Projects, WP Migration
With sunshine and temperatures above freezing….
we were finally able to tackle a few outside tasks. We spent a few days this past week cutting and hanging rafters on the wood shed and are pleased to be done with that phase of the project.
Most construction projects use trusses set on top of headers for the roof structure. About a decade ago we had some downed trees sawed up into lumber so we are making our rafters using the lumber that has been curing in our barn.
We cut 30 timbers and on each of the timbers we cut a small angle for the end that sets on our ridge board, and notched the opposite end that sits on the headers. The timbers are from eastern white pine and roughly 6 inches wide by 148 inches long. Some boards were longer than 148 inches but we left them long and are going to trim them once our roof is on. Carl rigged up a couple jigs – one to easily cut the plum cut which is the angle required for attaching the rater to the ridge board – and another for marking the birdsmouth cut where the rafter attaches to the header.
In addition, because our wood shed is 20 feet wide, we nailed up 13 rafter ties. This is a 2” x 4” x 20’ white pine board that spans the width of the building and sits on each side of the headers then nailed into the rafters. Because the header along our woodshed was bowed out in places creating a span of more than 20 feet we used our ratcheting straps to pull the header in so that our building was exactly 20 feet wide. (Carl is into exactness, and I am into good enough, which caused a lot of discussion during this project.) Our ratcheting straps are multi-purpose and we use them to tie down hay on our trailers and for tying down fertilizer/wood or whatever we are hauling on our trailer. A pretty handy tool.
It took us a few days to cut these rafters and nail them up…. My question to Carl throughout this phase of the project was, “What does industry do?”. I can’t imagine industry being as “profectionistic” as Carl because it would cost extra money in labor, resulting in corporate executives receiving less massive bonuses. Carl’s response, “Industry doesn’t build using rafters because trusses are used”. It is pretty cool to be using “primitive” building techniques!
I am thankful that Carl is a perfectionist because that is why all the structures we have built on this farm are still standing. So I might complain about the hours spent on our projects, and I probably will until I am off this planet, but nevertheless I am thankful.
We also seeded cover crop in a couple of our greenhouses and the little sprouts look beautiful! It is simply amazing to go from bare dirt (with some tilled up leaves) to little seedlings sprouting, which will hopefully continue to grow, and then tilled back under to nourish our soil.
