My timber frame build

[beenthere]

Awesome !!
Great to see that t&g being laid down.. Sure is a long ways up there. 

[Magicman]

Exciting !!!  

[TimW]

I second what MM said.  It is exciting to watch this unfold

[Ljohnsaw]

From a little earlier in the day.

[TimW]

That is the exact size Genie lift we had to work on tails of 737s.  It should did have a lot of movement that high.  We couldn't make sudden body moves or it could bang into the tail

[Ljohnsaw]

Yeah, fully extended is a challenge to move smoothly. Handier than a shirt pocket! I still get 3D motion sickness in the evening. I have to move slowly in the trailer so I don't fall over! 🙄

[TimW]

What is fun is when someone on the ground switches the control to ground.  You're stuck.

Which reminds me, back in 1990, I was taking care of a DC-9 freighter at Houston's big airport.  I borrowed a manlift to check something out on top of the T tail.  When I was finished with the inspection and started to come down, it didn't.  The cargo ramp was empty, as it was a Sunday evening.  I was up there two hours before someone saw me and I got them to call the fire department.  A ladder truck came out and got me down.  I thought a couple of times to just straddling the vertical fin's leading edge and slide down it.  I seen it done before by an avionics technician, but I chickened out.

[realzed]

Just an honest question - not being critical..
but since time is always of the essence considering your location in the mountains there and often early snowfall and all, why bother with tongue and groove and not just slap the boards in place so everything goes up as quickly as possible.
Is there a measure of complexity or strength that T & G gives you to make it worth the extra effort and time?
Randy 

[Ljohnsaw]

I wanted T&G for the wall boards and floorboards (added strength there) and figured why not on the roof. The rafters are 24" OC so it does help up there, IMO.  Either way, some machining is needed. The bottom side is visible inside.

[Ljohnsaw]

Update 9/5/2024:

Spent the morning talking apart my wooden winches and rounding up some appropriate scaffolding frames. Repurposed the winch wood for planks. Probably got started doing roof boards around 10:30. I added the 7 rows in the triangle. Slow going but some of the 16 footers actually went in without much fuss.

[Magicman]

Wowser, that is eye-popping in more ways than one. 

[jeeper9574]

Looking great. Must feel nice to be inside there and start having the roof closing things in!

[Stephen1]

That's is looking really great John, Now you really need to keep moving, I'm not sure you want one side left undone , wind load. 

[Ljohnsaw]

Bit more done yesterday 




Yes, I'd like to get it balanced. The prevailing wind is from the West.

[SwampDonkey]

Better get hammering. 

[Ljohnsaw]

A little more done between yesterday and today.

[Ljohnsaw]

Update 9/11/2024

No pic but the boards are even all the way across and I pretty much finished my second pallet. Getting up there! I did see this Bob Ross-like picture about eye level in the loft and it's right side up. I'll put a frame around it 😉


Lots of happy little trees on a lake at sunset.

[Magicman]

That is a beautiful rendition.  I love your "frame" idea. 

[doc henderson]

John, looks maybe some presidential faces on a mountain side in the middle!

[Resonator]

I know a guy that has been known to find animal faces in the paneling in his cabin...

[Ljohnsaw]

Ok, one more pic. To be continued next week.

If you look closely at the far end, there is a lone board at the top. So I need to complete it with the current pallet. These boards were really good and installed fairly easily. The pallet I had under it was milled first and not so good. I'm going to re-mill to make them closer to perfect.

EDIT: evening weather report for next week. Scattered showers Monday and Wednesday. Up to a half inch up there on Wednesday. (Oooh, scary amount🙄) Snow level above 8,000'. Temps in the 50s for the highs.

[thecfarm]

Better get boarding!!! 

[Ljohnsaw]

Update 9/18/2024:

I came up yesterday. There was a light rain overnight. Top fraction of an inch of the moon dust was wet  Cold and damp I started slow.

Put the new batteries in the Skytrac. It's never cranked so fast! It was pretty chilly so it needed a whiff of ether to pop over.

Put the new starter in the tractor. I mentioned on the other thread that when I pulled the old one and messed around with it a bit, it started working. Anyhow, I put the new one in and hooked the battery back up  without reinstalling the fuel filter, I turned the key and it fired right up. I immediately shut it down, installed the water separator and fuel filter. Started it back up and let it run a bit.

Two for two. I gathered up some more scaffolding and lifted it up withe the Genie. Made a couple trips. Then I pulled it around the side and got the basket in position to load some boards.  The up/down joystick wasn't working. It was giving the "I'm not level" alarm in bursts. The machine was perfectly level.

Turns out it gives two short beeps every 30 seconds when there is a fault. Except it uses the out of level beeper to do that. That beeper is a hi-lo alternating one. It gave me a Hi-Lo-Hi pause Lo-Hi-Lo every 30 seconds. Not a beep-beep like the manual says.

I figured a wire broke and it was too dark to see. I have the full manual set up here so I looked at the fault section. You are supposed to pull the cover off the basket panel and check the LED flash sequence to determine the fault. Well, there are 49 fault codes. Nine of them require recalibration of the joysticks. Instructions are provided. The remaining 40 faults are reset by powering down and restarting. So it was fine this morning.

I gathered up my tools and started putting up some boards. Very slow going now. I can reach less than a third of the length of the roof from the south west corner now. I place a couple boards, go inside up on scaffolding to slide them into position, fit the T&G and nail. Mid afternoon the clouds started to thicken and the let loose with a fierce hail storm, 1/2" hail for a good 20 minutes. Then rain. Short work day!

[SwampDonkey]

Do a rebuild on the starter and have one ready for next time. 

Haven't seen hail here for a couple years now and when it came it was in May. Was as big as yours, but not more than 5 minutes of it.

[Andries]

Building in extreme climates is sometimes like an episode of Survivor.
Hang in there John - you're doing great!