Small Green Oak Frame

this is a small oak frame I've been commissioned to build for a porch on a new house. 

All traditional mortise and tenon joinery. A mixture of hand and power tools have been used. 

The oak was quite twisted so I have to pick through the pieces to find the best ones for the truss.

Hopefully I should get this one pegged fairly soon and fitted! I could do with getting it away from my yard. It'll be sanded up before it's assembled.

Always heavy with oak but at least these pieces aren't too big!

Large Trussed Roof

October wasn't what I had planned as I had intended to work on my own kitchen and pantry area. The roof on my brothers house took priority in the end so he'd be weather tight by Christmas and it's nice to have been a part of his house build.

The roof was a monster and when it turned up we got a sense of scale of the thing! It's all attic trusses and they've got 8ft (2.4m) ceilings in them

Trussed Roof

On Thursday a gang of 5 of us put on this trussed roof.

 There's something strangely satisfying about putting on a trussed roof. It goes on so fast and looks so good when it's done.

We had the whole roof on and braced up in a day. All the trusses were lifted up by hand. I can see why big building sites opt for trussed roofs rather than ones that are cut on which take much longer and involve a lot more thinking.

Oak Frame Repair

A good few days work on this old oak frame repair, not very easy going as a lot of hand work to get it back to somewhere I could work from.

A large crack that had started to rot due to it being filled with concrete and the wood not being able to breath

Taking the bad wood back to good. I decided that as the upright would need two splices as well it was best to replace it at the same time.

Splicing in the top piece

Some of the bottom section chiselled out - this took a lot of work!

The completed repair

The bottom joint.
 I made the pegs on site as well.

A picture showing how heavily scribed the bottom piece is - I made a template first and then it fitted pretty easily (well for oak anyway)

The repair fits in nicely as the rest of the frame has had work done to it in the past. Once this greys with age you won't be able to tell when this repair was done.

Picture showing the whole frame

The customer seemed really please with the job and I've another repair to do on the frame lower down once the scaffold is dropped.

Pine Truss

This week we've had to put a roof on to a large underground shed that houses the water tanks for the house I've been working on. For this roof we had to make two large pine trusses as the roof is to have Coraline sheeting on, so there will be no rafters only purlins.

Pine truss ready to go in

Made out of 9"x3" timber they are mortised and tenonned together with a large bridle joint for the top of the truss. They look really smart and should last many years.