Sole plates

Sole plate tenons 
offset to allow space to fit the vertical wall posts

One of the challenges of building my shed was the space available to work in. Having to store some of the timber on the concrete base leaves little space to work. In the first few weeks I spent a lot of time just moving timber around. To give me more space I decided that erecting as much as of the frame as I could as work progresses would be a way to give me more space to work. The downside of this strategy is I have to take the frame down at certain times but it does mean I can layout for cross braces, etc. more easily than trying to do this in the usual way (in the horizontal plane).


I therefore decided that I needed to layout the sole plates and cut the joints in these timbers. Cutting the joints was relatively easy but I was rather concerned about the assembly of these simply due to the weight of the timbers. I can just lift one end of the 150mm square 4 metre long beams.


I put the sole plates together in the week of 9th April 2012 and, much to my surprise the assembly of these was very easy with the joints fitting just right first time. It was interesting that once in position it felt like the shed was beginning to take shape.

The sole plates assembled