All the wood carried by hand into the workshop. The sapele cills have been moulded for me by a local joinery shop. TBH I'd rather pay them to handle those 4.5m long lengths...compared to buying in the wood myself or getting them to supply and mould...it worked out about a tenner a length for them to do the graft. Well worth it IMO.
And therein lies the rub. Here is the basic design - roof still TBD. Internal area just within the limits to avoid Building Control.
The design is "windows - doors - windows - doors - windows" down the long 8m front. All window and door elements are essentially identical to aid prefabrication by me - sort of batch production. The ovals and glazing bars will be plant-ons. The ends have had a slightly different smaller window panel added but otherwise same criteria.
The idea was then to make a frame
into which the prefabricated window and door elements will slide in. The first design was to have the frame stiles this way round - (A) - stiles 100mm x 50mm.
But then I realised that the timber I have is only 60mm or so sawn and so after planing etc chances are it might not make the 50mm. So I redesigned it - (B). 110mm x 40mm. And that also let me do away with the filler used in (A) to get the stiles to the correct width. I'd also do away with the need for sub-frames.
Then I realised that that gave me a problem trying to build the frame in-situ as I wanted to minimise the joins in the cills. I could have had a bash at making each side by lying it on its side as I made it up but then trying to manhandle a heavy 8m x 2.3m high frame to the vertical by myself and without twisting and breaking it would be nigh on impossible. Not a chance of making them in the workshop and carrying them out either.
Back to the drawing board. The other question also was how level was the plinth.
So I've decided to go full-circle and back to making sub-frames. The cills will be fixed and levelled and made as co-planar as possible to the plinth. (C)
Then I'll make sub-frames in the workshop, carry out and fix to each other using a filler piece to get the spacing between them right and provide for final tweaking to get it all to fit. (D)
Potential problems are :
1) how do I keep that plinth from filling up with water and making a bath ? I think the best way is to leave the undersides of the cills clear so that there will be the inevitable gap between that and the DPM. That way surplus water can escape. Once the building has been made watertight then I can seal them. The cills will have been painted using linseed oil paint underneath.
