Archway Construction Begins

For the past few weeks we have worked on milling the wood. We have been in the shop at Evergreen cutting the old 12x6s down to size using the band saw. The band saw we were using we pretty much pushed to capacity trying to mill the enormous beams. We tried a couple different strategies to get straight cuts, including using gates and chalk-lines. We struggled with the blade bending and pushing the wood off course. Eventually we tried scoring the cut lines with a skill saw before running the beams through the band saw. Using the scores as our guides we made the long cuts with greater ease.

From the smaller pieces we shaped the beams and wings for our archway using electric handsaws. We measured the angles we needed for the wings, created a gate by clamping a square metal rod to the wood, and once again scored with a skill saw. Then we used a saws-all to expand the cut through the wood. With the same process and tools we trimmed the ends to the correct length.

5 of the 14 wings

Before long, we had 14 wings cut and ready to be planed and smoothed.

Wood Acquired

Collecting the 6x12s

For our archway we decided to reuse the fir wood from the deconstruction project. We collected and  relocated nine of the 6x12s that were being stored on campus. Because this wood had been pressure-treated for its previous use we were presented with the challenge of cutting it without contaminating the wood shop equipment or vacuum system. Don, the shop manager, let us use the band saw and hand tools to make our cuts, but first we had to complete the deconstruction by removing excess wood and hardware. Since we don't know the exact history of the fir we also needed to run it through a metal detector to make sure there was not stray nails or other metal that would damage the wood shop machinery or present a potential hazard to us while we were milling. This was a good learning experience that engaged us in making important considerations for the reuse of a material.

De-nailing the wood