Friday 25 November 2011

Complicated Little Roof

I had my first time off ill from work in 6 years this week, but by Tuesday night I was ready to get back at it.
I started this little roof on the Wednesday morning and straight away I knew it wasn't going to be straight forward. There's 4 steels marked on the drawing to go in; to take the old roof and support the ridge beam as well as the end gable brickwork, there's also a dormer window and a large valley gutter one side with a parapet wall containing a concealed gutter on the other. The first thing was a bit of head scratching and deciding where to begin ( as the picture below with drawings, bevels, scale rule and calculator shows!)
We decided to get the "cranked" steel in first, then the steel that's supporting the old roof, involving stripping the tiles, removing the old dormer window and cutting the old rafters.
We then managed to get a couple of rafters up with a ridge board (scarf joint ready cut) ready for us to place the new ridge beam so the brick layer can build up to it.
The sun was setting fast as we finished off tonight, but next week should see us shoot ahead with it (although I can already see that the drawings are missing another steel as there isn't one to pick up the shorter section of the new roof, so i guess we're have to come up with a solution for approval!).
Only a small roof but hundreds of things to think about! People forget how much a carpenter has to remember!

Monday 14 November 2011

Carving Chisels

I decided to have a bit of a tidy up in the workshop today (moping around as a fox killed all my chickens last night).
I brought a cheap Stanley toolbox the other day and decided that it would be good to keep all my carving chisels in one place. When I rounded them all up I was quite surprised by the number of them as this doesn't include my wood turning chisels or any of my normal everyday chisels that I use for work.
Some of them need quite a bit of work doing to them and I'd like to re handle quite a few of them but the ones in the tool rolls are all sharpened ready for action. None of them have cost me over a couple of quid but they have taken me quite a few years to accumulate (I've just remembered I've got another set of six tucked away that I wasn't happy with and not shown here).
55 here so far, ideally I'd like to have them in a big cabinet on the wall, but that will come when I get a bigger workshop!
Need to find more time to use them now! Anyone else got a nice set of specific tools that doesn't get used as much as it should (although they do get used!)?

Sunday 13 November 2011

Boyz In The Wood

I'm sorry my blog has been so boring lately. I've been so busy driving to Birmingham everyday and decorating every night that the weeks are slipping by.
I stayed at the farm last night as Mum and Dad are on holiday and my brother wanted to go out. My brother, Dave (Some of you already follow his blog http://davidalviti-rusticcreations.blogspot.com/) had left me out a few books to borrow (as we both read a stupid amount of books a year) but inside the one was a old picture he was using as a book mark.
It made me smile as we must be about 3 and 6 - a happy childhood on the farm.
Still somethings never change as this photo from last year shows (although we're stood the other way round in this photo). I hope we can have another photo like this when we're old men still cutting up bits of wood!

Sunday 6 November 2011

New Back Door

Sorry this isn't a more interesting post!
My week at work has not been very taxing on my brain, but we've got quite a bit done fitting out shelves in 18 different cleaners cupboards along with some other jobs so its gone quite fast.

More jobs at home again! I decided that this weekend I would change the back door from the kitchen as its always looked a little rough and is single glazed.

Bread and butter work again for a carpenter but I've grown to enjoy hanging doors and chopping out hinges. I've also stained some more windows and started to paint the landing up stairs - I've been quite busy with all these jobs but I can't say why just yet, but it will make for a more interesting blog in the future if it all comes off!
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