Back over at the Fort this afternoon for a couple of further measurements - the depths of the old beams holding up the floor.
I've now drawn the designs at as a large a scale as possible, spotted a couple of problems and re-drawn them, and I'm reasonably sure I know where to start: at the top, and against the wall. Everything is then worked back and away from the stringer it's impossible to put in afterwards.
Oh well, I know what I mean, even if I can't explain it.....
The beams are now all a little cleaner, after being sandblasted, and - from my particular point of view - it should be possible to see the old nails in them before using a chisel.
Removing several centuries' worth of dirt has revealed some very interesting grain - and a lot of very old woodworm - on the things like this doorframe.
And now, or at least very soon, the first bits of the stairs - the low plinth they'll stand on, to spread the weight over the floorboards - will be cut, sanded, routered, shaped, and installed. And then it'll be the first newel post and stringer.
Sometimes I wonder what is holding the Fort together. Probably just gravity .... the gravity of what would happen if anything shifted.
Take this beam:
There's a large cross beam (underneath the camera) and the large beam with the remains of junction box fastened to it is about four or five metres of 250mm by 250mm oak. And it has a convenient notch cut out of it, just where it ought to sit on the cross beam. I think another beam - coming in from the left - with a corresponding notch used to sit underneath it, but at some point in the past it has been moved away. Probably to make the unfeasibly steep staircase a better fit.
The lighter-coloured wood at the end of the notched beam is a bit of scrap wood nailed onto it to support a couple of floorboards above that would otherwise be floating at that point. When we remove the unfeasibly steep staircase we'll put some sensible joists in place there.
I'd been cleaning up along the top of the cross beam when I noticed that here was an accident waiting to happen. Fortunately there is quite a bit of old (and new) oak around on the site, so I cut this one and shaped it roughly to fit:
It needed a bit more planing, as the gap under the beam wasn't quite square - for that matter, the top of the cross beam wasn't particularly level either.
And in it went - with the aid of a mallet - a good snug fit:
Much better now.....
In the meantime, I'm just starting work on the staircase. I've bought a few rough boards of 54mm thick oak: here they are as they arrived, with Mike's dad John about to help unloading. These are heavy, about 30cm wide and 2.6m long.
I wasn't able to get large square section oak for the newel posts, so I have sliced some of the boards up into pieces about 100mm wide, and then glued them together, with the aim of getting a post that's about 100 by 90 mm. It will actually be a bit smaller as it goes through the planer a few times to get nice flat surfaces to glue - and then afterwards, to get nice flat edges. Here's one in process. I'm short of sash clamps, and one end didn't quite close up, so I am regluing just that bit. It's the bit furthest away from the camera in the picture.
The oak looks very nice once it's been planed, so I am hoping for some good results.
