Kitchen frame

Before the heavy trusses can be placed into position, the support structure needs to be braced, by leaning on the braced up light timber kitchen frame. By next summer this will be the engine house for the some great meals and long lunches in the completed riders lounge.

Kitchen frame takes the load

View from the staff room

Putting together the big frame

Working with heavy salvage timbers can still be an exercise in carpentry. As my chipie mate Andy says, carpenters work in millimetres and plasterers in centimetres. Joints are checked out to allow for variations in timber sizes, steel plates bolted on and the whole thing bolted together like a portal frame.

Posts are checked out to a common thickness

Plates bolted on with M20 bolts

 "Roger" the beam to the left is named in honour of the source, regular rider Roger the Gippsland Dentist. 135mm x 390mm x 5400mm solid WA Jarrah.

Plates of steel

Our special heavy timber trusses, built on site from the Barwon Heads bridge timbers, are to be assembled using 10mm steel plates cut to engineers plan using laser cutting technology.

Plates made from black steel and allowed to rust.

Toolbox

Because we are heading into winter we have created a little toolbox to keep the tools dry when the weather comes in. It will probably retire to a second life as a new chook shed.

The little toolbox that will be a chook shed

House of sticks

The arrival of the framing timbers marks the beginning of the next phase of the building. Going vertical. Framing is always an exciting part of the build, as the spaces, views and scale all take shape. Apart from the the large span trusses in the lounge area which feature the Barwon Heads bridge timbers, the bulk of the framing will use locally sourced plantation pine from Carter Holt

Packs of timber ready for framing

Clean up the timbers

The Barwon Heads bridge timbers came complete with the remnants of the road surface. Before cutting the timber to construct the lounge area, the tar and stones were removed with a hammer chisel and wire brushes. We found the task was reasonably easy to do on a hot day when the tar was soft.

Timbers cleaned up and ready to cut to size

The little tractor

After old mate Jed ripped up the front lawn to lay irrigation drip pipes, we had to do a heap of raking. To the rescue came the lawn mower with a custom blade fitted to make easy work of pushing soil back into the irrigation trenches. With a bit of a top dress in spring this garden area should maintain a green fire resistant swathe right through the summer months.

The little tractor