This was a great day. So many people came to help. This was one thing I could never have done on my own.

A very satisfying day’s work. Also it was Birch’s fourh birthday.

Trying to work out how to cut the bird’s mouth notches for the roof beams to sit on the wall plate was pretty tricky. I’ve not done wood working of this complexity before. I had to buy a new, sharp, chisel and then do quite a few practice cuts before I felt confident in getting it right.

My initial model was done with plastacine so that I could get an idea of how the cut should look.

In the end I was very pleased with how the cuts came out out – they were a pretty snug fit.

This was a fun work day project to build the roof plate – the section that the roof timber sit on top of:

10 metre long timbers on the roof of the van. A stack of pallets (for the floor). Roof timbers stacked up.

I didn’t attach the OSB to the bottom of the base plate at first as I didn’t want it to be badly weathered.

However, I realied that I needed to attach the boards to the underside of the base plate before I got too far with the rest of the building otherwise. It’s OSB3 so it lasts pretty well in the rain anyway. I used bottle jacks to lift it up, and then glued and nailed them on. This was pretty tricky.

I built this tripod on my own in the hope that I could use it to build a roof. In the end it turned out to be useless!

I moved a lot of the timbers into place using a winch and ratchet straps.

The ground under the structure was slightly too high, so we spent a while dgging it out.

You can see a spoil pile here. This ended up being the start ramp for a BMX track. You can also see the brush from the felled trees in the background.

One of the things I could get on with in lockdown, when I wasn’t home schooling…

This was one of the first things I did with other people during the pandemic!

In early 2020 I coppiced the hazel tree in our garden to use for stubs and pins.

The tree has grown back very nicely since. It might be ready for another harvest before the walls are up!