It Stands

Had a very productive weekend. Most of bent number one is standing in the shop. Eventually, three of the four bents can stand up inside. It's pretty exciting to see it standing. Alan, thanks for the help, I couldn't have done it without you.














Above is the first piece of the second floor. Everything is ratchet-strapped to the green I-beams for support.














Above is the finished first floor. That was the easy part. There are two overhead cranes that run on three phase power that came in handy for the rest of the pieces. Too bad there's currently no three phase power to operate them. But that's OK; come-alongs worked well.














That's me using a come-along to get the first piece of the second floor into position.














The rafter above was a lot of work to get into position. We had a few come-alongs on the beam to make it tilt. I have no idea how much it weighs- but it's a lot.














With the rafter finally in place; there's me again for perspective as to how big the frame is. I was a little worried that the knee braces would be too low, and that tall people would hit their heads. I'm about 6'1", and have room to spare, so that was a relief. If by chance someone does whack their head, they're too tall anyway, so it'll serve them right.

Bent is finished

Finally finished bent #1. Only three to go, plus all the joists and purlins. I think with the warmer temperatures and little bit of experience I now have, the rest will go quicker.














Above are the final pieces of bent #1. The joints where the two beams join are called scarf joints, and are a lot of work to make. There is no simple way to do it, and much of the work is done by hand. If you zoom in on the picture, you can see how it works- you drive a wedge in from each side at the middle of the joint, and they're almost impossible to get apart. (Especially when you only have access to one side. Don't ask how I know this.)

The reason I had to do scarf joints in the first place was because logs ~18 feet long are hard to come by, but 16 feet are fairly common. For the next three bents I'm going to find logs 18 feet long if I have to cut them down myself. It will be much quicker.














So here's a shot of the completed bent. Not too bad hey? Unfortunately, I am now out of beams. My sawyer doesn't have my next order complete yet, and is actually trying to find logs big enough. So, I picked up a bunch of wood to make all the knee braces I will need, so I will have them in inventory as I go. I will probably grab some lumber this weekend and try to make a bunch of pegs for when I get to that point. Gotta stay busy.