The oak posts for one side have been put up temporarily (three only shown here). They will need to be cut down to the right height and marked-up for the position of the windowsill pieces. This has to be done 'in situ' as the oak is changing shape just about by the day and no two gaps are the same. Each post is sitting on a nut and washer on a length of studding set into the concrete foundations (you can see the front corner one) to allow a bit of rotation to happen with drying out. This also keeps the wood off the ground and will allow a tiny bit of vertical adjustment if necessary. We have taken lots of advice from our friend John W. (ex building foreman for the Shakespeare birthplace trust before he retired to France), and who has probably forgotten more about oak construction than we will ever learn!
Pete sawing...
and me cutting one of the slots for the windowsill cross-pieces (not a bad tan for early June eh?). These will also be mortice & tenoned into the uprights. Next we will have to make lots of oak pegs to fix it all together... Don't use screws says John, they will fall apart in months, says John. So the whole edifice will be held together with oak pegs. I now need a piece of metal with a hole in it, the proposed diameter of the pegs, so I can hammer roughly-shaped bits of oak through it, to make the correct-diameter pegs - that's how its done!
See how wet the oak is once you get a centimeter-or-so into it! Cuts like a dream though!
Its funny, but I'm really enjoying having a bit of interesting building work to do again. We are now talking about building a whole house using green oak one day perhaps, as it's such lovely stuff to work with, and relatively affordable, here in Brittany.
Keep looking - will update again soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment