How to store heavy slabs for easy access and display

[Old Greenhorn]

Howard first, the cleaned out bay looks great, the photo makes it look like the biggest one yet, glad you mentioned it is not. This shed is gonna be very cool and if you were a neighbor I would be trying to lease one of those bays for storage.
 Now regarding your rocks:
1) if you go with Doc's suggestion (not a bad one for sure) remember you can't cut that stone dry, you need to get some water in there to cut the dust down and keep the blade cooler and lubricated. But you don't want enough water to soak the motor on the saw. ;D
 2) You can also use a hammer drill to put in a lot of holes allowing you the break the high spots off with a chisel and lump hammer (wear gloves and good glasses or a face shield please).
 3) if those things don't work, think about just building a little frame around these rocks and dumping in some sackrete around them to level it off and lay your floor right on top of it. When you can't raise the bridge, lower the river, or vice versa. ;D

 Knowing the kind of rock would help, all rocks respond differently and have different weak spots. The bluestone around here is tough but works like sedimentary sandstone and will flake out with feathers (stone wedges) easily. Millions of tons of Bluestone was harvested in our area to make buildings streets and sidewalks in the big cities. The stone cutting arts are disappearing here, but there are still a few guys that know the old ways. It's a lot like wood, but not at all the same. :D ;D

[WV Sawmiller]

Tom,

  Thanks for the reminder about the water when sawing. Kind of like the drill speed and oil when I was drilling out my hinges (Which reminds me - I need another set of door hinges. I hope the hardware guy is at the flea market tomorrow!)

  Actually this may be the biggest bay but it is the shortest in height because of the slope. The left side is 22' on this bay and was 17' on the last one. All bays are about 9' wide but the back is at an angle.

   My big regret when I built this shed is I put that rear pole in first and it was the limiting height factor for the whole shed and I cut off a couple of feet on it. I could have left that pole longer and running it the same level as I did I would have had another 2' of height for the whole shed. The shed is a Rhomboid shape due to a power live offset in/along the front and a fence/wood line in the back. It is 22' wide on this end and 12' wide on the other end.

   I'll have to think about boxing and building a cement pad on the rocks but I may be able to just fill with gravel and adjust the sleepers and joists around the offending rocks and let the floor board rest on the peaks. Such a pad would make it easier to determine the final floor height and add formwork and gravel as needed.

Don,

  Congratulations on keeping the spirit of the design committee alive and well in spending other people's money! You've already had me checking HF for electric jackhammers, which they don't sell, and there is not a convenient rental place around here.

   I don't know if my half inch hammer drill with a masonry bit would cut the rock or not. I've seen on the gold miner shows where they drill holes in rocks and put expanding foam in that cracks the rocks. I need to look into that as I have plenty of rocks I'd like to get rid of.

[Don P]

You're welcome to borrow them if you are making a trip south anytime soon. The percussion drill is just an amped up hammer drill. I have a 1-3/8 x 2' bit that is made to use with DexPan, an expanding grout. In hard rock we would drill a line like you were going to blast it but instead mix and pour a bunch of slurry, go home and the rock was cracked the next morning. Softer rock flexes and it is a waste for it. I've seen more soft shales up your way, layered compressed clay that has lithified, become stone, but there is hard there too. Under the last 2 houses the rock was too soft for the dexpan, it was mostly jackhammer work. The one prior to that got into the roots of the mountain, very solid granite that is our "basement" layer. Gold is mined by hard rock miners, it is in with quartz most of the time where coal is in sedimentary rock. The New cuts into the basement rock, it predates the coal and shale.

[WV Sawmiller]

Don,

   Thanks for the offer but I'm not heading south any time soon that I know of so I'll come up with some solution.

   Talking about jackhammers reminds me of my first job overseas after Il eft the USMC. We were building building a university hospital complex in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and our contractors would often try to hire local workers. Most day workers were probably illegals from Pakistan, Turkey. India and the surrounding Gulf States. Our Safety manager was getting hard on the contractors about the PPE requirements and told them he could look the other way somewhat of the safety shoe requirement but they did have to have good sturdy shoes and not sneakers or sandals. They cracked down on their hiring and would only hire day workers with shoes. I was riding around the site one day and saw a big black air hose going over a mound of dirt a found a Pakistani man in a 5' deep hole using a 90 lb jackhammer to loosen the hard clay soil. Proudly displayed on top of the mound was a pair of leather shoes. He was down in the hole barefooted hammering away but he was not going to mess up those shoes because that was how he got his job in the first place.

   My first boss over there told a similar tale of hiring a crew of day workers and providing the each with a plastic hard hat/bump hat. He sternly warned them if they lost it they would have to pay a $5 replacement fee. While riding on the back of  a 5 ton truck on little Indian's hard hat blew off and he jumped off while the truck was running 40-50 mph to retrieve. Fortunately the jump did not kill him but he was eat up with pavement rash afterwards. That $5 was a lot to a man who was probably making $80 a month.

[doc henderson]

Howard, I did not mean to lay the saw on its side, but to provide a guide so the lowest part of the radius of the saw blade would cut at an even height and make a flat top on the rock after all the cuts were grooved and wedged.  so, a flat base to run the saw across.  a concrete saw blade is not too bad at a big box store.  I have a dedicated worm drive saw with a blade to groove my concrete after it is set.  better than a 14-inch handheld saw for depth and following a chalk line.

[WV Sawmiller]

Doc,

 Thanks. I did not find a masonry blade to fit my saw at the flea market and I even stopped at our local market and they did not have any.  They had 8" and 10" and bigger but none for 7-1/4" saws. I ran into our hardware store owner in the grocery store on the way home but forgot to ask him. He won't be open till tomorrow anyway.

 I did find a box full of drill bits for $15. Probably not great steel but there are plenty of small ones in there like I use for pilot holes on crates and birdhouses and such plus 8-10 1/4-3/8 inch bits. If one of them is any count would be cheaper than the last 3/8" bit I bought.

[WV Sawmiller]

   I ran a long straight edge from the top of the rock to the top of the floor in the next bay and it looks like if I can take off 2.5-3 inches I can run this floor level with the next one which would be a real plus. I doubt there is a square foot of rock surface to move. Of course that is just the peak and the deeper I go the bigger the diameter gets. I have no idea how much more of the rock is underground but I can't even vibrate the ground around it with the bucket on my FEL. I'll check our local hardware store in the next day or two and see if he has the masonry blade for my circle saw. Before I do that I'll take some water out there with me and try drilling it.

[WV Sawmiller]

 

 
Been a while since I worked on this project. There is one bay left to floor and make bins. It is the first so it is the shortest but is the longest. This bin is 9' wide and about 22' long on the left/longest side. There are some shelves on both sides and at the back I will keep so any bins I built will be under them.

   I built formwork on the back and R side (as facing the bay). A couple of boulders I could not remove determine the height of my floor. On these 2 sides the top of the formwork will be the top of the fill. On the left side the bottom of the formwork is the finished height of the fill. It is resting on the top of the boulder determining the height. There are several tons of river rocks in the picture I placed for fill to reduce the amount of gravel I had to buy. I gave up and decided buying more was easier that collecting and hauling it. The front formwork will be added at the end but I left it open for access to this point.


 
I was using my JD 750 and put a ball on the blade to haul the trailer to the site. It is easy to place and lift but the blade can swing from side to side. It works ok when pulling but does not back well. Yesterday the trailer got stuck
and I had to chock and disconnect it. I went back today and freed it and placed it as close as I could.


 
     I have 3 tons of 3/4" crusher run unloaded so far and it looks like I will need that much more before I can get the desire height so this bin will be the most expensive I have done with over $200 worth of gravel. The design committee should be well pleased. : :D

   I still have some uprights, framing and walls to install but I have the uprights milled and just need to dig the holes and attach to the headers and existing uprights.

[Old Greenhorn]

 
... It is the first so it is the shortest but is the longest......

Howard, maybe this is possible in West Virginia, but up here in the frozen north it ha to be one or the other, it can't be both. :D

Anyway, looking good and I'll bet a nickel you never thought it would go this far when you started putting out your thoughts for your first storage rack. ;D

[WV Sawmiller]

    Well, its different here. :D I pretty much keep the front and back headers level but because of the slope of the land where this shed lives the left (low side) bay is about 9' at the front while on the right side the bay there is closer to 12' high. The bays are stair stepped down. Also the shed is not square or rectangle. It is 22' deep on the left end and about 12' deep on the right end. A powerline and a 12' offset on the front does not allow me to come further forward but an angled wood line/fence line at the back offers more space so I built it as a Rhomboid shape. One other feature because of this is the slope of the roof changes because I built the back header 2' lower then the front so the angle of 2' on 22' is less than 2' on 12'. Yeah - duuh. But I never thought about that and the roof works and keeps my wood and crafts dry.

   BTW Shortest is height and longest is depth/length in my earlier post.

[doc henderson]

Well Howard, why didn't you say so!!! : :D 8)

[Resonator]

I mentioned MC Escher in a thread recently. After reading that building shape description, I'm starting to wonder if he ever visited West Virginia...  ;D

[WV Sawmiller]

 

 

This is before I added the 4th bay or the metal on the roof but it gives an idea of the shape of the shed. The nailers are 2' apart and you can see how they peter out from the left (Deepest/longest) bay to the other end where the depth of each bay gets shorter.

BTW - the very first post on this thread shows the height difference from left to right. And that was before I added the 4th/right hand bay.

[Stephen1]

It looks like it follows the curvature of the earth. Shows the earth is not flat. ;D

[WV Sawmiller]

Stephen,

   It does curve but that is because of the changing slope I mentioned earlier. The back header is 2' lower than the front but on the wide end the distance is about 22' while on the narrow end it is about 12' so the slope gets steeper from one end to the other. I did not consider that when building it but it works. Both headers are level from one end to the other - they just get closer to each other changing the slope.

   So the slope changes from 22/2 to 12/2.

[WV Sawmiller]

 

 

    I got another 1.5 tons of gravel and unloaded it in the new bay yesterday. I am pretty much to the level I want except for the front I had left open as I needed to add 2 more uprights for the doors.

   I dug, actually pretty much chiseled out, 3 post holes about a foot deep for the uprights. They will be attached to the 2X12 header overhead and braced to other uprights so they did not need to be very deep. They are only holding a 4' wooden door or bracing to nail wall sheeting to. I had previously cut and staged 3 locust poles for this purpose.


 

   I used my JD 750 and FEL to lift and place the heavy uprights. Two were about 6X6 and one was more like a 4X5 and all were about 12' long. The FEL and a spud bar sure made it a lot easier to place these uprights.



 

   Here are the 3 finished uprights. Each is nailed with a couple of 60D spikes to the header. Tomorrow I will nail up some 2X4 bracing for the wall boards then I will finish the gravel, I hope, with about a ton I have left over on some roofing metal. It may not look like a lot but this was a good afternoons work and things should go pretty fast now.

[WV Sawmiller]

 

 
   May not look like a lot of change but this sets up for a lot more. I added the framing on the new uprights so mow I can start adding the sheeting and I can build and add the door on the R hand bay. I also added the formwork on the front and filled in the rest of the gravel. I had about a ton left from the last bay. It looks like I had just enough and the gravel is down.


 
With the gravel down now I just need to buy the plastic and cover it them I will saw and place the LE locust floating footers on top of that.

   The finished floor in this bay will be about 6" higher than the next on to the right.

BTW/FWIW: That is 5 tons of gravel in there and several tons of local stone and river rocks.

[WV Sawmiller]

 

 
I laid down and doubled up 2 rolls of 4 mil plastic. The rolls were 10' X 25' so not enough to save and I just folded it under.


 
Sleepers in place and ready to start nailing 2X2 strips to them for "floor joists" then I'll nail 4/4 boards to that. Once that is done I'll add upright bins under the existing shelves. This is the shortest (Height) bay so I use it for short stock and items like 5' tomato stakes.

[Old Greenhorn]

Looking good there baby! Those are some sexy curvy sleepers you got there man, but they will do the trick for sure.
I think you will be able to stack a boatload of rustic benches in there if nothing else. This has come a long way. I had thought you were 2 years into it, but you only just started thinking on this in January, so not even a year yet! That's pretty quick considering you only planned one bay to have a place to display slabs.
Great project to be following along on, for sure.

[WV Sawmiller]

Tom.

   In the back of my mind that is my goal - finish this floor and bins this year. I may not finish my last door simply because I only have one more set of hinges and I get them from a dealer at our local flea market and it won't open till April or May.

EDIT/ADD-On: Tom, I see reply #87 has a picture of the whole front of the shed. When I started it only had 3 bays so that last bay on the right was added and was the first with a floor and bins and over the year I have rearranged, emptied and added floors and bins and moved my stock into it. I can't say it is a lot neater than when I started yet but I sure have a lot more wood in there and I can get to it now.

[WV Sawmiller]

 

 
More piddlin' on my shed floor. I got the "floor joists" all nailed to the sleepers I put down yesterday. I used 2X2 strips and they were cut to 9' long. I had most of the strips already cut from earlier projects and had to rip 2- 2X4s to get the last ones needed.


 
This shows the angle of the shed. The left side is about 3' longer (deeper) than the right side.


 
I even started on the flooring and got the first 12" nailed down. I'm using 4/4 poplar I had in stock. I grabbed a pipe clamp to tighten the board next to the adjacent board to close the gaps caused by bows in  the board or out of square construction. :

   I have family coming in tonight and weekend plans so probably won't get any more work done the next couple of days unless my newly 7 y/o grandson wants to to hammer some nails. :D

EDIT/ADD-ON:

FWIW I put my "joists" on 16" centers. I put the first one down and laid down a 9' piece of 5 ridge roofing tin as a square edge to square and line the first joist with the left side formwork. After that I cut a 14" spacer block from a scrap board and used it to space the 2X2 strips using the first one as the baseline. That is pretty simple and works well and is quick to do. The 2X2 want to bend but it is easy to push them into place using the spacer stick as a guide. I nailed the joists to the sleepers with 16d nails and the floor boards to the sleepers using 12d galvanized nails.

[WV Sawmiller]

 

 

Taa Daah!

   The floor is done! Hooray. Now I just need to decide if I want to build bins, leave it open, or even add more shelves. There is only 5.5' of clearance under the shelves at the back but that would be a perfect fit for my 5' tomato stakes but I'd have to haul them around past my benches if I use this bay for storing them. Under the front shelves there is just under 7' of clearance.

   This floor is about 6" higher than the next bay to the right. On the left (Which is the deepest) side the floor is 21' long. On the right side it is 18.5' long/deep. It is 9' wide. The finished door opening will be 45" wide once I place the wall sheeting and hang the door.

   I will probably do a mix but start by just moving the benches into this area then decide later. I build my shelves using 2X12's cut into 45's for supports/bracing and nail the bench top directly to the 2X framing. That makes a very simple and very strong shelf.

   I also see I have a leak in the roof I need to patch. I can't see daylight from below. I have some leaves on top of the roof I have been meaning to sweep/blow off which could be slowing down the runoff and contributing to the leak.

[GRANITEstateMP]

Howard,  I was about to point out that now that you have a floor, you have to go "OUTSIDE" the barn to relieve yourself  ;D

[WV Sawmiller]

 : : : : :D

[WV Sawmiller]

   It has been drizzling rain the last couple of days and the ground is really muddy and sloppy. I had to pull a LE 8/4 ash slab and buck it to 10' then edge it to a 2X12 for a new customer who got my name from our local hardware store. They are kind of "Information Central" around here if you need any work done. This customer wanted a plank to place between 2 ladders.

   I climbed up on the shed and blew the leaves off and patched the hole causing the leak. While I was at it I scraped the tar off and fixed 3-4 more old nail holes that would eventually leak. I used the rivet repair method I learned from Tom King which works great. After that I rearranged the benches into the newly floored bay.

 

    After this picture I covered them with moving blankets and stacked a couple on top of the others. Actually I can stack several more layers and probably get 40-50 benches in this same space especially since most of what I make now are shorter versions, typically about 3' long.

   When I finished that I went ahead and built one quick bin next to the door/opening.


 

    It was a simple bin made with 3-1X4's nailed to the gate upright and a 114" 2X4 nailed to the 2X6 truss overhead for extra stability. When I finished that I stacked about 12 dozen mostly 5' WO tomato stakes I had out in the weather.


 

   By this time it was dark go I called it a day.