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A Lean-To Tale (with pics & maybe vids)
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Day 4
There was a day three and I did some work believe it or not, but it doesn't warrant a posting on its own. I've included it here in day 4. During the storm yesterday, I couldn't do any real work so I decided to make myself useful and hash up a few bits and pieces that will help with the project. I need a saw horse just to hold large beams when cutting, and I need a straight edge jig for my circular saw.
I spent a bit of time on the circular saw jig, drawing up a few designs on sketchup before finally coming up with a very basic version of a prototype. The saw runs along a straight edge provided by a scrap piece of perspex board (using the factory edge). This edge is screwed down to an oversize piece of ply. The initial run of the saw along the straight edge cuts the ply perfectly to width. The cut edge of the ply now becomes your reference edge. You just place this wherever you want to cut, run the saw along the perspex and voila, a perfectly straight cut every time. I added a pivot and locking mechanism to it to allow me to use it not only as a t-square, but to cut almost any angle from 20 degress on. It has a piece of hardwood underenath that runs along the side of the work piece and has a ply clamping plate. Using it today and it worked a treat. If you want the sketchup plans, let me know, and I'm sure there are lots of ways to improve it.
The saw horse is made up of loads of scrap pieces bodged together. It works grand and gives a reuse to all those old off cuts. Simple as, rough as hell but then again all it has to do is hold up a piece of wood.
Homemade saw horse and a circular saw jig. Made these yesterday while hurricane paddy or whatever it was called howled around me. Even though it was very windy, it was mostly warm and dry so ....hate to waste the day.
Painting preservative onto three sides of the beams before fitting. Once they're up, I'll never have paint brush access to the backs of them again.
Letting end grain soak in a basin of preservative.
Fitting a beam, I predrill the holes in the beam and soak them in preservative. Then offer it up to the wall.
Any trimming to be done, do it now.
Drilling the wall. Pilot holes are drilled through the beam. Then the beam is removed and the pilot holes are drilled to size. Then I use a tube to blow out the dust and a pipe cleaner to clean followed by another blow etc. Mind your eyes now
Obstacles need to be accomodated. Rather than remove this air vent, I rout out a recess to accomodate it.
I bought this in Lidl a few months. Brilliant for heavy DIY work. It was so cheap it's unreal.
I plan to brace along the sides of the extension. Two members coming out at each side, meet a cross member that joins the two of them. This cross member will then be used to anchor two uprights to to hold the rafters over the extension. Where the joins meet, I want to half lap them. Pics show some of that process.
Not all the drilling went as planned. Had to do a bit of explorative drilling in the sides of the extension before I found solid stone. Surprised me this, I thought this might be new block. When I did find solid material, it was like diamond. I earned my dinner here let me tell you.
A few chalk lines as per my sketchup measurments. All went as expected. No surpirses thanks to a good plan.
Drilling the ground to hold the upright surrounds. These will have to be levelled as the yard has a fall off. I have opted to level them by placing bolts under them at the low end and filling underneath them with quick drying tile cement. I'll basically create level stands for them.
Cut up two length of threaded bar, will need one more. These are just looselt fit for tonight.
I have spend most of the day drilling. Drilling walls and ground. Nothing is fitted yet. I will be using chemical anchor (poly resin) so I want to have as much pre-drilled as possible. Once you start using the anchor, you have a very short period of time to work it before it cures.0 -
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Hi dnme,
You have gone to great extremes to plan this project but I hope you did'nt omit a very important detail as your last post may suggest. Link below
http://safetydirecteu.com/Admin/images/DSP-3932_6GLSUTBA.jpg
Thats a luxury I cannot afford.
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Day 5
Survivalists talk about the psychological importance of shelter when they are marooned in the jungle or wherever. Getting shelter from rain is key to the psychology of the individual. It boosts morale and increases the will to survive similar to being able to start a fire. Today more than ever, I understand this concept. I am beaten by the rain. I've nearly lost the will to live. It has been a heavy drizzle all day long, constantly soaking me and my work. A lot of what I'm doing is ground work, so a constant soaked back, soaked knees, work being flooded etc. It's JUST TOO MUCH.
I started out this morning by finishing cutting threaded bar and getting all hole / bar combinations ready for chemical anchor (polyester resin). Luckily I bought two tubes of the stuff cos in the end I need them both. The stuff cures VERY fast, in my case I had a working time of 5 minutes. The ground holes were full of water, I spent a lot of time blowing them out in the rain.
The chemical anchor comes in two parts within the tube. The resin itself and a hardner. They are kept separate in individual bladders. The nozzle is where they meet and mix. It's a special long helical nozzle. Start off by cutting the bladder clip, placing the nozzle on and then squeez a bit out out as waste as it takes a few squeezes to get the stuff properly mixed. Fill the hole about half way (hard to do / see). Trial and error was my experience, my first few attempts were messy. The holes were either over filled or not enough. Eventually I started to get the hang of it. When you have injected the stuff into the hole, get your threaded bar and slowly press it in while screwing it. I found it best to turn it clockwise and then counter clockwise towards the end. Keep the thread tidy, if you have overspill, (and you should have), have a scraper ready to cut it away, (use it to line the threads of the next bar), and have a rag ready to wipe the bar. There'll be some resin left on the bolt, don't worry, when cured the nut will go on with a little persuiasion as long as you've left the bolt reasonably clean.
Resin cures fast, and remember, it's mixing and hardening in the nozzle so it'll cure there also (and that's that). Therefore have your work flow ready. Have all holes drilled, cleaned and bar sitting in them. Literally move, get a move on. Stuff is expensive, not to be wasted so a little planning is in order. Also I'd recommend plastic gloves as the resin gets all over you and sets fast on the skin.
Is it strong......oh sweet jesus is it what? It's what they use to build bridges these days. There's the advantage of no compression on the concrete or stone wall, and 100% surface area coverage of the joint. Let all fixings set up for a few hours before putting any load on them. I have installed wall plates but not toghtened them yet. I'll go around tomorrow and give everything a tighten allowing a night for full cure (overkill, a few hours will do).
Resin ready to go, it's already mixing in the nozzle so need to get a move on.
Bolt set in resin, installed as described above. You could hang a tank on this now, it's so strong.
Managed to get some timbers installed. Two wall plates and two braces. I know it doesn't sound much but jesus the weather. The large wall plate was a bitch to get in. When I set the threaded bar, it didn't quite match up with the holes in the plate. Had to trim it and widen the holes. A half hour of to'ing and fro'ing and eventually a belt of a lump hammer.
Spent the rest of the afternoon on ground work. Getting the post brackets level. I did this by placing bolts underneath the bracket at the low end, adjusting these to level, then laying a bed of quick setting cement and tapping the bracket down while checking for level. The rain was relentless. I would mix very stiff mortar, by the time I troweled a bit out on the ground, it was swimming. I've shaped and smoothed the cement and left all brackets covered for the night.
Ground is way off level.
I level the brackets by adjusting bolts that the bracket will sit on.
A bed of cement left to set for the night.
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Day 6
Slow progress today, I managed to get one rafter up. It took a while to get everything in order and I didn't start work until after lunch. I spent a lot of time getting things true, level and upright. Took my time getting the rafter end cut to sit nicely on the joist hanger etc. I did make a few mistakes but I have 12ft rafters for a 10ft job so plenty of spare to lob off and start again. Once the first one is in, it's a breeze to run a plumb line or two, from it back to the house and follow these with subsequent rafters.
1. Hanging the rafter, here everything is just clamped in place as I work out a few angles and cuts.
2. Once I get the rafter in place as high as I can, I need to work out the angle of attack so that I can cut and joint the rafter into the joist hanger true and accurate. So a plumb line with a level back to the house, then some trigonometry. Remember SOACAHTOA ?
Here, I need to work out the angle to the right. I have the opposite length, I have the adjacent length so I use the TOA part...Tan(x) = opposite/adjacant. In this case I think it was 330mm / 2610mm = 0.12. Then inverse Tan (Tan to the -1) gives me an angle of 7 degrees. I use that everywhere in making the cuts.
3. My circ saw jig and a protractor makes a 7 degree cut a breeze.
4. The jointed end that will be offered up to the wall plate.
5. Now to work on the post. A half lap joint will allow the rafter to sit on the upright as well as a through bolt. I set my (lidl) circ saw blade depth to match the depth of the rafter width, then make a few runs across the upright. Tap the remaining leafs out with a hammer. Finally clean up with a good sharp chisel and a rasp.
6. Jointed end sits in the hanger perfectly, It's butted tight to all surfaces which makes for a good joint, and helps with keeping rain from hitting it etc
7. Half lapped joint at the upright. This takes the weight and the bolt makes it very strong and robust.
Job done.
I now have a plumb line running from the outer joint of the first rafter back to L part of the house. This is dead level so I just need to line up each subsequent rafter to it. I have also managed to get the second rafter and upright cut to fit.
Getting the uprights level, true and plumb is simple. The stands are now level after yesterdays job and it's easy to tweak them with my 900mm aluminimum level that I bouight from Amazon for £4. Yes £4, and don't forget, free delivery too! I priced similar length plastic levels in local hardware shops for anything upto €30.
I'll trim the rafters to length (about 9'10") when thay are all fitted. Easy to do then with a plumb line, a ladder and a saw. This will make for a nice aestheticly pleasing straight look rather than trying to measure each one individually.0 -
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Dnme that is some seriously slick work and as I've mentioned before, I like a bit of woodwork as well as solving, fixing, making etc and to see a perfect half lap joint like that just puts me in exctasy this lean-to is gonna be incredible and will give you such a nice working area for the boat.
I've a bit of a business brain on me so I'll have a decent think as to what way you could spin these sort of things into a living.. Not saying you can't do it yourself, a second brain just generally helps 0 -
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Day 7
It rained all morning. Heavy showers and steady drizzle in between. Hard to do any woodwork in that. You can't even write or draw on the timber. Anyhow, I got some more done. I have two more rafters up and have the extension supports started.
So far, I have made lots of mistakes along the way. I guess sometimes, the way I edit these posts, people might get the impression that I actually know what I'm doing.:) I really don't. I get a lot of my woodworking ideas from watching Norm on the New Yankee Workshop years ago on Discovery. It was my favourite show on tele. Anyhow, today I'm gonna post a couple of mistakes as they might be useful to someone.
Working conditions this morning
A useful little aid. Drill a hole in a block, rawl plug etc. Then get a baton and screw it to the block. You can now screw this baton to an upright that you want held in place.
Three rafters now up.
Second plumb line. Now that I have come to the end of the wall plate, I will be working over the extension, so I need a second plumb line to guide me.
Working on the extension assembly.
This is what I will see as soon as I open the back door so I decided to add a chamfer as simple decoration. Looks well.
Needed to countersink the holding bolts here. So I use a hole saw, then trim out with a screwdriver and a chisel. Good fun and I have the nut ends facing out as I love this kind of detail in a finish.
Mistakes
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(a) I planned my rafters 5'4" apart. I forgot all about this when positioning the holes in the wall plate. Had to move rafter #2 about 3" to the right to compensate. You gotta admit, it was a bit unlucky apart from being plain stupid.
(b) On day one, I was gonna notch the rafters and have them rest on the uprights flat. Bad idea as it locks everything into one precise position, is totally unforgiving and awkward to cut. So I re-use this rafter, turning the mistake upwards. It'll be hidden in the overall finish.
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