Tuesday 1/12/20
Today started with the drilling of the peg holes for the brace joints. As before, this involved drilling perpendicular holes through the mortices (use a pair of squares) and then drilling off-centre holes in the tenons so that the joint is pulled together as the pins (and ultimately the pegs) are driven in.
With the peg holes drilled we were then able to put the posts and braces together.
I was very pleased with the way it all came together. If Ben had his way I think we would have spent another couple of hours getting one of the posts and braces ‘perfect’ but it already looks better than our extension! So we moved on.
Once we were happy it all fitted and the posts were the same distance apart at the top and the bottom, it was time to take it all apart to work on the two end posts of this, the rear wall. To give us room to do this, we also took apart the wall plate at the scarf joint.
With the wall plate split, Ben and I could also split. Ben is now working on the long post at the rear right of the building…
…while I’m working on the short post at the rear left of the building.
I used fence post off-cuts to roll the short post into place.
I squared off the top end of the post, identified and marked the face side and face edge and put a centre line down both faces. I then made sure that both the post and wall plate were straight and level and lined the post up with the wall plate in the correct position. I then set a pair of dividers to 80mm (the length of the tenon) and scribed the shoulder of the tenon on both sides of the post using the underside of the wall plate as a guide.
I joined these scribed lines across the face side of the post and then drew the tenon using a level.
Before moving the post to work on the tenon, I decided to take the opportunity to mark the location of the mortice. See the marks in this image. The small horizontal lines mark the position of the sides of the mortice and the vertical line marks one end of the mortice. I then marked the haunch of the tenon on the face of the wall plate.
I moved the post away to complete the marking out the mortice. I used a spirit level to draw the sides of the mortice and the same spirit level in plumb line mode to mark the other end of the mortice by transposing the haunch mark down from the mark on the face of the wall plate.
Job done. Tomorrow I will get the tenon and the mortice.