Snowing again

Never mind, still managed to get some work done. One of the main things I've done is to re-arrange all our stuff so I can get to the other half of the floor to work on. Not a very glamourous or photogenic subject but lordy it doesn't half make a difference! Now everything is packed into the salon leaving the cuisine free for tools and work. I've not been down to the saw mill to order the rest of the solives yet so I've been tackling the repairs to the lintel and wall above the kitchen window.

That gap between the windows is where the rotten lintel was this morning. As you can see with the aid of a hammer and chisel and of course the chainsaw its all clear and ready to fit the new lintel and build back up again. Just need a few days where the weather is sufficiently above freezing to mix some mortar!!
I've also been cleaning off the remaining beam ready to fix the rest of the solives. Mostly this involved removing the old ledger strip and de-nailing. Sound easy but not as easy as you might think when the ledger strip has been there for 300 years. The aproach I took was to saw through every foot or so and then split with a chisel around the nails. All the nails were lovely old hand forged jobs. I almost thought about cranking up the forge and making a few replacements, but on reflection that seamed a little excessive even for me.

As you will notice that beam is a little on the skinny side so I'm going to build a colombage wall with oak posts to add some support. I reckon 150mm square should do the trick. When I'd finished up today I even had a little help tidying up!

Just to remind me what I'm aiming at with the upstairs I also taken the opportunity to look at the plans (not a bad thing now and again). Good thing I did because a few things are a bit different than I remembered. Also taking to Julia I think were going to do the main bedroom as the architect intended as a "room in a box" sitting within the space. I wasn't overly keen on the idea at the time but actually its quite simple and inexpensive to do, so its back in.

More...well..floor really?

OK! so it's a big floor and these things take time. Today I finished off the floor round the fireplace. I was a bit stumped at first and it's taken me a few days to work out what I was going to do. I put in the floor either side of the chimney breast with the solives next to the chimney sistered up to carry a solive across in front of the chimney. When I looked at it, the span across all six foot of chimney, looked a bit wide for one solive to carry the ends of the other beams. To solve this I've taken one of the shorter solives through into the chimney to support it and thus halved the span. Well it feels pretty solid; I can stand and jump up and down on it and it doesn't bounce. In addition I've mortised the solives in to each other. There is a tendency to do a straight halving joint but to my mind this would weaken the beams to much (although on a shorter span this would probably be fine). Instead I've notched the male 1/4 of the thickness and then cut the female mortise only 30mm into the 100mm thick beam. This way neither is significantly weakened. As a belt and braces the middle solive/beam has a ledger stip for additional support. Well right or wrong (comments welcome from any experience joiners out there..Darren?) thats how I've tackled it and short of an earth quake that's how it's staying!
Here's the view from the kitchen

And from above. If you squint it almost looks like a room!

A close up of what I've been rambling on about;

The other thing I did today was convert my trusty generator to LPG. Running on good old petrol is OK but expensive and a pain to keep refilling. So god bless that lovely internet if I didn't find a company doing garret regulator conversions. As far as I can make out this works in a very similar way to a divers demand valve. Took a bit of fiddling to fit since the holes in the gas adapter collar didn't line up with the studs on the carburetta and you need ptfe tape for all the connections. Drilling out the holes in the collar was fine, but could I find my ptfe tape! It's there somewhere but I'm blowed if I can find it (like my meter long rule and spirit level!!!!!). Fortunately Andy down the road in the village came to the rescue with some tread sealing gunky-stuff. That said works a treat and I'm now cooking with gas...well sawing and drilling and lighting and generally power tooling it up. Here's the finished installation. Oh and of course you need to make sure you've drained out all the petrol, thus avoiding making a fuel/gas/air bomb!


P.S. For those of you who know our neighbour Guy, he had a heart attack on Wednesday night and had to be taken by helicopter to Caen. Touch wood he's making a good recovery and was well enough to be moved to Flers today. Our thoughts and prayers are with him.

Workbench №3

The floor is still progressing. In my spare time I've knocked up a Jewellery workbench for Julia. The bench is constructed using bits of oak I had lying around so the only things I've actually had to buy is the plywood top at €14 and some varnish at €9, which to be fair I thought was a bit steep! Anyway the legs and rails come from off-cuts of beam. This I fashioned into usable timber with judicious use of my trusty chainsaw followed by the band saw and planer/thicknesser. All the other bits are offcuts of reclaimed wood from various sources. The most interesting of which is the back rail which has a really lovely grain that has blackened with age. It looks a bit like oak but definitely isn't (doesn't have that oaky smell), my best guess would be chestnut!
I have to say the bench may be tad over engineered but one thing is for sure, its not going to fall apart in a hurry!

I've wrapped the plywood top with a strip of wood to cover the end grain. This I steamed to make pliable so I could bend it into shape enough to glue and clamp.

I love that back rail, the grain is fab!

And here it is fully loaded and ready to earn it's keep.

As the title above suggests this is the third (and I may say the best) jewellery bench I've made. The first I made when I was a technician engineer at GEC in Coventry. In those days GEC was like a small town in its own right. It had carpentry shops, electricians, tool rooms, canteens, bank, photographic studio, garage, ballroom! the lot. The carpenters cut all the wood I needed to size and loaded it all onto a trolley for me to take away, all for free. In its day it was a proper little community, but then that was in the days of cost+ contracts for British Telecom before privatisation! All (mostly) gone now of course - sad really.

P.S. The skin under the bench is to save you grubbing round on the floor when you drop something, it also catches any bits of precious metal filings so they can be re-cycled.

More Floor

Well its progressing slowly. The other carrier beam is in on the other side of the fireplace and I have to now fill in with solives in front. All the same sort of stuff but seeing as it was a nice sunny day I took some more pictures.


This one gives you some idea of the work involved.


When its finished this will be the children's bedroom. Although they are already enjoying climbing on the temporary floor (closely supervised).

Frankie making her quality control inspection!

As a bit of a diversion, I been making a new jewellery bench for Julia. It's not finished yet but here are the legs in the process of being morticed in for the stretchers. These were hewn out of a 250 x 250 beam I had spare with the chain saw, so a fair bit of work involved just getting 4 square ish usable bits of timber. The bench should be completed tomorrow so I'll post a proper picture then.

P.S. The marking gauge I made during my first year of woodwork (would the be 1st year or 3rd?) at Leek High with Mr Procter and Bobby Beech. It's made from beech wood with a brass face and screw all turned by hand and finished off during my lunch hour. Been one of the most useful things I ever made!

P.P.S Hi to Barbara and Owen in Bristol, hope you have a long attention span Its likely to take a little while!

Bon courage!

Good old fashioned housing joints

A little more progress. I've morticed in the solives into the carrier beam. OK I confess I intended to sit the solives on top of the beam, but put the beam in too high; oops. Still its probably a better job in the end, just took a little longer. Still as my old dad used to say; The "art" of being a craftsman is not, not making mistakes, its getting out of them once you've made them! Well I'm not a craftsman yet but I am learning each day, and that's good. More mortices to come on the other side of the chimney, to make it all match! Its just a good job I had a handy stationary morticer sitting in the barn.

So that make the Fox stationary morticer the "cool tool of the day"

Oh yes managed to get real live post including parcels in France through our new regulation Post box. How cool is that. Instead of spending all your life going to the Post office to pick up a parcel because it wont fit your letter box, you have a box and the Postie has a key; fantastic. My parcel was a shiny new jumper from my favourite on line shop at the moment. Trust me if you want a 100% British wool jumper at reasonable prices delivered anywhere in Europe in a matter of a few days go to WoolOvers or "Woo-Lovers" as we like to call it. So forget you iphones and wide screen LED TV's give me a nice warm jumper any time! I went for the fisherman crew shown below (still waiting for the boat and the girl to be delivered though...must go down to the post office...)!

Bye for now

2010

The beam has now been hoisted up into place and levelled up with a few shims of slate. I used my 1 ton chain winch suspended off a ladder used as an A frame. Nice and controlled and no danger of any nasty accidents, as slipping with a big piece of oak is not funny!

Here is the beam in place and ready to fit the solives

And yes it is level (if your really sad you can click on the picture to get a close up of the bubble for proof)

Just to remind me what year it is I added a little detail to the beam (it was a excuse to use some really sharp chisels).

I got the beam in place just in time to go over to a depot vente with Andy to help him collect some reclaimed oak windows. While there I had a quick look round and it's staggering what you can buy in these places. Everything but everything you could imagine, most it has to be said i wouldn't give house space to. Still I've promised Julia not to buy anything until we have somewhere to put it!

Back in time to cook some tea and skype to my brother Nick and his wife Jenny. It is an amazing thing to be able to sit in a farmhouse deep in rural France and have a video call to your brother in Derby, all over a free piece of technology. Before moving to France I never used skype, always preferring to pick up the phone instead, but I'm really a convert. In-fact I think I've seen more of both my brother and sister than I did when I lived just down the road. And it does make a huge difference being able to talk face to face; without it it would seem a lot more remote (and as my wife will attest, I do like a good old chat with the bro).

What will they think of next!

More first floor antics

Yesterday I finished of the first run of solives and blow me if it isn't lovely and level. This now gives me a level to work across to the wall and install one of the carrier beams to support the floor between the chimney and the front wall. As usual this is never straight forward and low a behold on one side where I needed to make a socket for the beam there was the end of an old beam and on the other two great big stones in the side of the chimney breast! Ho-hum! Anyway my good friend Alan will be pleased to know that the reciprocating saw he lent me about 10 years ago was just the tool for cutting out the end of the Oak beam. in fact without it I'm not sure how I would have cut the socket! So a big thanks to Alan. The other side was just a case of cutting through the stones with the angle grinder and smashing a hole big enough. Built up the holes to just below the right height and lined with slate so i can shim with more slate to level up the beam in place. As for the beam I'm using 200 x 100 green oak and just for good measure I've hand cut a bevel into the bottom edge. I always think that its those little touches that make the difference!


If you look through the socket for the beam the wall is black on the other side. That's because its the inside of the chimney! Well it'll give me plenty of room to slide the new beam in and i can leave the ends of the beam nice and long.



So if the mortar ever goes off in this cold weather I can install the beam. While I had a bit of mortar mixed I thought I would tidy up round the bit a wall between ground floor and first floor window. Closer inspection however showed that the supporting Oak lintel needs replacing, so i'll have to take that bit a wall down and rebuild it. Bummer! Oh well probably only take me half an hour.

EXPLANATION:
Any job you have to do always feels easier if you tell yourself it will only take "half an hour" even if you blatently know it won't!!!!

ALTERNATIVE:
Tell yourself "How hard can it be!"

For Alison, Cool tool of the day is: Stihl MS260 50cc Tronçonneuse

Nice!