Timber Frame Tools

The roof decking and siding on the gazebo will be made from rough cut 1″x8″. Ideally it should have been tongue and grooved, but I couldn’t find a router bit set locally that would tongue and groove lumber that was over 1″ thick (remember the rough cut lumber is over-sized) In hind-sight I should have mail ordered one. I was trying to save time by getting what I needed locally. So I settled for ship-lap by using a 1/2" rabbeting bit. Even this approach took two passes to get a rabbet that was a little over 1/2″ deep.

This could have been done by hand with a rabbet-plane or with a more rare rabbet-saw. But my MIL said she wanted “More power, arr arr arrr”. So we used the Porter Cable router.

The router makes a bit of noise and a lot of shavings. She was covered with shavings and saw dust after only a few passes….and there were a lot more to go.

Here are some of the finished products (lots more to go).

Note: if you use a rabbeting bit, stop every so often to tighten the bolt that holds the roller in place. We lost the first one and that brought siding production to a halt while we looked for it and eventually had to go get another one.

Of course no job is complete without a few visits from the “inspector”. He had a few complaints, but my MIL discovered he can be bought off with an apple piece. (She is sitting on the stack of siding left to be done, and her feet are resting on the pile she has completed.)