Author Archives: Simon Berry

Tuesday 13/4/21 Now that the oak frame is complete, the urge to start putting the frame up is very strong. However, we are resisting the temptation and doing a few tasks that it’s sensible to do before the tent comes … Continue reading →

Monday 11/4/21 Today we achieved a significant milestone. We completed all the structural elements of the green oak frame by fitting the last two green oak hip rafters. The top joint of these rafters is the most complicated in the … Continue reading →

Sunday 11/4/21 Today’s task was to cut the jack rafters for the righthand hip of the softwood roof. These were going to need individual adjustment because of the actions I took on Friday to overcome the ‘rocking straight edge’ problem. … Continue reading →

Saturday 11/4/21 After the trauma of yesterday I started on the marking up and cutting of the jack rafters. This is a task done from the measurements in the roof plan, taking great care to get the bevelled mitre joints … Continue reading →

Friday 9/4/21 Today I set about fitting the righthand hip rafters. Because we decided to orientate the end wall plate differently to the side wall plates, the geometry of the corners are interesting. We knew this would happen and decided … Continue reading →

Tuesday 6/4/21 I didn’t get much time on the project today but I did cut spacers to put under the seat of both hip rafter birdsmouths. Predictably, this solved the non-alignment problem discussed yesterday. However, putting in the spacers moved … Continue reading →

Monday 5/4/21 This short blog post summarises hours of anxiety, thinking and internet research and concludes with a simple and, in hindsight, a very obvious solution. The problem is that when you place a straight edge across the two hip … Continue reading →

Thursday 1/4/21 My goodness, we struggled today trying to get the lefthand green oak hip rafters to fit. There’s nothing more complicated than a timber on a sloping diagonal. They were cut some time ago using a mock-up of the … Continue reading →

Wednesday 31/3/21 The objective today was to fit the green oak rafters but things didn’t work out this way. We started by taking out any twisting of the wall plates. Ben then secured the corner ties. We then offered up … Continue reading →