Sunday, October 31, 2010

Friday, October 29, 2010

local red oak.. starting on the roof trusses!

I ended up deciding to just give it a go and experiment with the circular saw, reciprocating saw, hand held back saw, chisle and rasps... and I got one of 10 done....


So I used a radial arm saw for the first time today, with a dado blade, to cut the tenons for the trusses. think I will need some help using a able saw to cut the mortises.. I just don't have a lot of upper body strength,. and oak is hard enough that when the blade catches it really wants to go! Anyways: step one finished with out any loss of limb!!


Bob and I cut the 15" wide boards down to 3 5/8th inches wide, and then I used the card board patterns I made to mark them for length. I borrowed my friend Chris' Purcell's circular saw, bought a new blade and cut the boards to the various lengths and angles needed. I had a very girly moment when Scott heard the saw over working, and came down to see what my trouble was, and pointed out gently that I had put the saw blade on backwards. He went away to get the camera laughing. Tomorrow I will go over to my land lord's house and use his radial arm saw to start on the mortise and tenon joints.
My friend Bob Fernandez helped me man handle and cut the boards down to 3 5/8th" wide, helping get them to right dimensions and also taking some of the bowing out.

lots of flying sawdust in the air! Go BOB!

We went to meet Landus Bennett of a local reclaiming lumber, wood craft outfit Watson Springs, and we drove out to Bishop Ga and bought 4 15' pieces of local red oak that had been sitting in a pile air dried for four years. Then I took it to my friend Bob Fernandez's house and he helped me with his skill saw and table saw to cut the boards down to the size we need to incorporate them into the lower cords of out roof trusses! We drive and bought the amount of steel we need yesterday, so today I am going to start building the bedroom loft platform floor, which will be a staging platform for the truss erection.
Landus helped us cut the boards in 1/2 so we could load them in our little truck. 120 board feet to be had in all.
nothing like drawing it out life size in chalk to get the feel for how it will look and what to do.
these two pictures kind of show the layered structure of the roof once it is complete. The wide pieces of cardboard represent the metal cords of the truss itself, then they will be ganged together by perpendicular lengths of furring channel, then on top of that we will attach a layer of foam backed fiber glass insulation board, represented here by what is seen as a cross section of card board. Finally we will attach the aluminum standing seam roofing material with stainless steel fasteners.
and this is where the window goes...