditional material, and aside from a price premium, it doesn't appear to have any real drawbacks. I opted for this snazzy stuff:





Which if you believe the spiel that comes with it, is some kind of super varnish from another planet. It has a high gloss finish, easy application, lasts for decades, is non toxic, food safe, all natural, in fact I'm pretty sure it forms part of a balanced diet if I ever get really hungry.
All I know so far is it goes on quite nicely:





I've not checked it since it dried so i'll report back after the weekend.


----------



## TFrench

What route are you training for? Wasn't it Ben Moon who made mock ups of the holds on agincourt so he could beat the frenchies to it?


----------



## Dandan

TFrench":2n2bhnal said:


> What route are you training for? Wasn't it Ben Moon who made mock ups of the holds on agincourt so he could beat the frenchies to it?



Hehe, that was the last question I was expecting on this forum! Loads of people have made replicas to train for harder routes so Ben Moon may well have done that, the most famous one was probably Malc Smith building a replica of Hubble in his bedroom to train on over the winter which resulted in a successful ascent, despite it being about 3 grades harder than anything he had climbed before.

I'm training for a route in Margalef, Spain called Nina Mala (bad girl), if you are really interested you can see the hold I am trying to replicate here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzfWcBrYfXM at about 3.10


----------



## devonwoody

Dan I know nothing about climbing but that piece of wood could split looking at the grain direction and appearance.


----------



## thick_mike

Dandan":1ag8yius said:


> TFrench":1ag8yius said:
> 
> 
> 
> What route are you training for? Wasn't it Ben Moon who made mock ups of the holds on agincourt so he could beat the frenchies to it?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Hehe, that was the last question I was expecting on this forum! Loads of people have made replicas to train for harder routes so Ben Moon may well have done that, the most famous one was probably Malc Smith building a replica of Hubble in his bedroom to train on over the winter which resulted in a successful ascent, despite it being about 3 grades harder than anything he had climbed before.
> 
> I'm training for a route in Margalef, Spain called Nina Mala (bad girl), if you are really interested you can see the hold I am trying to replicate here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzfWcBrYfXM at about 3.10
Click to expand...


You might be better off with an Abu Hamza style hook instead of fingers there.


----------



## Dandan

devonwoody":1dxsu8nb said:


> Dan I know nothing about climbing but that piece of wood could split looking at the grain direction and appearance.



John I know almost nothing about wood so you could well be right! With three screws in at least it shouldn't fall off in my hands, if it shows signs of a split I guess i'll make another one.
In the spirit of finding out at least something about wood, what is it about the appearance that makes you think it might split?

Thick Mike - if you take that to it's logical conclusion then I might as well walk around the back of the cliff up the path to the top!
It's not always about the destination, it's about how you get there. Wise words for climbing *and* woodworking I suppose!


----------



## devonwoody

Just had in the past a piece of wood split along the grain(I was building boats around 40 years ago, not professionaly) and I got that feeling again seeing yours. Wait and see if anyone else follows up, but bear in mind I have no idea what or how you are using the piece and there might not be any stress to timber involved.


----------



## SammyQ

DanDan, as a passive rockrat, (much used as belay/anchor material by more adventurous mates) I have to say that Spanish bint looks a lot better provided with holds than, say, The Quarryman* above Llanberis? Such a coarse grain to the rock!

Sam

* https://www.ukclimbing.com/news/item/62 ... arryman_e8


----------



## TFrench

I'd be very surprised if that split with 3 screws in it. If you can generate that much power off a mono you don't need to train :lol: 
Looks an absolute monster of a route! I bimble around the 6c/7a mark mainly, training and bouldering bore me so I seem to have plateau'd around there! Done E2/E3 in the slate quarries though, one of my favouite places to climb.


----------



## Noel

devonwoody":1cpqp7n6 said:


> Dan it was a pleasure to meet both you and your father last weekend although there was some regret seeing your truck dissapear into the blue when you drove up the road on its way to its new home. My woodwork started 15 years ago (after years of DIY) and each item installed over that time gave me much pleasure and made a lovely retirement pastime for both myself and my wife, (we were both invited to Australia three times to visit the woodwork community there , in fact one visit was arranged for a 6 month stay)
> So you can expect there is some regret, and even a few weeks ago I still got requests to spare another tissue box, that time to our local physiotherapy dept.
> I hope you have as much enjoyment from your hobby that we enjoyed and I am certain members here will help with any guidance requested by you as also myself, please take care and work safely.
> 
> John
> 
> Devonwoody



Lovely post there John. Hope you enjoy your rather less noisy woodwork from now on.

Dan, great build, enjoy.


----------



## devonwoody

Noel":3lf9fqny said:


> devonwoody":3lf9fqny said:
> 
> 
> 
> Dan it was a pleasure to meet both you and your father last weekend although there was some regret seeing your truck dissapear into the blue when you drove up the road on its way to its new home. My woodwork started 15 years ago (after years of DIY) and each item installed over that time gave me much pleasure and made a lovely retirement pastime for both myself and my wife, (we were both invited to Australia three times to visit the woodwork community there , in fact one visit was arranged for a 6 month stay)
> So you can expect there is some regret, and even a few weeks ago I still got requests to spare another tissue box, that time to our local physiotherapy dept.
> I hope you have as much enjoyment from your hobby that we enjoyed and I am certain members here will help with any guidance requested by you as also myself, please take care and work safely.
> 
> John
> 
> Devonwoody
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Dan, great build, enjoy.
Click to expand...


Lovely post there John. Hope you enjoy your rather less noisy woodwork from now on.

Thanks and to Beau on Dartmoor who I visited yesterday (and nearly had to swim home) who also had a super workshop in a barn. Beau helped me with by preparing 5 short boards for 12 more of my boxes..

Dan, I now think I see the function of that climbing accessory, you screw it to a flat surface and the hole is to put your finger in to maintain a hold when going along a flat underside surface =D> 

(OK or whatever)


----------



## Dandan

That's pretty much it john, I've put it on my 40 degree overhanging training wall and currently wedged it so the finger pocket is only about 20 degrees overhanging, as I get stronger i'll take the wedges out to make it harder.

I finally pulled my finger out with the soffits this weekend, after weeks of faffing around doing one board at a time I tried to get into more of a mass production frame of mind.
I finished drilling all the holes, then did all the sanding before laying them all out to varnish in one hit. It seemed to make things go a lot faster, I soon had six boards all smooth and varnished:





Rather than buy plastic push-in vents for the holes, I'm using left over bug mesh from when I did the bottom edge of the cladding. I'm sure it's only a few quid in reality but it made me feel better about using up stuff that would otherwise just languish in a cupboard until thrown away.





Hopefully that will do the trick.

Then it was a simple matter of screwing the boards in place as they had already been sized to fit. There are a couple of small gaps between the fascia and the soffit where everything isn't perfectly straight, i'll have to try and plug them with something unobtrusive otherwise it kind of negates the point of all the bug mesh!
In retrospect I should have fitted the soffits before the fascias so that I could then have pulled in the gaps with screws, but at the time it seemed more important to have something to screw a gutter to...





Sorry about the terrible picture, my battered phone is really starting to suffer in sunlight!

Next on the list is windows, I know this is a terrible attitude to take but since they are on a very sheltered side of the building, and have suffered no water ingress throughout the winter despite only having a ply panel nailed on the *inside*, then I'm not getting too hung up on how I seal them up. I'm going to do what I think will work (with a lot of info stolen from Fitzroy's fab build) and I'm sure it would be sub par for the north side of a Hebridean outhouse, but I'm willing to risk it.
Also, I don't know any better way to do it than what I have planned, I'm sure it will be fine!


----------



## devonwoody

Then you have time to do those furniture jobs you are keen to get going on.

Nice work and shed.

PS Ask beau to send you a photograph of his bench he made to finish up your shed. Its a beauty.


----------



## Dandan

I have a window!
Despite spending most of the hours of daylight in my teenage years either in bed or behind closed curtains furiously surfing the interwebs, I'm not actually allergic to sunlight so I decided it was time to let some into my workshop.
Now, if you google something to the tune of 'timber window frame section' all you get is drawings of complicated machine cut sections and over-engineered opening window frames. There is not one picture of a basic, fixed window frame section that I could find. Ok, so no pictures, then it must be so simple that nobody even *needs* a picture, right? 
It was with this foolhardy frame of mind that I decided to crack on and make the thing from first principles. Well if it's true that you learn from your mistakes, then I had a university course in wooden window building this weekend, I've ended up with a window but there is a lot that I will do differently on the next one.

First things first, I knocked up a quick and dirty cross cut sled for the table saw, I did get one (several actually) with the machinery from John but it had all sorts of clever clear acrylic protective covers on meaning I couldn't load a piece of wood end-on to cut box joints.





I suppose that technically this is the first proper jig that I have made. Ah well, they can only get better from here on in right?

Is 'jigsaw' a verb? I hope so, because I jigsawed the internal trim panel to reveal my opening:





It's nice to see a bit of the outside world, until now the workshop was very well lit but completely closed off from outside, it already feels very different even with just this tiny window. 

Forgive me for my sins, but I used off the shelf, sized timber for the frame, it all looked reasonably straight so I didn't even get the planer/thicknesser out once. I made a box jointed frame from 20mm planks and made the first of many errors.





To avoid adjusting my stop on the cross cut sled too many times, I cut the joints on the top and bottom lengths from one side, and figured I could cut the joints on the left and right lengths from the other side at the same time. This would have worked had the width of the planks been exactly divisible by the width of the joints, which of course it wasn't, I missed by a couple of mm





(You can see the mismatch at the top)

Then I had a bit of a moment, a little bit of a peek into the reason for hanging out in dusty man-sheds, a tiny 'oh so THATS what it's all about' moment.
I started to plane down the two proud sides from my jointing error, and at first I got a corner like this:





Which I thought, yeah that's ok, it'll be hidden behind trim anyway.
Then I moved onto another corner and ended up with this:





And the little lightbulb went on. It's just so... right! Nobody will ever see it once the window is finished, but I know it's there and I can be proud of it. The day I can make something where every joint looks like that is something to really aspire to. I'm definitely not at the stage of making every part the best it can be before moving on to the next, but it's something to aim for.

Anyway, back to the mistakes.





I built this frame 5mm smaller than the opening, as I understand it you make it smaller so you can set it in square and level and screw it in place then fill the gaps with your favourite gap filling material. Well 5mm is not enough. Not even close when the opening is defined by 2x4 stud work put together with a nail gun. It fit but only with persuasion. it looks great but I'm guessing it will be only a matter of time before two different materials have an argument about the relative merits of expansion and contraction and I end up with a shonky frame. I've not addressed it yet but I guess making the opening bigger might be a little easier than making the frame smaller, I'm sure it will be fine.

I then used 43x33 PAR to make the inner frame to hold the glass, and again I made a lot of mistakes. I did a kind of open mortice and tenon joint which ended up spreading open once I put it into the outer frame, I'm guessing these inner bits should have been measured and made along with the outer frame instead of trying to fit them in afterwards?









(You can see its a bit gappy on the outside)

I cut the rebate for the glass on the table saw, the process went well but the result wasn't ideal, the remaining material to hold the glass is a little, er, thin, I really should have started with much larger stock.





It leaves me with tiny thin pieces to try and nail in to secure the glass too, not ideal and not super secure either. I might glue more wood front and back before painting to thicken the whole thing up.

I pooped the glass in temporarily, overall I'm happy that it looks at least vaguely like a window should, it's more than I had hoped for!





I was going to leave the outer frame proud of the cladding on the outside and leave it like that, but the total depth of my wall is such that I decided to put it flush to the cladding and then i'll put a trim piece around to hide the gap. Due to fitting the cladding before fitting window frames, the cladding didn't butt up perfectly to the frame anyway, so a trim piece will look a lot neater.

It all needs taking down and painting now, which I will wait to do until I have made the other (hopefully much improved) frame.


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## Fitzroy

Been there, feel your pain, the devil's in the detail and that's really hard to workout until you have a go at making one. Looking good though. 

F.


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## devonwoody

Dan it sure looks a lot tidier than mine. (when dividing wood, take into account saw kerf lost)?


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## devonwoody

Dan it sure looks a lot tidier than mine. (when dividing wood, take into account saw kerf lost)?

I would have put both the timbers through the P/T on edge at the same time til they were equal.


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## Dandan

I didn't get much done this weekend, I was too busy going out and enjoying myself, but hey, there's no rush!
I started to cut the pieces for the taller window (and even used the planer this time!) but didn't get all that far, I'm off to the wonderful West Country this coming weekend so I won't get that finished for a couple of weeks.

I did manage something though, I had a bunch of donated cupboard units kicking about the place and generally getting in the way, so I thought I should do something about mounting them and making the place look a little tidier. The intention is to tidy/repaint them eventually for a more uniform look, possibly modify them when I know exactly what I want to store in them. I'd have to get seriously bored to bother building bespoke cupboard units so this random selection will do for me for a good while.
All I did was to make a French cleat the length of the wall, screw a length on the back of the cupboards (along with spacers so they sit level front to back) and hang 'em up. I did manage to mess even this simple task up though, I had a width of plank that I wanted to rip into 4 lengths of cleat, so I enthusiastically set my table saw to 45 degrees, found the middle and ran it through. At this point I stopped and allowed logic to enter my life, if I want 4 pieces with a bevel on one edge of each, the first cut should be a vertical cut, then use an angled cut to split those two pieces. Ah well, 2 unnecessary cuts later (and a bit of kindling) I had my cleats.





Of course the best thing about cleats is they stop me from making further costly mistakes, when I realise I don't want the cupboards where I've put them, it is but the work of a moment to re-arrange!


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## devonwoody

Dan I think something went wrong with my first attempt at French Cleats, you need to think outside of the box with those.


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## Dandan

Hey, long time no post, things have been going on, but slower than I'd like, as per usual!

I've made window frame number 2, I won't go into too much detail with this one as it's the same as the previous, just with less mistakes.
I found a method of clamping the glue up when I realised my clamps were too short:





Seemed to work ok.

The only real error I made on this frame was using the thickness measurement of the glass from the previous frame to work out the rebate I needed, when in fact this piece of glass was considerably thicker. In the end it worked out ok as I could just use a larger trim piece to hold the pane in which is actually a better solution.
Yeah not much space for a trim piece here:





Sitting it in place went a lot smoother this time





Then after a few coats of paint it looks like this:









The green paint I am using is a pain in the backside, it's really rubbish, not nice to use and doesn't cover well, but i'm kind of stuck with it now so I have to continue using it on all the frames. I thought I might use the linseed varnish on the outside trim pieces that I am still to fit, less things to paint green but should still look nice.

Didn't get much done this weekend as I need to order some timber for the side door and frame, and every time I had some time free, the shops were shut. So I decided to try and change the blade on the bandsaw, it came with a large resawing blade fitted but had a much narrower blade supplied with it. As I have the table saw and don't work much with raw wood, I couldn't see me doing much resawing on the bandsaw so I reckoned the smaller blade would get more use.
The changing of the blade was relatively issue-free, the setting up of the guides took a little longer because I was a little stumped when I found this underneath:





The left hand bearing and rear thrust bearing were stuck solid and the blade had been wearing a slot in the thrust bearing.
I've never used a bandsaw before so a bit of time with the (terrible) instructions and more time on the (infinitely more useful) youtube and I learned that this wasn't quite right!
I got it sorted eventually, the left hand bearing was stuck because it had no washer on the rear, and the rear thrust bearing was overlapping the blade way too much so the blade was crossing the inner bush.
After figuring out all the adjustment, a bit of grease, and then figuring out I could replace one of each pair of side bearings with a bush to accommodate the much thinner blade, and I was done.

The initial switch-on was a tense affair and I thought it wasn't working correctly because it sounded completely different, but that must have been the extra friction caused by the stuck lower bearings, it now runs considerably quieter and the thin blade seems to cut lovely curves!

I should really have checked all this before I first used the machine so i've no idea how long it had been running a bit off, but no harm done as it seems to be running great now.
The only puzzler for me now is the blade tension, the saw has a visual aid, a big red arrow that points at some arbitrary markings inside the case, but I have no reference of how to calibrate it or how tight I should be running, any hints? Also the machine has a big lever to quickly release tension from the top wheel, should I be releasing this between uses to avoid stretching the blade?


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## devonwoody

Hi. Dan, No idea about that bearing, I assume it is a back of a blade that rubs on the face of the bearing that has cut its way into the front face of the bearing. 

Regards setting the tension of your new set up, use scrap wood until you are satisfied that you have tension and bearing set ups are to your satisfaction, it can be time consuming and a loss of valueable timber otherwise.

I hardly ever used the narrow blade but it did resaw OK when used many moons ago.


BTWI note that the side tables are not propped. most probably OK unless any timber placed on the outside (right) most probably will cause unbalance and topple over?
It did wobble at my end referring to tablesaw.(The sliding table might be counter balancing?)


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## Noggsy

Hi Dan. Excellent WIP and what a fantastic man-cave. I recommend getting Steve Maskery's DVDs on setting up told (definitely the bandsaw one at least) which should help you to get the best out of your kit. In terms of the lever...I think the idea is to release it if you are going to not use the saw fora some time to avoid flattening the tyres on the wheels. Personally, I never do, but that isn't to say I shouldn't. Also, the red arrow-thing is arbitrary and when I had an Axminster bandsaw (which I think that is), I found it too wobbly to be of much use. There is a technique I've been shown about how far you can deflect the blade under tension, but I think it probably more down to trial and error.

All the best for the rest of the build...I look forward to seeing it.


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## devonwoody

Dan, there is an observation window in the top compartment to see where the blade is situated on the top wheel, for larger blades centralise the blade. (equal empty rim either side) Spin the wheel by hand with cupboard open until satisfied blade is central.
For smaller blades I have no experience because I mainly used the BS for resaw jobs.

PS I never let the bearings touch as mentioned above .


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## Dandan

It's nearly time to build a door, something I am both nervous and excited about but it should be a good learning experience either way.
I went into the loft to get some more wood down to build the outer frame, and good old past-me had got there already and labelled everything up!





What a helpful fella.
I made 3 sides of the frame this time unlike the windows as the threshold would be a different timber which I was going to fit afterwards. I'm getting the hang of these simple box joints, had this up in no time and it was impressively square:









I then did something potentially wasteful but I can't see a way around it, I want a bespoke profile on the threshold for both this and the the front doors, so I bought a massive bit of sapele which I will turn mostly to sawdust to get what I want. I suppose I could build the threshold in pieces to save wood but my thinking is a one-piece item would last better. Oh well, the money's spent now:





I'm a bit scared to start chopping into it to be honest...

I couldn't cut the threshold until I know how thick my doors are going to be and that depends on the result of a meeting between the planer/thicknesser and the timber that was yet to arrive, so with some time to kill I did a couple of odd jobs instead.
I gave the bandsaw table a clean, it had picked up some surface blemishes in it's previous life so I thought it would probably operate more smoothly with a, er, smoother table. Flawless logic at least.
Here's a half and half, it wasn't that bad really but it's lovely and shiny now:





I did the same for the sliding cross cut extension table on the table saw, I forgot to take a picture but that thing had had a somewhat harder life, once I got the rust off, it revealed a series of sharp gouges, all roughly parallel, as if someone had gone at the surface with a chisel. It doesn't affect it's use but i've no idea why it's ended up with gashes like that on it.

With still more time on my hands, I decided to fit the hanging rail that will carry the bifold part of my triple front doors. I checked and re-checked the length of the rail, the doors need to be very precise sizes, the middle one must be wider than the end door by half the thickness of the door, plus 23mm, plus the hinge offset to make sure the mechanism works correctly. I can't make the rail over length because it would intrude on the space above the third door, where I hope to have shoot bolts. After many repeat measurings, I went for it with a circular saw above my head, with the riving blade removed, to cut a channel for the rail. Do not try that at home kids.
Half an hour of chiselling later and I had a channel to fit the rail into. This would have been so, so easy if I had done it at the construction stage, but hey ho.









It's still proud of the frame because there is an outer wood frame to go on yet, it should sit flush when that extra frame is in place. I'm happy to announce that it's very sturdy, in fact it makes quite a good swing.

The timber for the doors has arrived now so I can get cracking, one last decision to make, I have enough t+g to make the front doors, but only if at least one of them has a lock rail bacause I have lots of short bits but not enough long bits. I've looked into buying a little bit more of the t+g but no response so far. So the question is, which of these three images do you prefer:


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## devonwoody

Hi Dan, I do not recall or recognise those scratches you mention but my thinking is that they could be caused by a jig running across the top of the table surface,, perhaps screws coming through the bottom of a sled or that mitre jig I used? Could even be the mitre INCA gauge?
Sorry about the rust, I did get condensation before my new roof on workshop you saw. But as you mention the scratches do not affect the level of table top operation. (Keep them clean and free from build up?)


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## Dandan

Thanks John, i'll try and get a picture, it looks less like marks from something running over the surface and more like it was used as a worktop to beat something into submission. It's no bother but it is a puzzler!


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## devonwoody

Dandan":338u697l said:


> Thanks John, i'll try and get a picture, it looks less like marks from something running over the surface and more like it was used as a worktop to beat something into submission. It's no bother but it is a puzzler!



Nothing done here Dan honest.

The sliding table section used a couple of times got rust through lack of use and storage


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## AndyT

I must confess to a serious case of workshop envy - this is looking good enough to live in. 

As for the doors, I much prefer the second option, with three doors all with middle rails. I know the others are symmetrical, but I still look at them and play 'spot the odd one out.' Also, middle rails will make them even stronger and help maintain those critical dimensions.


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## Dandan

Thanks Andy, it's much appreciated.
At first the 3 middle rail option was my least favourite but i'm starting to come around to it, the side door has a lock rail too so it would help match them up all around, thanks for your opinion!

I little progress this weekend, I milled my first bits of timber! Quite a nerve wracking experience, probably made worse by me selecting the worst of the wood for this, the side door, my thinking being that I save the best bits for the more visible front doors.
Below is a picture of the resulting pile of (mostly) square lumps of wood, i'm very pleased with this, I never thought i'd be able to actually 'make' my own bits of wood to build things with! The disconnect between a piece of tree and a finished piece of timber seemed huge to me before but the gap is definitely closing.
You can see the plank one up from the bottom is a bit sub-par, that was probably the worst of the original pieces and coincidentally the first one I milled. Should I be able to get twist out on a small-ish planer? The twist ran the full 2 metres so it exceeded the length of my planer, therefore it was very hard to keep it pushed down in the same orientation.





Oh, and I finally admitted defeat on my phone camera, you might have spotted the same dark smudges on all recent pictures, I broke the glass cover over the lense and so it's slowly getting more and more dirt stuck inside it, so i've finally cracked out the proper camera, should have done this a long time ago, sorry everyone!

Next I made the threshold for the side door, this was mostly done on the table saw, angled cuts either side, then a bit of trenching and chiselling for the central rebate and then edges rounded on the router table. It took me all morning but I have to say i'm very pleased with it:









What should I use to finish it? I'd like a kind of oiled look to the finish but as it's exterior do I need a solid thick coat of varnish on it? The wood is Sapele. I have some more Linseed varnish coming, could I use that?

That's it for this weekend, i'm kind of avoiding hacking into my new planks to make the door out of fear of messing up all my good work thus far, but it will happen soon!

Oh, and I forgot how ridiculous proper lenses can be, this is what happens when you try to take a close-up at f1.4:





EDIT: Click images for much more pleasing full size versions


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## sploo

Dandan":22r5fv7m said:


> You can see the plank one up from the bottom is a bit sub-par, that was probably the worst of the original pieces and coincidentally the first one I milled. Should I be able to get twist out on a small-ish planer? The twist ran the full 2 metres so it exceeded the length of my planer, therefore it was very hard to keep it pushed down in the same orientation.


Looking great.

BTW I find it's usually a good idea to get lengths of timber closer to their finished sizes before milling. I.e. if I have a badly twisted 2m length, but need two 80cm lengths I'll cut it into two 1m sections. The twist over the shorter sections is usually less severe, and it's easier to handle on the planer. Obviously there's more risk of snipe when it goes through the thicknesser, but a few fractions of a mm of snipe is better than twist.

Obviously if you need 2m lengths then... well.. yea 

EDIT: For finishes, Danish Oil should look good on sapele. Osmo also do some outdoor capable oils. Alternatively, I understand Le Tonkinois is the gold standard for protection, but I've never used it.


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## Dandan

Little bit of progress this weekend, I went and bought myself a snazzy new car so it distracted me somewhat from the woodwork, but I did manage to tear myself away for long enough to cut the tenons on the top and middle rail.





As you can see they are pretty chunky, as are the stiles, it's all down to the size of the salvaged glass that I am putting in, but I like the chunky look, it will make the doors nice and heavy.









A question though, my tenons are currently 100mm long, do I need them to be that big? I want to save as much effort as I can when making the mortices but I also want to have good solid doors, so should I leave them at !00mm or could I get away with, say, 80mm? That's a lot of waste I won't have to dig out...


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## ColeyS1

Dandan":qen9hcqw said:


> Little bit of progress this weekend, I went and bought myself a snazzy new car so it distracted me somewhat from the woodwork, but I did manage to tear myself away for long enough to cut the tenons on the top and middle rail.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> As you can see they are pretty chunky, as are the stiles, it's all down to the size of the salvaged glass that I am putting in, but I like the chunky look, it will make the doors nice and heavy.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A question though, my tenons are currently 100mm long, do I need them to be that big? I want to save as much effort as I can when making the mortices but I also want to have good solid doors, so should I leave them at !00mm or could I get away with, say, 80mm? That's a lot of waste I won't have to dig out...



Personally I'd always allow the tenons to go right through the stiles, then wedge them. Worse case scenerio the glue fails but the wedges hold it all together anyway.
Your tenons are looking really tidy ! 
I'd be inclined to reduce the width of your tenon (on the top rail) and increase the haunch size. The tiny bit of wood that's left on the stile where the haunch sits, is all that's stopping your rail from falling out- besides the glue obviously :lol: 
Coley 



Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk


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## Dandan

I had to re-read that a couple of times but I think I see what you mean, cut a bit more of the tenon away to make the haunch taller, and therefore leave more material on the top of the stile, am I right? I can do that, no problem.
The issue with running the tenons all the way through the stiles is that on this door the stiles are a mighty 190mm wide! (and I've already cut my rails down, obviously) I could try to cut drafted motices and use a blind foxtail wedge but I think that might be a little above my skill level currently, I guess I'll just have to trust the glue!


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## ColeyS1

Dandan":3uzsdy0c said:


> I had to re-read that a couple of times but I think I see what you mean, cut a bit more of the tenon away to make the haunch taller, and therefore leave more material on the top of the stile, am I right? I can do that, no problem.



Yeah you're right [WINKING FACE]
People's opinion vary with wedged tenons. 
I've always used them on windows and doors cause you end up with a larger glue area if they go right through. Wedging them is like leaving a load of sash clamps on, holding everything together. 
Horses for courses.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk


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## devonwoody

Also stops water trapping inside joint if the tenon goes right the way through,


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## Dandan

Hello strangers!
It's been a while, I'm just a busy boy at the moment, what with a new job and a holiday and various other stuff going on. My simple target of having doors on the workshop by winter might be a little less likely now, but i'll keep on chipping away at it. One thing I didn't do this year was to get the floor painted, i'm still umm-ing and ahh-ing over whether to screed it before painting to even out some of the irregularities but i'm not sure I want to commit to covering the whole thing and I don't know if just locally patching in the worst offenders would work long term.
Ah well, a problem for next year perhaps when I can once again rely on a weather window to be able to evict the entire contents of the workshop onto the driveway for a day.

I have made some slow progress on the side door though, I finally committed to the glue up!
My mortice skills clearly need further development, as I found it very difficult to keep the sides of the mortice square, how do people go about this? What I ended up with was rail faces that weren't quite parallel to the stile faces. It would look fine face-on but if you laid it down on it's back (or front) face it would not sit flat on the floor, one or other corner would sit high. It wasn't much but it did mean that I needed to use a bit of persuasion in the glue up to try to get it to sit nice and flat.
What I did was to glue all the joints, clamp each joint together side to side and check for square, then to fix the non-parallel-ness I laid the door on it's back onto three 2x4's (one behind each rail) that I had levelled up on the floor. Sure enough it rocked between two opposing corners so I put heavy weights on those corners to bring it flat, I guess that makes it a gravity clamp.
Like I say it wasn't far out, but after it had dried it seemed to stay nice and flat and didn't immediately spring out of shape and curl up like a leaf!









I even had what for me was a smart idea, instead of gluing the window into the channel that I had lovingly crafted, I turned the inside into a rebate so that I can secure the glass with nailed on strips to allow me to remove the glass if necessary in the future without destroying the door.
I need some door furniture now, I've been trying to get some UPVC multipoint style locks for the bi-folds on the front of the workshop but finding something to meet my exact requirements is turning out to be a real problem. I don't want to buy furniture for the side door separately in case they don't match, so I really need to find a solution for all the doors soon.


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## sploo

Dandan":15agf7c9 said:


> My mortice skills clearly need further development, as I found it very difficult to keep the sides of the mortice square, how do people go about this? What I ended up with was rail faces that weren't quite parallel to the stile faces. It would look fine face-on but if you laid it down on it's back (or front) face it would not sit flat on the floor, one or other corner would sit high. It wasn't much but it did mean that I needed to use a bit of persuasion in the glue up to try to get it to sit nice and flat.


Your stock needs to be perfectly square for starters. It then depends on how you're cutting them; by machine it should be relatively easy to set everything up square, by hand... this may help: https://woodworkingmasterclasses.com/vi ... technique/

EDIT: Door looks good though


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## Dandan

Hello all,
I know I've been quiet for a good while, but I'm still here and I'm still trying to get these doors finished! Too much climbing resulted in some golfer's elbow issues which I didn't want to exacerbate by doing DIY so i've not really been out to the workshop in the last 3 months or so. The elbow is on the mend now so I decided to risk it and crack on.
The good news is the door was still where I left it, the bad news is it isn't quite as flat as I remember...

So, whether it was like it all along, or whether 3 months of sitting around allowed it to shift a little I don't know, but either way the door now has one corner that falls away from being flat by quite some margin, i'd say about 10mm. I could see it wasn't quite perfect just by eye but it wasn't until I fitted the door frame and offered the door up that I realised just quite how far out it was.
The problem with the corner being low is that I can't plane extra material on, meaning I had to plane material off EVERYWHERE ELSE. I offered it up again and marked around the edge where I needed to remove material to get something resembling a good fit from the outside. It would result in an uneven thickness door but seeing as it was 45mm thick to start with, i'm not too fussed. Still, gave me a chance to work on my planing technique and have a fettle of some of my planes.





Something that hand planing taught me was that my planer/thicknesser is possibly not all it's cracked up to be, taking fine shavings with the plane showed some serious peaks and troughs along the stiles, as well as a very rough finish (when compared to the hand planed parts) so I think that needs some attention, although i've no idea who by, as I certainly don't know what i'm looking at!

A second offering up was much more acceptable, just a little to come off the bottom to square it up and it should be ready to test fit.
I bought normal door furniture instead of upvc multipoint stuff in the end, I think a good sturdy lock and some top and bottom slide bolts in the triple front doors will be enough of a deterrent for any opportunists, and I don't think there is enough value in the workshop for anyone to want to 'really' get in. If they were that desperate they could multi-tool a hole in the wall after all...

I also indulged in a new toy for prepping the door for varnish, another one to add to my Makita 18v collection...





That's it for now, i'll try to get some better pictures next weekend!


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## devonwoody

Hi. Dan, I note that members did not reply to your post and this morning the web/forum would not let me come into your latest post, some message that it did not exist or perhaps moved. I got in this morning by devious means.

Firstly re your problems with door.
I do not have much experience with soft wood and my old tools, I did not like softwood because of the resin in timber clogging up blades, and movement of timber across surfaces.
If you left the door for three months and it was not primed all sorts of timber movement most probably took place.
The planer blades have not been sharpened for sometime I suspect and pushing timber through planer at a speed might give some problems you mention perhaps.

Perhaps other members can comment with advice.

Hope your elbow recovers I know the experienced I called it RSI.


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## Dandan

Thanks John,
I imagine the planer issues are all of my own making, the blades now probably need a good looking at as I have pretty much only put softwood through them so far.
I did notice while drilling holes for the hinges that some parts of the door are still soaked with sap (might have been a batch of particularly sappy wood, is that a thing?), so that may have transferred itself to the planer and caused some problems. I also had issues with my chisels becoming quite sticky when doing the motices which I wouldn't usually expect, so maybe i'm fighting excess sap on this job.


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## devonwoody

Dan when the weather warms up, get the good blade cleaned up and it might need a regrind perhaps, it is too cold imo to set up planer blades in comfort. I used to take 2/3 efforts sometimes, you will find the problems when you do this operation on the first occasion.


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## Dandan

Me again, I bought a small space heater last weekend and progress has become remarkably more rapid, coincidence i'm sure, but it is nice to be able to feel my fingers whilst operating machinery...
The side door is done, here it is from the inside less a few bits of door jamb:





And the outside, finished bar an escutcheon and the frame trim:





Goes to show how much the cladding has faded in 12 months, the bottom panel of the new door uses the same cladding material as the walls...
I'm reasonably happy with the door for a first attempt, it was certainly a learning opportunity. The fit is nowhere near as good as it should be, but the finish is ok, and the closing action is spot on, it shuts with a really satisfying 'thunk'.

Next job was to install the frame for the big set of triple doors for the front. I had already fitted the upper sliding rail for the bi-fold part, so needed to work around that. The mistake I made with the side door frame was to fit it, take all the measurements for the door, then take the frame back down, paint it, and refit. It definitely didn't go back in the same the second time which is probably the cause of a lot of my fit issues. This time around I am fitting the frame once and leaving it in place, so the measurements I take for the door will (hopefully) remain correct!
I roped my dad in to help, it's one of those three handed jobs that goes so much quicker with an extra body to hold this or fetch that or measure this.
Here's the end result, a frame that is out of square across diagonals by 2mm, so even I should be able to make some doors to fit this:





Here's the rail we had to work around and the evidence of me not painting bits that I thought wouldn't be seen, it's ok I can drop the rail to get in there with a paint brush later.





And that's that. I've rough cut the stiles for the doors so they will need to go through the planer/thicknesser if I can get it working a bit more happily, I can always rough them out on there and hand plane to finish them if absolutely necessary.
Before that I will make the threshold to finish the frame completely, including a rebate for the lower sliding rail. I'm hoping to have quite small gaps top and bottom when finished and I have to make sure I am going to be able to slot all of the hangers and runners into place when it comes to assembly, I think the kit is designed to leave open ends where you can slide stuff onto the rails, but i've enclosed everything to give smaller gaps, time will tell if that was a silly idea!


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## devonwoody

Well done Dan, I am sure we are all proud of you and wishing a happy completion. (but please gets some preservative splashed on before anymore woodwork, that would be my ideal next job.)


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## Dandan

Thanks John, it's not picked up well on the camera but the door has 3 coats of Linseed Varnish on it so it should be well protected.
If you mean the cladding then it's supposed ot be self-protecting to a degree as it is larch, I don't want to interfere with the fading process as I'm hoping it will end up a nice silver-grey colour.


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## devonwoody

Sounds like you are well covered


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## Dandan

I found the time to have a good look at the planer last weekend, I changed out the blades for new ones, fiddled with everything that I could fiddle with, and got it running much more happily than before. My inability to use it properly however, is not adjustable by turning a screw, so I managed to plane down a twisted board to make it thinner, but still twisted...
I think the issue was the length of my plane surface versus the length of the board, with 2000mm long planks it's tricky not to rock the plank halfway and just keep planing the twist in! I decided with this length to hand plane the twist out to save it becoming firewood. It was a good excuse to dial in my big plane (I think it's a 6) and knock up some winding sticks, I quite enjoyed it to be honest.

I'll save the planing of the rest of the planks for when I have an extra pair of hands to see if we can't control things a bit better, so I went back to finishing off the threshold.





After cutting the slot for the bottom guide rail, I test fitted the threshold and realised that the part of the threshold on the outside of the guide rail is only supported by the tiniest sliver of brickwork underneath, the overhang is such that it's almost all floating in free space.
Clearly that's not going to last 5 minutes and I can't rely on gluing the guide rail in place to create enough support, that smacks of bodgery, or at least more bodgery than I am comfortable with.
I decided to hack up some spare bits of the heavy gauge top rail and make some support brackets for underneath. The plus side of this is they set the height of the guide rail and give me something to screw the guide rail into, meaning I don't have to glue it all together. The material has a pressed form on the flat face (so it's not actually flat, it's a very shallow corrugation) and I left 10mm returns on the brackets so they are very stiff. A couple of routed slots and this ended up impressively sturdy, hurrah for cantilevers:

[url=https://flic.kr/p/EBTas8]



A test fit went well so I started to varnish the threshold, this bit of Sapele has a really nice feature right where the right hand personnel door will go so i'll get to see it every time I open the door:

[url=https://flic.kr/p/24gXTK6]



I'll finish the varnishing this week and get it fixed into place at the weekend. Then the entire frame will be set in place and I can take some accurate measurements to ensure the new door fit a fair bit better than my side door!


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## devonwoody

Dan I never had much use for planning down or thicknessing long boards, did you have mobile timber supports at both ends of the operation for that length?
I would think it is a skilled operation needed to tackle removing twist when planning out on that length, I hope you looked up on youtube videos to see how others cope. The cover over the blade does not hold the timber to table it is there to keep your hands from avoiding the spinning blades I would also comment.


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## Dandan

Thanks John, you know what, despite YouTube usually being my go-to source of information for things like this, i've not searched this particular issue, I should definitely do that. Perhaps a roller support could be my extra set of hands, i'll look into getting one.

A little progress this weekend, I gave the threshold 3 coats of linseed varnish throughout the week so by the weekend it was looking mighty shiny. I screwed it into the brickwork and with the help of some shims, managed to get it lovely and level.





The other little job I managed to squeeze in between other, non-woodwork commitments was this:





I have a remote for the dust extractor but as the extractor is now mounted on the ceiling, the remote would just end up wherever I absently placed it, and i'm sure it wouldn't have been long until it went missing. My solution was this little holder that I put right next to the power socket for the extractor, and I made sure the buttons were accessible even in the holder, so I needn't ever really take it out. Even I should have a hard time losing it now...


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## devonwoody

Dan, I recall an incident some years ago with the Jet extractor, do not depend on the gadget to switch off the power supply use the mains at the end of a woodwork session in shed. You might hear an electric interference noise if you leave the mains on. Advice I got from this forum years ago.


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## Dandan

Thanks John, I've already heard the hum when it is apparently off so I do make sure to switch it off at the plug after use, that's why I put the remote right next to the extractor plug on the wall


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## Halo Jones

SO jealous of your space!

If I recall correctly it is tricky to accurately flatten a board beyond twice the length of your planer bed (ie a planer with a bed 1 m in length will flatten a 2 m length of board but struggle to accurately flatten a 3 or 4 m length).

When I was new to my planer/thicknesser (an old Elu) I used the Woodwhisperer video to give me a lot of ideas
Woodwhisperer planer set-up


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## Dandan

Quick update of a little bit of progress, I bought myself an extra pair of hands for the planing:





Well worth the £20-ish price tag, it's sturdy and has both a large roller head and multiple ball bearing head, although quite what situation would demand one head type over the other i'm not sure.
It's been really helpful though, once set to the right height it receives the planks so smoothly that you can't even feel a bump, making the planing process much more reliable as I can keep my hands and focus on one part of the plank at all times.

With my new helper I was able to get a flat face and a perpendicular face on all 6 stiles with a minimum amount of passes and very little hand planing to tweak them.









Next weekend i'll flip the planer to thickness mode and get the stiles down to size.
Then i'll need to cut them accurately to length, which reminded me that I should get my chop saw back from my dad, but that in turn reminded me that I wanted to get a new chop saw without rearward moving rails to keep my future chop saw station nice and close to the wall, so i'm currently hovering over the 'buy' button on a shiny new Makita 10", the LS1019L. It's more than i'd like to pay but I found a review that says it's pretty hard to beat and has almost as much capacity as a 12", I can't see myself regretting the purchase in the long run.


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## Dandan

Now is not the time for anyone to pipe up with a terrible review of the new Makita chop saw because i've just parted with a sizeable sum of money and it will be with me tomorrow...


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## devonwoody

only problem is foresee is delivery with the snow forcast!!!!!!!!!!


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## Dandan

Morning all,

I've not made progress for a couple of weeks as I got hit by a winter virus which put me out of action for a while, I even missed out on frolicking in the snow a couple of weeks ago!
Anyhow, i'm back up to full health again now and made some good progress this last weekend.
The new mitre saw arrived, and what a beautiful shiny thing it is! I've not had an opportunity to properly set it up and check everything is square yet but it seems to cut pretty well out of the box. I cut all my stiles and rails to final length and have no complaints so far, the supplied dust bag does an impressive job of dust collection, shame it won't fit when I mount the saw against the wall...
I'm still learning when it comes to sharpening blades, but I feel like my chisels are getting sharper and sharper as time goes on, so the first set of mortices ended up pretty neat and a went lot quicker than the last.
I also routed a groove to accept the cladding panels, if I use 3 full cladding planks then i'll need to space them as wide as they will go to ensure I fill the gap. This could be a problem when things contract in the summer, my thinking is to glue all three planks together pre-spaced, then the expansion/contraction will happen at the join with the stiles, where I can make a larger, separate tongue to fill the groove-to-groove join on one side which should be large enough to account for summer shrinkage.

2 mortices done and trialling a cladding plank:





I also tried half-lapping a piece of cladding, I have enough cladding to do all three doors but probably not enough to do it in full lengths. As I decided I didn't want any centre rails, I will need to join some planks to get the lengths I need. It went ok although these planks do like to cup so i'm not sure if the joint will hold, although once it's encased in the door then it shouldn't be able to fall out completely.





In retrospect I could have used two more similar coloured planks!
Here is the door dry fitted, this will be the left half of the bi-fold doors, so will just have a long, vertical pull handle on it, which i'm planning to make myself from some steel section, it will be a good excuse to get the welder out and get some much needed practice!





I still need to chisel cutouts for 3 hinges on BOTH side of this door, I have 9 hinges in all to do so it seems like a good opportunity to build a small jig, perhaps I will rout them out...


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## devonwoody

Sorry to hear of the health problem, hope this last phrase does not give more problems. Door looks good.


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## Dandan

A little update from me, my elbow got a bit upset after the frantic chiseling last week so I had to ease off a bit.
I routed a chamfer on the inside edge of the stiles and rails to match the cladding panels, and glued the door up. The less said about the glue up the better, I may or may not have glued the frame together once without actually inserting the cladding panels...
I used the same method I used before to try to end up with a flat door, I laid the door on flat runners on the floor and checked for any rocking, fortunately this time it seemed to be flat of it's own accord, so no adjustment was required. I got it to within a mm of square too, result.

My next cock up was not long in coming, I marked up the first set of hinges on the door, chiseled the first recess out, stepped back and realised I had done it on the wrong face of the door. Seriously I need to stop these silly mistakes, for a hobby this woodworking lark requires significant concentration!
I glued in a filler piece and will plane that flush next weekend. Once I actually managed to get the hinge recesses in the right place, I did a fit up which went considerably better than my first door, I think the door and the frame both being actually square this time may have had something to do with it...









You can see my hinge booboo in the last picture, this photo was after I had cut it on the correct face but before I inserted the filler piece which is why it spans the whole width of the door.

I also cut the tenons for the centre door rails, I decided to stop trying to be accurate and fast, and just went for accurate, so I snuck up on all the final sizes instead of trying to cut them first time, i'm hoping this next door will be a step above in terms of tight joints.


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## Dandan

Also, looking at those pictures, i'm pretty sure i've put the bottom hinge too low, dammit.


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## devonwoody

Dan you are an honest man, many members have not described their actions and thoughts so openly I suspect over the past 15 users :wink: 
I like the door panels appearance.


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## Dandan

Hehehe, thanks John, if I pretend all these mistakes didn't happen then I can't really claim to be learning anything! Although the mistake:learning ratio doesn't seem to be improving yet...


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## Dandan

Another small update from me, still having some degree of elbow trouble so I'm being forced to keep the workload low, which is a shame as motivation is high at the moment.
I cut the centre door rail tenons, as I mentioned last week I stopped pretending I could cut things to the right dimension and perfectly square first time and actually took my time to sneak up the finished size.
I used a trick I saw on the YouTubes, clamping another piece of wood above the edge you want to chisel so you have a vertical reference to put the back of your chisel against:





It works okay but the subsequent hammering tends to push the guide piece away from the line so you have to reset it each time, it's good to get you started though.
The result of a bit more time and effort with these tenons was a finished product that i'm pretty pleased with, certainly hte est i've managed yet:





When I deem my elbow healthy enough to cut some mortices i'm hoping I can cut those just as nicely to get a good fit.

So while I can't do the motices, I picked off one of the smaller jobs, the frame for the window in the central door. I decided to try cutting box joints on the table saw with a sled, i'd love to make a proper box joint jig like Mr Wandel's but in the meantime I just set up the cuts by hand each time. Once again, a bit more care in the setting up and I got some pretty good joints first time, no chiseling or filing required!





That's just a dry fit up, I pulled it apart to rout (route?) the groove for the window pane, and had a hell of a time with the router table, just trying to cut a slot with a straight bit turned into a scary experience, it kept grabbing the work and doing all sorts of unexpected things, I finished the grooves by hand because I was fearing for my fingers. I've no idea what the problem was, the table is usually so well behaved.
Next week will be much the same, chipping away at jobs i'm happy to expose my elbow to, I've a climbing holiday in May and I want the elbow fixed and happy for that, so if that means no mortice cutting before then, then so be it.


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## devonwoody

Have a look at utube vids. again, also bear in mind grain directions on a router table.
Also never trap the bit on the wrong side of a router fence and timber being routed. Also stops are needed if you are dropping in.


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## Dandan

I forgot to mention I got a bench grinder last week, it's an 8 inch Sheppach one with with a grey medium and white fine wheel on it, i'm pretty happy with it although I had to take the base off and fiddle with the wiring to get the integral lamp to work, aside from that it seems good.
I used it in anger for the first time this week when I had to re-shape an old junk skinny chisel that I had, it made very short work of that. I want to make some kind of small jig to hold blades to the correct angle, although i'm guessing there is some kind of commercially available product?

On to this week, I got a rare day free on Sunday so was able to make some good progress.
I glued up the small window for the centre door, I decided to glue it up with the glass in place, it will mean tearing the door apart to replace the glass but it was a custom sized piece from the old house so i'd probably need to replace the frame as well if it ever needed replacing. It did mean the construction is nice and simple which in turn meant the finish was pretty good by my standards:





I then modified some cladding panels to fit around the window, giving me a complete centre section for the door. It still needs cutting to width to fit the door but I can now mark it up against the rails with the desired spacing between cladding panels to get a perfect final width, instead of doing a whole lot of maths and hoping I hadn't missed 2mm here or 3mm there.





I'm quite pleased with the detail:





I also threw together a little leather strop, my chisels keep getting sharper and hopefully this will help continue that trend:





(Chisels are now shaving sharp, getting better!)

I also received a late birthday present from my parents, this beautiful japanese chisel. Unfortunately they gave me a storage box to go with it which has 9 conspicuously empty slots...





Not had a chance to sharpen that bad boy yet, can't wait!


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## devonwoody

Dan please do not put that new Japanese chisel to your new grinder. Go to forum and request information at the hand tool section .


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## Dandan

Don't worry John, I try to make my mistakes on cheap bits of wood, not on expensive tools! This one won't be going near a grinder


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## Dandan

More progress with the door, the elbow seems to be doing well so I decided to risk cutting a mortice or two, which went pretty well.
These mortices have definitely been the fastest and straightest that I have cut yet, the new wide japanese chisel is great for paring down the inside faces. I managed to put together 3/4 of a door:





The cladding panels were a little snug so I shaved a little more off the ends of some to allow a bit of movement top to bottom, but aisde from that it is all ready bar the last stile.
I've not cut the mortices in the last stile yet but I did fit the hardware for the bifold mechanism. The bottom has a runner, the edge of which will be visible when the door is closed but i'm ok with that:





The top required a bit more faff, I actually ground the edge off the bracket so that I could leave some material on the outside face of the door, otherwise i'd have had a gaping hole into my workshop. From the back it looks like this:





But from the front/outside it looks a little neater:





I did a test fit into the rail to check I hadn't got some calculation horribly wrong but it fits well. It did highlight that I need to pack out the top rail a little at one end though, i'm glad I checked as that is easy to do now but would be really hard to do after installing nearly 100kg of doors...

I'll try to get this glued up this week then I can do a test fit!


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## devonwoody

There is a known exp/shrinkage figure per length somewhere.


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## Dandan

Door number 2 is glued up!





It was a good, flat, square glue up, very happy with the end result, although some of the join lines are still not all they could be, not from my poor tenon cutting this time, but from a much simpler error, my original machining and squaring of the stock wasn't as good as I thought so the stiles weren't entirely square in every orientation. How I manage to construct anything is a mystery... 

I a fit of unaccustomed foresight, I cut a groove in the bottom of the door to accept a brush strip. Due to the way the bifold works, I thought this would be a better solution that a foam seal strip which would probably get torn up by the motion of the doors along the sill. Don't worry, I managed to mess this up too, I didn't cut a groove in the top rail, despite needing a brush strip there too...
The strips I got looked like this:





I wanted to turn that 'h' shaped extrusion into an 'n' shape, so I put the soft aluminium through the bandsaw:





Then I routed a matching groove in the rail, glued it up, chiselled the groove through the bottoms of the stiles, fitted the strip and then found out that the strip actually does this:





Which i'm pretty sure would fit perfectly into a saw kerf. Damn.
Anyway, got it in, and i'll know next time, although I suppose this way I can glue the extrusion in and still replace the brush if I ever need to...





I'm going to trim a load of the brush off, my fitment into the frame isn't quite that bad...

Anyway, after all that nonsense, it was time for a test fit. I have to be honest, I was pretty pleased with myself here, I knocked this whole thing up from scratch, did all the maths myself, trying to get a good fit with a bifold system that's designed for big, loose dairy farm doors, and this is that I got:









The doors open beautifully, smooth and solid, and go all the way back without catching or binding:





Here is a view square on, the doors angle outward slightly when fully open, making the access as easy as possible:





I spent the rest of the weekend glancing out the kitchen window and grinning to myself.


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## Halo Jones

They look fantastic! I think you will be making a lot of people jealous with such a great space.


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## AES

Great stuff Sir! I'm particularly keen on the brush idea - "simple" but very effective.


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## Dandan

Thanks For the comments, really appreciate it!
Minor update here, i've been busy doing various other things so not a whole lot of progress. The workshop got to a point where I could barely see the floor so I had to spend a bit of time having a tidy and organising a few things. I moved some machines around and am much happier with where things are sitting now.
It started like this:




And ended up like this:



(I'm not sure why I look quite so perplexed)

Then it was straight back to the cock-ups. I measured up for the locking bolts for the bi-fold doors, which were intended to go into the rails and pull the door in hard against the jamb top and bottom. It wasn't until several nights later, lying in bed it suddenly came to me - I had placed them to push the door out - away from the jamb instead of the other way around. Typical.
Still, chance to give my new Robert Sorby turning tools (which I picked up at Makers Central) a quick try to make some plugs.





The left most door is now in the process of being varnished, so I'll be able to hang it for the final time soon. Meanwhile, I acquired some thick wall metal pipe from my dad to make the long door pull-handles that I always wanted, so I dug out the welder and had a go at sticking some metal together. For a first try it was pretty abysmal, I didn't melt the pipe at all so the weld just sat on the surface and there was no bond. More voltage required, i'll do some more practice runs this week.









(I easily snapped these pipes apart by hand right after taking the photo, no penetration at all.)


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## devonwoody

Life is a learning game and that's a good part of life I have found, much better than just living through it.


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## thetyreman

I admire your bravery in trying welding, and great job on the doors, they look really professional.


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## Dandan

I finally figured out the issue with my welder, after buying new gas which was suggested by a welder friend which made no difference, it turned out it was the dirty feed wire that was causing a really intermittent feed. I unwound a whole layer off the reel to reveal shiny clean wire and now it works great! (I also have a spare gas bottle #-o )
Now I can stick bits of metal together, I managed to make this;









Which goes on the door something like this:





It needs end caps, a clean up and paint but i'm really happy with what I've done.

I was slightly less happy to nearly burn my workshop down though, top tip when learning to weld in a wood workshop, maybe have a little sweep up of the sawdust lying around before you start...





A bit of hot spatter got under the table saw and caught the sawdust hidden under there, it started gently smouldering away while I locked up and went out for dinner. I put the smoky smell down to the fact that I had just been welding. Two hours later we got home to find the power off, the workshop has a seperate breaker to the house before a main breaker so I knew that was the location of the cause and I went to investigate, finding a very smoky workshop. If this cable hadn't been in the sawdust and tripped the power to the house, I would have left it burning all night, somehow i've managed to get away with just a ruined bit of flex and a slightly smelly workshop, it could have been much worse! It was a cheap lesson learned but i'll treat it as if it were an expensive one...


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## devonwoody

That was a scare Dan, I would also find a different location for that grinder you displayed some time ago, they produce sparks and the could be a problem with that timber bits around.


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## AES

Blimey! You were lucky mate, that could have been a LOT nastier!

Glad you got away with it, especially after all that excellent work on building and fitting out your shop.

+1 for the comment about having a grinder (and anything else that makes sparks) well away from sawdust, shavings, old rags, timber stocks, etc, etc.


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