All trimmed up

After quite a bit of chipping out and sawing we put the trimmer into place, together with the new joist it will be supporting. There was quite a lot of trial and error - despite all my careful measurements - in getting the short beam to fit across the opening and into the two mortices that I had cut.



It looks a little lower than the beam against the wall - and in fact it is - but that's because the beam is several centimetres higher than the rest of the floor. The next layer of floor supports will be cut away at the wall edge to give a floor that is level all the way across. For the first time in four or five centuries, I'd guess.

It all had to be done from a step-ladder, as seen in the picture below, and there were one or two wobbly moments. The new beams are oak, and they're pretty heavy, and they had to be put in and taken out repeatedly.



The other end of the new joist simply sits on top of the big old cross beam  - as do all the other square timbers holding up the floor. It's lucky it didn't have to be cut to fit as that end of the beam had a few splits in it.



You can see how the new beam is supported at the other end in the picture above. Now these are in place we'll be able to get on with the floor in the other half of the room. We'll not be able to finish it, though, until we're able to take the old rickety stairs down.

The curve on the underside of the trimmer in the picture above is where I took out a bit of slighly spongy sapwood. It means we'll have a nicely rounded edge to hit our heads on rather than a sharp one.....

Chipping out at the Fort

Work on the Fort's new staircase is just starting. We've taken out one beam to make room for it, and the next job is to put in place a trimmer and a curtailed joist, after cutting into the trimming joists. I wasn't originally quite sure which is which, but putting these in let you have a space for the stairs that is bigger than the gap between the floor beams.

Our neighbour supplied the oak that will be going in, and it's been sitting on the floor underneath the opening while we tried to work out the exact size of the new stairs. As we've now taken that decision, we've marked the beams for the mortices and I have just started cutting them.

This one is in progress:



The beam is about 25cm square (10 inches as we used to call it) and the oak it's made of was probably felled five or six hundred years ago. It's not impossibly hard, and once you cut through the outer layer - with a little bit of worm - the rest of the wood is very nice. It cuts very cleanly with a chisel. 

Here's one I finished earlier:



You can just see on the left side of the cut where - many years ago - a wooden peg (I think these pegs are properly called "treenails") was inserted into the beam to hold down the floorboards above. This is a little deeper than needed: the "trimmer" will sit partly into the mortice, and partly on top of the beam, in order to have as much strength as possible in both the old beam and the new one.

The work is made just a little more difficult by the fact it has to be done on top of a stepladder two metres up off the floor, weilding a wooden mallet and a chisel. But that's easier than trying to perch on top of the joists, and involves less bending, too.