The time was fast approaching when I could button up the wire frame tunnel, wrapping it with the 6mil greenhouse plastic.
First, concurring with reader EarlM, I secured al the wireframe panel edges with hog rings along the joints. Yes, zip ties are not what was ultimately needed but sufficed for the initial assembly, but the metal hog rings were necessary for the long haul. Addressing the issue of stable edge joints was paramount as the ongoing vibrations of wind against the wire/plastic would eventually breach the film membrane. Not good. However should that ever occur I can repair it with special tape made for that purpose.
And speaking of tape, I decided to cover the edges and hog rings with Ace Hardware store brand heavyweight packing tape. It is not very good for packing cardboard boxes but really excelled at this application. Two layers of the thick transparent tape had me ready for the final step of this episode — draping the whole thing with the plastic film and affixing said film to the edges of the wooden structure.
I’d arranged for my friend Boyd to come over to help, and he was a great help with excellent ideas on how to actually do the task.
I spent the next few hours tacking down the edges to secure the lid. Not all of it was aesthetically exquisite, but it has been holding fast through some pretty fierce winds already.
It’s beginning to look a lot like greenhouse, just in time for Christmas.
With the wire frame tunnel in place it was time to frame out the ends. It was not as easy as I had hoped given that the perfect semi-circular arc was not, well, perfect. Nor was it even symmetrical for both ends. Mostly a semi-circular arch, but not perfect. That meant that every stick had to be custom cut and fit before assembling with deck screws. plus, the pile driver/local rocky dirt combination meant that the posts themselves were out of perfect by about an eighth of an inch. All of that compounded to make sure the assembling of the end framing was a tedious process.
I did have the advantage(?) of lots of recycled windows and doors. When you have replaced all the windows in two houses, you’ve got plenty of inventory. There are two doors at each end, one screened and the other glass. All of the windows will be openable as screened awning windows once the weather is right in the early summer (our “frost free” date is May 30).
Notwithstanding the fact that the arch at the east end of the space was 2″ off-axis due to whatever factor — lunar forces, prevailing trade winds, inherent torque in the raw material — it was an easy enough problem to rectify once I recognized it.
Compounding all of the tedium was that we were at the time of year when I lose usable working light by about 4PM, at least “usable” for these tired old dysfunctional eyes. But after about four days of effort the ends were framed and mostly glazed. I say “mostly” because we are awaiting the arrival of the solar ventilation fan to get installed before everything gets buttoned up.
At least you get the idea.
Up next; draping the plastic. Stay tuned.
…to discover this carpentry tip.
While working on the greenhouse I brought down my favorite sawhorses but found the ground to be too uneven to use them. Perhaps I should have chosen my Butterfly Sawhorse instead. In a moment of inspiration I realized I could create a stable workstation by simply screwing the two horses together at a right angle to create a rough triangle configuration.
Zzzztttt. Problem solved.
As I assembled the “tunnel” of the greenhouse from the cattle panel fencing I noted a lot of wiggle in the structure, even after tying all the sections together with zip ties at their edges. Yeah, yootoobers swear it can withstand fierce winter weather but my friend Floyd over on the east side of the county, and whose greenhouse was absolutely the inspiration for this one, indicated that our occasional heavy snow (~18″) caused him some problems. Being the over-builder that I am, I decided to add curved ribs inside the tunnel to beef it up.
My first step was to configure to tunnel to be symmetrical which required aligning the center of the arched panels with the center line of the overall structure. Using a simple plumb bob I pushed and pulled the sections to be at least along the same center line. I’d hoped that this combined with the rib-building process would make all the arch curves identical.
With string lashing to keep the arches aligned with the center line, along with diagonal wooden braces, I set about the task.
Using my little table saw more than I have in a long time I sliced off a pile of 3/16″ strips to build the laminations. For the most part simply clamping the strips to the underside of the arches imposed a semi-circular arc, and this was enhanced by the continued build-up of the laminations.
A combination of spring clamps by the bushel, T3 glue and a multitude of crown staples the ribs began to take shape. The enhanced structural robustness became increasingly clear as the glue dried, which took about three days given the moisture content of the PT SYP lumber strips and the weather itself.
All in all it took me almost three days to get the 10-layer ribs finished, but they are now in place for the next step, framing in the ends of the tunnels and adding doors and windows.
Seriously, the structure is now strong enough that I could crawl all the way to the top to staple the fence grid to the ribs.
The conceptual core of this greenhouse design is an arched tunnel made from heavyweight metal grids, known as “cattle panels [fencing].” In fact that is what the product is used for, to fence cows in or out, and it is robust enough to withstand the rubbing of cattle against it. Even our little feed-and-seed hardware store in the middle of the least populous county east of the Mississippi has a stack of it out in the yard, and since the dimensions are 52″ x 16′ I was glad they could and did deliver it to the greenhouse site.
Unfortunately I failed to get a picture of my pile of eight panels, but here is one lying on the ground. They are #6 gauge so plenty stout.
These panels are not heavy but they are unwieldy. Think of trying to handle a full sheet of 1/4″ luan plywood in a windstorm. Once I got the hang of handling these panels and setting them in place on top of the knee walls it went fairly quickly. I first strung parallel lines on top of the wall sills, then drove in nails along those lines. The nails were proud about an inch to “catch” the ends of the fence panels as I placed them where they belonged. In an hour or so they were all in place.
I drove fence staples all along the bottom edges of the panels then joined the panel edges together with zip ties along the joints to yield a single 30-foot panel from the multiple individual four-foot panels.
This is going to be a marvelous addition to the homestead.
Most folks building this style of greenhouse simply drape it with plastic at this point, assuming (correctly) that the arched configuration could withstand all manner of problematic weather. I know this to be true but it felt a little flimsy to me, so I decided to build structural ribs to enhance the robustness of the arch.
That’s what comes next.
With stout posts driven 36″+ into the ground I was ready to move forward and ordered the requisite 1/4″ hardware cloth to cover the entire floor space (to keep out all the little rodents that make Mrs. Barn’s gardening life one of frustration) and the pile of 2x8x10′ PT/SYP to build the knee walls and other components. Now that was a shock, as the price was 3X more than the last time I ordered any meaningful quantity of construction lumber. Those who are Inflation Deniers clearly do not comprehend either the definition of the term nor its manifestation. But Don, are you saying you are smarter than the President and Secretary of the Treasury and Chairman of the Federal Reserve and all those other “experts”?
Yup. Why that is would be another blog post, or better yet, in some other universe of discourse. Hint: it all boils down to the “Austrian” strain of economics.
I laid the hardware cloth and began screwing the 2x8s to the posts. I bought enough material for a four-course wall but Mrs. Barn decided three was better, so I managed to build my reserve inventory of that supply even more.
With the three courses in place, I fired up the chainsaw and lopped off the posts at the top of the knee wall. Carpentry by chainsaw is definitely a thing. Those scraps will become bench legs in the greenhouse configuration.
Setting the edge with string I lined up all the sill plates on top of the walls and posts, readying everything for the addition of the cattle fence panels that will form the arched roof structure.
Stay tuned.
Looking through my lumber inventory for vintage cherry boards from which to make the trim for the new bay window, I found some beauties. Unfortunately, all the boards I had on the top of the pile were about 4″ shorter than I needed for the lintel and base trim. The deeper into the pile I looked, the more frustrated I got as these were too short also. Aaaargh!
After many days of ruminating on the problem, including contemplating a trip to a sawmill to get some new lumber, I settled on a plan to stretch my boards by grafting in some diamond “dutchmen” as decorative elements into the center of the boards I had. I rough cut the boards with my circular saw and a fence, then fed them through the lunchbox planer.
I laid out the dutchman on the inlet, clamped the inlet board and the longer board together, and cut the angles with my reciprocal saw and a speed-square fence. The kerfs were smoothed with my Iwasaki float to fit them together well.
Using pinch dogs on the verso as the clamps (indispensable accessories I first used in the foundry patternmaking shop when I worked there 45 years ago), the glue margins drew together very tight with nice squeeze-out of the PVA I was using as the adhesive.
To counteract the slight curling induced by the pinch dogs being only on one side of the assemblage, 10-pound bricks were placed on each end of the gluing-together element to press them flat on the bench top.
The next morning they were ready for me to work by hand.
The past three years have seen the dramatic improving of the envelope of our domicile, part of which is a c.1890 chestnut log cabin and the other a c.1985 modern kitchen, dining room, and bathroom. Three years ago we had the stone/block walls of the crawlspace underneath the whole insulated and the ground underneath sealed with heavyweight plastic sheet (depending on your physics literacy the system was either wicking cold in or wicking heat out like a champ, the only thing that was for certain was that before the insulating and sealing the floor was icy all winter long); two years ago we had the cabin completely re-chinked with all the old chinking stripped out and new chinking skillfully installed. The combination of the two improvements made the floor much warmer, room temperature as opposed to refrigerator temperature, and reduced the air flow ~90% or so. Not a small thing when you live in a windy, wintery place.
Last year we intended to continue the trajectory by having all the windows in the home replaced. The extant units were all of modest quality from the 80s, with the sash windows augmented by aluminum triple-track storm windows. One feature of the latter is that they provide excellent ventilation, open or closed, year-round. Ever since we moved there in 2013 I have been taping plastic over the windows every winter just to keep the interior somewhat congenial.
We ordered the new, high-performance windows about eighteen months ago, but given the disruptions to the manufacturing and supply chain the windows did not arrive for more than a year. When they finally did arrive, a local contractor installed them lickety-split, replacing more than a dozen old windows in two days, all finished.
Except for Mrs. Barn’s prized new bay window in the dining room.
That one took four days of work, reframing the opening and installing the new custom unit. It transforms the whole house.
Extending the schedule of the bay window project was the need for me to fabricate all new trim for the unit. We decided to go with some of my vintage cherry lumber to be harmonious with the built-in cherry china cabinet already in the room. The only hitch was that none of my cherry boards were long enough for the upper and lower trim boards, missing the mark by just a few inches.
Next time you will learn about my board-stretching technique.
Stay tuned.
I first met Webmeister Tim during my research for the H.O. Studley tool cabinet book, probably around 2012 or 2013. I got an email from a fellow who said, “Hey, I think I’ve got a vise like the ones you are talking about.” I arranged to meet him in person at a diner in southern Maine and sure enough, he had a vise much like the ones about which I had been waxing ecstatic. Tim was a wood turner but not yet a full-spectrum woodworker, so he allowed me to borrow his vise to study, and eventually, to display in the 2015 exhibit that coincided with Handworks 2015. Of all the piano-lakers’ vises I’ve seen his is the closest to Studley’s.
Our agreement was that he would come and get it, “Whenever.”
Well, after more than a decade of long-distance friendship, including dozens of phone calls relating to the business of the donsbarn.com website, which he now steers, “Whenever” finally occurred last month. Finally aligning the stars of our respective lives, he was able to come to Shangri-la and spend a week with us in the Virginia hinterlands. It was truly a great time of fellowship and productive work together.
Our focus for the week was to build him a heritage workbench that would last the rest of his life and probably any eventual grandchildren and great-grandchildren as well. The raw material for the bench was my slabbed black walnut, the style of the bench a split-top Roubo.
I worked him really hard during the week, beginning with hand sawing the almost 5″ thick slabs to length.
There were a couple of regions of the slabs needing attention, so we saturated them with diluted West System epoxy and walnut sawdust, followed by a top sprinkling of sawdust on top to provide a good surface for final finishing when it got to that point.
I did not have slab stock for the legs and stretchers, so we had to laminate them from black walnut cut from the same tree and some vintage stock I had in my lumber barn. For the newer stock we ran them through my little Ryobi 10″ planer that has been serving me well for about 35 years.
For the vintage stock from my barn, they had been planed eons ago so all they needed was a quick scrubbing with a wire brush to remove any debris and freshen up the surfaces for gluing.
Then glued-up they were with T3 to accommodate any situation the bench might find itself in the future.
Thus endeth Day One of the Great Webmeister Tim Bench Build.
In addition to the first lawn mowing of the year, signifying (we hope) the end of winter (although our frost-free planting date is still six weeks off), our little cabin underwent a transformative few days as the new windows we ordered last summer were finally installed. We can generally work in one big project per year, and this is the one for 2023. Since the weather was sunny we were both working in the yard and did not get to watch/photograph every detail, plus the fellows worked so fast, but here are a few images.
The old windows were inexpensive double hung units with a triple track storm window grafted on to the outside, probably from the early 80s. They were looking pretty shabby but even worse their performance could best be described as providing excellent ventilation, open or closed, year round. Since we moved here I have had to tape plastic sheeting over the windows every winter. Hint – if you have to do this THE BEST material to use is the transparent shower curtains from Dollar General.
Like I hinted, the fellows hit the ground running Monday morning. They have done a lot of this so knew exactly what to do. Actually, the window units were held in place only by the trim molding directly against them so once that was pried off the units just popped out. I was amazed at the pace of work.
Sorry about the image quality, it was binding bright outside and our usual grotto inside.
The new Anderson units popped in place lickety split, and the trimming out was actually the slowest part of the process. The living room windows went in first, and on Tuesday we were glad for that as the wind howled all day and into the evening, probably 30-40 mph. Working out in the yard was like getting sandblasted. But that evening as we were watching our nightly episode of The Chosen, there was not even a breath of air coming off the windows onto our necks. Superb.
The most spectacular transformation is in the bedrooms upstairs. It seems like the light coming in is twice as much as before. That cannot be literally true but the new visual atmosphere is pretty wonderful. BTW the trunk underneath the window is my suspenders repository, and it is almost full. I rotate them out regularly.
The last part of the project is to replace the double windows in the dining room with a custom-made bay window which will both brighten the space and provide a shelf for some of Mrs. Barn’s plants.
We saved all the old window units and they will be repurposed into hot beds and cold frames for the garden. That is in keeping with the motto of folks in the hinterlands: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.
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