Monday 29/3/21
A bitty day today.
When we come to installing the posts we will need to hold them 13mm off the brick plinths. This gap will allow us to pump in the epoxy resin into the holes I created in the brick plinths yesterday. Spacers will be fiddly and will be difficult to keep in place as we erect the frame above them. So we’ve decided to make a ‘spacer plate’ from seasoned oak. This will be screwed on to the protruding threaded bar that will be driven into the bottom of the posts and will have a diagonal slot in each of them. This diagonal slot will line up with the channel I made in the top of the brick plinths – see Modifying the Brick Plinths – which will guide the epoxy resin into the post holes. I started the day by drawing up a design for these spacer plates and Ben set about making them.
I then turned my attention to installing the ridge beam hook. I’d drilled a 16mm hole for this using the drill guide a few days ago.
I’ve no idea what I will use this hook for but now is the time to install such a feature.
Then the oak featherboard arrived for the walls. This is probably at least two weeks too early but it’s good to know we have it.
The 20mm stainless steel bar also arrived. These will be cut to length and driven into 19mm holes in the bottom of the post leaving 120mm protruding. The protruding bars will go into the holes in the centre of the brick plinths and be secured by epoxy resin.
And finally, I started painting the ends of the softwood rafters that we cut the other day. Much easier to do this when these are still on the ground.
Tomorrow we hope to start to erect the green oak roof section on the floor to check that everything fits together and fit the hip rafters.