A New Year - Jan. 7, 2012

Out with the old, in with the new - side sill, that is.  On New Year's eve day several hardy souls removed the east half of the north sill that had rotted from the water from an icebox in this corner.  On the first work day of the new year the new sill was fitted in place.

In the photo on the left is a view of the northeast corner of the car showing the framing that was mortised into the  top of the old sill, and the new piece on chairs next to the car.  The photo on the right is looking in the opposite direction.  The new piece and remaining good section of the original sill will be joined with a taper as shown, then glued with epoxy and bolted together.

In the photo on the left, Bob is cutting the taper into the original sill end.  On the right, it was asked how many Friends it takes to change a sill?  Craig's answer was "As many as we can get."  It took a few tries to get all the mortises and notches to fit snugly, but the process went quite well.

It took some tweaking with saws and chisels to get all the pieces to fit together, but eventuall they did.  Some of the tenons on the vertical framing had to be tapered to raise the new sill in place.  The horizontal tenons were cut during removal of the old sill, and will be replaced with angle iron plates.  In the photo on the right a clamp is holding the old and new pieces together temporarily.


Concurrently with the sill replacement Ray and John were replacing the horizontal tie rods.  The side of the shelter had to be raised to remove the long rods, and things got rather interesting near the end of the process as a cold front went through and blew the fabric out and up.  It shifted to the other side as well, but everthing came back together as we tightened the loose side back down.  At the end of the day the vertical and horizontal tie rods had been passed through the new sill and were securrely tightened.