A Day of Building the Layout

 Well, today dawned an overcast day with predicted rain.  Well bugger!  I can't put my drop saw outside to cut wood, now can I...  But wouldn't you know it, the weather bureau's prediction didn't come to fruition until 4:30 this arvo, well after tools down time :-)

So I started the day with a good strong coffee, then checked my supplies and found I was low on stock of 42 x 19mm DAR Pine.  So off to Bunnings to grab another 20 lengths.  By the way, my local Bunnings now hasn't got any decent 2.4m lengths of that wood size after I finished with their stock today :-)

Now the plan was to get enough wood ready to be able to make 12 frames for the middle deck. This should then make it that the middle deck around the wall would be in place - peninsulas come later.

So 12 frames needs 2 lengths of 1.2m 42 x 19mm DAR for the sides and then 4 cross members, each being ... let's see, if the deck is 600mm wide and the cross members go in between the 1.2m lengths, then they need to be 562mm in length.  So each frame needs just under 3.6 m of the 42x19mm DAR. So I need 18 of the 2.4m lengths of DAR.  I dragged them out into my outdoor workshop where I also moved the dropsaw for the morning., and proceeded to make a lot of noise and cut my timber up.

After a lot of sawdust and noise was made, I had the requisite bits of timber ready for my next batch of frames. 48 cross beams and the 24 sides.

The rest of the day was used to then do a little bit of drilling...  Each crossbeam needs 7 holes to cater for wiring.  So the drill press was setup and an 18mm spade bit inserted and away I went for a few hours making about 5 litres of sawdust and 336 holes.

The 48 crossbeams were then lugged back into the shed ready for the next stage of their evolution - screw holes - Pocket Screw holes to be precise.  So out with the drilling jig and away I went for the rest of the day, drilling 192 pocket screw holes.

So that was enough as it was 4 o'clock and time to go inside.  But of course sweep up the mess and clean up the benches for tomorrow.  And get the bits out for tomorrow - ie the screw driver and pocket screws.  Each frame will need 16 screws to assemble