New workshop build, with a difference!

[xy mosian]

Cegidfa, butting in, sorry. How about drinks cans, they are probably soft enough to 'help' on to the ties with a suitable lump timber.
xy

 

[Cegidfa]

Hi xy,
Another good idea, however, having worked in the bottling and canning industry, I have doubts whether a good clump would work. Our apprentices used to have competitions as to who could condense cans into themselves with a judicious stamp of the foot. Maybe a gentle hacksawing with a loose blade through the ring pull? Another side effect of working in the drinks industry....I don't drink fizzy stuff, so no cans available...ho hum. You should see what coke does to the filling/seaming machine. :shock:

Regards....Dick.

 

[xy mosian]

Thanks, I was thinking the Steel ties were rebar, which could be driven through the drinking hole of a tinny. Sorry, must read properly.
Coke? Strange what we put into ourselves isn't it, or rather what we let others con us into putting into ourselves.
xy

 

[JFC]

The roof is easier than a cut and fix pitched roof . Probably the most simple roof there is . Dont be scared about a roof , they are easy compared to other stuff .

 

[Cegidfa]

Hello folks,

We got lucky, the toys were delivered and it didn’t rain The only downside was that Diane and I had to lift the T/S out of the box to check that we had all the parts...110kg out and back again...she’s a tough girl. And then 80kg for the B/S (that motor has the loudest centrifugal switch that I have ever heard, and I have heard a few). Then lay down in a dark room waiting for our bodies to recover.
Next day, trip out to get DPC and some goop to hold it down temporarily, plus some ‘does what it says on the tin’ for the cut ends....
Fit said DPC with afore mentioned goop...day over.
Hmm..ah forgot, trip to local (ish) tip with a bulging car, and call in to collect a doggy bag of medicine from the quacks. The joy of living in Wales, it’s all free. It used to be a small fortune in Bromley.

Next day..Wood delivery....64 lengths of 4 x 2, just over a tonne to sticker up in the vain hope of it staying straight. There were some bananas in both planes, but not too bad. Then the joy of cutting the grass before it rains...again...That’s about an hour and a half of ‘fun’ with three mowers.
Wednesday....It starts in earnest. It took most of the day to fit the sole plates between showers. Oh the joy of doing a half lap joint in wood that is more like soft marg. Thank goodness for the battery c/saw with a thin kerf. We used Rapier screws, straight into the brickwork for fixing. Strewth, those engineering bricks are hard. I also joined across the corners with the same screws to bind it all together. Thursday...erection time :shock: .... not in front of the sheep and buffalo please.

More costings.

Timber....£410
Screws...£93
Running total £1601

Regards...Dick.

 

[Cegidfa]

Hi Jason,
Thanks for the words of encouragement. Now that the build has started, the nervousness has evaporated. it was down to never having done anything of this scale before.
As a matter of interest, why would you consider a gambrel roof with more angle cuts easier than a standard pitched roof with gable end? Were you thinking of the birdsmouth cut?

Dick.

 

[Mcluma]

Looks good

but i would have bought spax

If i had to do 5000 screws :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

this weekend i will do about 1000 screws, but only with an impact driver (AN ABSOLUTE MUST _DO NOT START WITH OUT ONE)

go back and get spax. i tell YOU GET SPAX

 

[Cegidfa]

Hi Mcluma,
Do you work for Spax by any chance :wink: ?
We recognize that they will be superior screws, but they are at least three times the price. Instead of £90 they would be £270 min.
The other problem is that (a) we have the screws already and, (b) they are in use. No breakages so far, and I do double granny fixings....if you get my drift. Yes, we do have an impact driver which doesn't take any prisoners; a great piece of kit - Makita. Thanks for the advice anyway.

Regards...Dick.

 

[Eric The Viking]

Looks good... go back and get spax. i tell YOU GET SPAX

What 'ee said, except get Reisser.

I've actually given larger-sized Spax screws away in the past as they're horrible.

Reisser are staggeringly pricey, but they hardly ever 'misfire' and fix well usually without splitting. Came into their own when framing and battening* up on the roof, and for fixing plywood (no countersink needed). I get longer battery life from the driver, compared to 'twin-quick' etc.

I agree with you, mostly, about TS fixings. Generally they're pretty good value, but occasionally you do get a duff batch. I find their s/s screws are not very robust (I usually run a toughened screw through first, obviously, and lubricate them), and their more recent maker of double-start countersunk BZP makes em blunt! I've also had quite a lot of pozis from them with loose fitting heads on the driver, which is a complete PITA.

Cheers,

E.

*Vertical hanging tiles, etc. Roofing nails for normal roofing!

 

[Cegidfa]

Hi Mcluma and Eric the Viking,

Is it impact drivers at dawn then :shock:

Or is it ...In the blue corner, 'Spax Mcluma vs Eric Riesser in the red' :roll:

Regards...Dick.

 

[Eric The Viking]

Hi Mcluma and Eric the Viking,

Is it impact drivers at dawn then :shock:

Or is it ...In the blue corner, 'Spax Mcluma vs Eric Riesser in the red' :roll:

Heck no: I like Reisser screws, but I can't usually afford them!

In the raving-loony-price bracket, we had the garage roof redone last Thursday. They've done a brilliant job - no more rusting tools, I hope!

They screwed through the new metal sheets, through the old sloping roof, into the folded steel joists, using self-cutting, self-tapping hex-headed screws. These things are serious! To demonstrate, the foreman took one and went straight through an old boat trailer chassis I have outside (nominally about 1/8" steel). I think they're about 75p each in small quantities, but boy do they work well.

 

[flying haggis]

Those roofing fixing are indeed serious, I have used them in the past and they save a lot of pre drilling. In largeish quantitys they are not that dear

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/250-TEK-SCREW-CLA ... 2ea8ad29e2

 

[Eric The Viking]

Those roofing fixing are indeed serious, I have used them in the past and they save a lot of pre drilling. In largeish quantitys they are not that dear

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/250-TEK-SCREW-CLA ... 2ea8ad29e2

Yup, those are the beasties:

The ones they used here were quite a bit longer. They have snap on plastic heads too. I'm seriously impressed with them, but time will tell regarding durability.

 

[flying haggis]

The same roofing screws have been holding the metal cladding on the warehouse where I work for the last 10+ years so I dont think durability is an issue. And if you look at any modern steel clad building that is the type of screw that holds the sheeting on. Also opposite to where I work a new building has just gone up and the roofing sheets were two sheets of steel with at least 100mm of kingspan type insulation glued in between and the roofers fixed them with long roofing screws by screwing straight through the roof into the metal purlins.

 

[Cegidfa]

Hi folks,

At last.....the stud walls are up. It took three days to cut, fabricate, and erect the buggers; boy, are they heavy, in spite of splitting the long wall into three parts and the side walls into two.
At the moment, it’s looking rather large, but I know that as the roof goes on it will probably ‘shrink’ a bit. Space is tricky stuff.
Interestingly, the only pozi bit to shatter was the alleged high tech titanium coated one that fitted directly into the impact driver. Fortunately, none of the Toolstation screws have sheared yet, although a small number were bent.The bit to head fit was far better than those from screwfix.

In the pic below, you see my high tech workstation, that is to say my thirty year old Delta sliding compound saw and equally old B & D Workmate. I don’t think that they owe me anything after all that time....boy have they had some use. And the saw is still in excellent condition. Mind you it has spent its life indoors...err, the dining room was my workshop. :shock: :shock:

Today we cut the first roof section. How the hell we will lift it is yet to be worked out.
Firstly, the pattern was drawn on the concrete floor in woodworker’s pencil, it looked enormous. Then with good old Sketchup, the cut angles were worked out, and the length of each chord measured. We did a few trial cuts of the angles to see if they fitted the lines, and whether the saw markings were reasonably accurate, as we don’t have an angle checker. I had some doubts about being able to set the angles repeatedly, but it seems to work.
Fortunately, every piece of the roof has a twenty degree angle, so we will cut each length of timber in half at that angle, and then do all the apex angles and then the feet.

You may have noticed that the timber looks rather wet, I think, having come direct from the treatment tank....great. This is the reason that we haven't fitted the binder yet, as that load was saturated. So much for the treatment only penetrating approx. 6mm. Fingers crossed for sun, sun and more sun. Or at the very least, no rain :roll:

That's all for now folks....Dick.

 

[xy mosian]

That workshop looks good even now. Keep up the good work both of you.

xy

 

[Mcluma]

Looks good ,and we both have worked hard over the weekend

I put up 32meters of fencing and you did the studwork

Just one small note, double up the header on top, as you will have a pretty high load on the wall

Good luck

 

[Cegidfa]

Hi xy and McLuma,

Thanks for the encouraging words, they are appreciated.
30m of fencing....that's a lot of hole digging and concreting/back ramming.
With respect to information, why do we always find the best way to do things after the event. We concreted our fencing many years ago, and the concrete binds to the wood, as we found later when they had rotted..only in the socket.
The technique is to put a very slight taper on the socket end, wrap a plastic bag round it, or film if you have it, and then pour the concrete. The plastic stops the binding and the posts can be lifted out easily because of the taper.. I hope this may be of use to someone out there. I wish I had known.

With respect to the roof, the loading, including trusses, sheathing and tiles is 1717kg. Whether this needs a top plate and a binder,I don't know. I do know that because of the height restriction, an extra 47mm changes the upper roof angle to less than the tile tolerance, and if I lower the doorway/wall height, I will have to duck to go through. welcome to the world of Gambrel geometry.

Regards...Dick.

 

[Mcluma]

so any work going on???

to double up the headerplate will only add another 5cm to it, but will add a lot more strenght

about the posts,

the trick is to ensure there is a plastic pipe in the botom of the hole, so the pole is on top of that, and make sure the bottom part of the posts are ruberrished

keep the pictures coming

 

[Cegidfa]

Hi McLuma,

I must be a founder member of Densa, your description of fitting posts eludes me. Would you mind having another shot at describing the process please. And what are ‘ruberrished’ posts?

The master draftsperson, aka Diane, tried leaving the roof height and top angle unchanged and adjusting the lower chord to incorporate a double header. It can be done without compromising the aesthetic look and we will do it if we don’t think it is stiff enough after we have finished fitting the first one all round. It is surprising how a small change can affect the look of a Gambrel roof.
With 96 ply plates to make for the roof trusses, it will be a while before you see more progress. What a tedious job ](*,) .

We also decided to set up the new bandsaw to speed the cutting of the ply and the bottom birdsmouth cuts. Only to find that the body of the saw has been welded at less than 90º ....do’h.
I didn’t think that the Chinese suffered from TFI Friday syndrome? As it took four of us to get it safely onto its stand, I don’t think that it will be sent back; unless they provide two strong men to take it apart and replace it. As I have one leg shorter than the other due to an old ‘war wound’, we will match, and it will look straight as I stand at the user position :wink:

Weather permitting, we will finish the first header tomorrow, and decide if we need a binder.
If wet, back on the bandsaw.....in the conservatory, of course :smile:

Regards...Dick.