Pre-raising frame fit up story & raising story

[Jim_Rogers]

In August of 2010 I held a workshop here at the sawmill yard to cut joints for a frame for a client.

This landscaper lady has her frame just about completely ready to raise.

We hopefully will raise it on Saturday January 14th starting at 10 am.

It will be an old fashion hand raising with just a gin pole for lifting the plates.

She and her workers have be cutting joints and getting things ready for several weeks lately.

They had just about everything done and asked me to come over and help them with the finishing up by making some long mortises for the curved braces in bent 2.

I did that in December.

This past weekend we continued with some of the pre-raising fit up of the frame.

What we do is fit each timber's tenon into the mortise where it will go when the frame is erected, to insure that it will fit correctly. Before we try that we bore the peg holes in the mortise timber. Then when we have the tenon in the mortise and it fits right we put the drill bit into the hole and turn the bit counter-clockwise to make a point in the tenon. After removing the tenon we offset the point a little to "draw bore" the hole.

This method causes the peg to pull the joint together when you pound it in.

Here is a shot of a wall nailer and it's peg:



Her workers have done the bent fit ups and have that all done.
What I mean is after we test fit each tenon to each mortise, what I call one to one, as it is one timber to one timber, we then put the entire assemble together. A bent is like a giant "H" with braces from the post up to the tie beam.

Her frame has three bents. It is a version of the garden shed from Jack Sobon's book.

Now that the bents have been tested. We've been doing the walls.

The first wall we did was the back wall that will only have two windows, in it.

This came out quite nice.

Here are two shots of the back wall:



Her daughter stood up on the wall at the sill corner and took this picture with my camera.
I then instructed her to just turn a little and take another:



The timber on the left, that my sun glasses are sitting on, is the sill. The timber with the braces going up to it is the plate.

Yesterday, we fit up the other wall.
But at the end of the day it was too dark to take a picture of the completed wall sitting on saw horses and blocks above the foundation area.

Now that the walls have been tested, we know that all the joints are going to go together on raising day.

Next we'll put the sills down onto the granite blocks she has for the foundation.
And drop in the floor joists.

Her decking hasn't been planed and tongue and grooved yet, but should be this coming week.
In order to have a "temporary deck" we're going to put some 1x8 siding on the joists so that we'll have something to stand on while we raise the frame.

After the decking is done, hopefully on Friday if it isn't still raining, we're going to put the bents together and have them ready for Saturday morning.

Her daughter is suppose to bring a camera that will take stills and videos. So hopefully next week I'll have some more to show you.

If you are within driving distance and want to join us on Saturday, just drop me an email and I'll send you the address. It's within 3 miles of my sawmill yard.

Jim Rogers

[Jim_Rogers]

Well, we took the second wall apart today.

Put the sills down and I left my camera here on my desk. Boy was I pithed.

We dropped in the floor joists and put on some 1by temporary decking.

Then we assembled bent two, and bent three.
After a pizza break, we got bent one ready to go together. The client wanted to wait until we have the crowd there tomorrow to see the final bent go together.

We also put a rafter pair together with a collar beam to be read for the raising.
That was so I could show one of her workers how to do it.
He may do rafter pairs while we are doing something else. Don't know for sure if he'll do that or not.
We'll have a camera person on duty tomorrow taking lots of stills and maybe some videos as well.

More tomorrow.

Jim Rogers

[dukndog]

Get those pics Jim!!!  Can't wait to see the progress and raising!!

DnD

[canopy]

I understand for precision one might wait and scribe the tenon peg holes as described, but why wait to drill the mortises? In fact, it would seem advantageous to drill the mortise peg holes before even making the mortise so there is no wood blow out into the mortise pocket.

[Buck]

PPPpplease! get the pics...

[jamesamd]

I really wish My Son and I could come and help Jim but work will not allow that to be.I wish You all,a safe and successful raising!

My Son and I had a great time at Your workshop and the experience bonded Us closer together. Meeting a couple FF members as well, was a big plus.Tell Lillabeth, We'll be there in spirit.
Jim

[Jim_Rogers]

I understand for precision one might wait and scribe the tenon peg holes as described, but why wait to drill the mortises?

Good question, the reason why I do it is that in the past we bored the peg holes at their correct location through the mortise, as we cut them. But the frame took months to finish, maybe even 18 months. During that time the timbers that were first completed continued to dry. During this drying process, I noticed that the peg holes distorted. That is they were not round when we went to drive in the peg.
This caused problems with the pegs. We didn't want to shave the pegs and make them smaller. And we didn't want to try and "re-bore" the holes. So to solve this problem with frames that may take a long time to process, I developed this idea to wait and drill the mortise peg holes when we do the frame fit up.

When we do the frame fit up on timbers that have aged some, the fresh holes work out great and there isn't any problems with the pegs fitting.

Also, the peg holes may not distort, it may depend on the type of wood being used.
This is just something I do to make it work for me.

Jim Rogers

[Jim_Rogers]

Today, I received some pictures and videos that the host's daughter took during the raising.

Over four hours she took 500 pictures and 9 videos.
Some were short videos only a minute or two some were longer.

There were lots of the people there that she knew and not of the actual raising event.
I may go through the pile and move out the ones that show the people and not the raising itself and see how many are left.

I'll start an album of pictures for understand raising process. But I can't do alot at any one time.
I'll try and add some everyday for a while and then we can discuss them.

Here is the first one:


This is a shot of me giving some information about how we pre-fit up the two bents that are all ready to stand up, just off camera to the camera person's right.

Here is the last photo of the group with the frame up.



And here is a nice shot of the frame similar to the frame drawing:



Here is the drawing:



I think it looks pretty much like it should.

Jim Rogers

[Jim_Rogers]

Here is a shot of the three bents.
Bent #1 is not assembled but the tie beam is on the pony saw horses ready to go together and have the tenons poked to then draw bore the holes.
To the right of that is bent #2 which is assembled and nearly in the correct position to raise.
To the right of that is bent #3 which is assembled and on horses outside the frame.



Next we see that half of the bent is assembled:



During the assembly of the bent it was necessary to have it stationary.
One way to do that is to secure it with some "Butt clamps":



The men in the middle may look like they're taking a break and drinking coffee, but they are both doing something very important.
They are sitting on the tie beam holding it still.
The fellow in the red plaid hat is a Forestry Forum member who drove over to help out and we thank him for doing so.

Behind her brother, you can see the bent all assembled and ready to be lifted up.



At the ends of the sills where the bent will stand are some "kickers" which are 2x6 planks timberlok screwed onto the sills and braced with a diagonal so that when the bent is being raised the foot of the post won't slide off the sill and this works very well to do that.

I hope you enjoyed this installment.

Jim Rogers

[Jim_Rogers]

Next we see me demonstrating how a board will be used as a temporary brace to hold the bent vertical until the plates are put on.



We use duplex nails so that they can be easily removed when we want to take the temporary brace down.

Now we see that the rope to help pull the bent up is attached.



Also, a rope is attached so that the bent can be held vertical and not pushed completely over. It's kind of a safety line.
The two young men in the foreground are the sons of the man in the background. They drove down from NH to help us raise the frame. And we thank them for that.

Here I am holding a "push stick" that we use when the tie beam gets up and over our heads. We cut several and they were both 4' and 6' in lengths.



This next shot:



Shows us sliding the bent over and back to get it in line with the pockets on the sills.

Bent #1 Up



Here you can see that bent #1 has been raised.

The men are holding the ropes to hold it still, the safety rope is being held as well.
And the push sticks are in use.
The temporary brace is being attached to both sides of the bent at the same time by two men with claw hammers and boards that have had the nails pre-started and ready.

More later.

Jim Rogers   

[Thehardway]

Wow, I now know that my calling in life was to be a butt clamp!  I can do that job real well and find it very rewarding, especially with a bologna sandwich and a jug of sweet tea.   Great job Jim.  It looks great but more importantly it will serve the owner(s) well for centuries to come.

[piller]

Nice Job!  Enjoyed the pictures.

[Bill Gaiche]

Really nice Jim. Thanks for sharing. bg

[dukndog]

Great job Jim. Thanks much for the pics. Looks a bit cold there on the raising!!

[Jim_Rogers]

Great job Jim. Thanks much for the pics. Looks a bit cold there on the raising!!

Yes, it was a bit chilly that day. High temp was 27° F

Thanks for your comments.

More to come.....

Jim Rogers

[Jim_Rogers]

I really wish My Son and I could come and help Jim but work will not allow that to be.I wish You all,a safe and successful raising!

My Son and I had a great time at Your workshop and the experience bonded Us closer together. Meeting a couple FF members as well, was a big plus.Tell Lillabeth, We'll be there in spirit.
Jim

Here is a shot of jamesamd and his son at the workshop in August of 2010:

 

His son was always ready with a quick funny saying or something like this:



And sometimes he'd catch me off guard and I'd "say what?:



But they did nice work and their joints all went together.



Jim Rogers

[Jim_Rogers]

Ok, so where did we leave off?

I know bent #1 was up and braced off, after checking for plumb:



Next, some kickers were installed next to bent #2 post foot locations and the ropes were again attached to the tie beam.
Also, to prevent a trip hazard the diagonals of bent #1 kickers were removed.



Now that the bent was ready it was positioned for the lift:



Once up it was braced off as well:



More to come,

Jim Rogers

[Jim_Rogers]

As with all plans, something sometimes gets forgotten.

I forgot to put in the back wall nailer before we raised up bent #2.

So we had to lean it out to slip the nailer in:



Once it was in place we pegged it off:



And we added a temporary brace anyway:



You can see the "kicker" at the bottom of the post on bent #2.
This was moved down to the next bent. There was one for each side.

The next back wall nailer was remembered and installed:



And we had to make a "support ladder" for the front wall as it had two nailers. One below the window and one above it.



A couple of boards or planks are used to construct a temporary support to hold these nailers up.
The small boards that go from one vertical support board to the other are like "rungs" of a ladder.
So that's how this support system got it's name.

The rungs are attached 3/4" or 1" lower then the actual finish height of the nailer, so it just hangs down a little.
Then when the bent is stood up, the nailer is lifted up just a little to slide into it's mortise.
If the rung was at the correct height and the nailer was by accident too high then we'd have to fight to get the nails pulled out while the bent was leaning. Not a safe thing to do.

We have used these "support ladders" many times. After the bent was up we just pulled the duplex nails from the rung boards and disassembled the ladder.

Here is bent three up:



You can see the support ladder in the background, with the two nailers going through the middle of it.

Next we get ready to lift the plates up and on top of the post's top tenons.

Jim Rogers

[Jim_Rogers]

As mentioned the next step was to set up the gin pole.

We constructed the gin pole a few years ago, and have used it to raise the plates on several timber frames since we made it.

The pole is just a 6x6 and I think it's 16' long.

 

This is a picture of it when it was new back then.
You can see I put a threaded rod through the pole about a foot down from the top, for the chain to go around that holds the hook from the top block.

The bottom has a tenon on it to go into another 6x6 and we added braces to help make it stable, from side to side.
Others here on the forum have constructed their own gin pole from these pictures and it is something that is easy to use.

Here is a shot of the bottom:

 

Basically it's a giant upside down "T" with braces. The braces help make it stable from left to right, and with all that weight it makes the bottom end heavy, and wide for pressing down onto whatever you set it on. Usually we set it on the decking of the frame so we know it's solid and supported.

I was advised, years ago, to not lean it over more then 20° from vertical. This keeps everything safe and not overloaded.

In order to figure this out, that is the 20° lean, I drew the gin pole and put it into my frame model in my drawing program. I placed it onto the deck and leaned it over 20° and arranged it so that the pick point (the threaded rod at the top) was directly over the tenons on the three posts. That was so that the plate would lower down onto the tenons directly without any swinging it out or in to line it up.

Here is a shot of the drawing:



Being that this is a very accurate drawing program, I could then measure the distance from the post to the gin pole base and see that to be leaned over at a 20° angle that the base had to be 5' 6" off the post.
Using this measurement it is easy to setup your gin pole in the correct spot and when it leans over the tenons it at the right angle.

Before we raise the pole we put on all the rigging.

The top gets a chain for the hook on the block:



The the block and tackle set up is laid out:



The stationary block is put at the top, the moving block is put at the bottom to be attached to the plates we will raise.

Once the entire setup is attached it is secured to the pole so we can pick up the pole and move it into position:



Above is the bottom of the pole ready.

Here is a shot of the top:



When the pole is up and leaned over with the back line and two guide lines tied off it would look like this at the top:

 

To redirect the pull line to a horizontal position we use another block at the base of the pole. To insure that the gin pole base can't slide on the deck we put a chain around the pole and the nearest post.
This chain also works to hold the "re-direction" block, as shown here:



After the pole is raised the plate is set onto some saw horses to make it easier to attach the lift line and block to it.

At this raising all this work was done, but the crowd of helpers were mostly in the way and the view of us doing this "set up" work was blocked by these people, so not all of this work got photographed.

More later.

Jim Rogers

[Jim_Rogers]

Before we could raise the gin pole we needed some temporary decking put up where the loft will be.
The day before the raising, I brought over, on my trailer, some 2x14x16' an 2x16x16' planks, enough to go fully across the tie beam to create the second floor decking.
We slid some of these up over the end tie beam:











Now that we have something for men to stand on we can raise the gin pole.

more to come

Jim Rogers