High end cedar porch construction: the main beam

In the previous blog I talked about the ledger which required that I make my first ever lap joint.  This time around I want to focus on the largest piece of wood in the whole cedar porch.  It is the main beam that holds the other end of the rafters.

The beam was a very nice piece of wood.  Its dimensions were 6" x 12" by 20'2".  I actually really needed the extra 2" in the 20' measurement because of the patio slab dimensions and was lucky that 20' beam I ordered came a little longer. It was rough cut western red cedar.  It was gorgeous and smelled wonderful.
 
To start off I decided to plane the beam. Luckily before dad left he helped me plane the beam through my inadequate 6" porter cable thickness planar. It was ridiculous shoving that huge piece of wood through there.  The beam was actually 6.25" wide so we were maxed out with the planar.

One trick I learned through this process was to put Johnson Paste Wax on the the wood bearing surface of the planar which would make the wood slide more easily.  Also I had bolted the planar down to the sturdy shop bench I had made but even so everything was just too small so that the beam never quite aligned right with the planar and so we ended up pushing with all our might to get it through.  We ran it through a couple of times but it was not the best planing job. 

Once the 6" dimension was done it was time to tackle the 12" dimension.  I decided that a joiner would be the way to go.  I have a 6" Joiner from Lowes and there was no way I could run this huge beam on this little joiner which only has a 31" long table.  I had a hard enough time with 8' lumber.  20' lumber would be impossible.  Ever since I owned the joiner I wanted to get a better one I just never could find one for a decent price.  But now I was forced to put in an order for a joiner with a 6' long table for about $1000.   I wasn't sure that this would work but I had to try something.

Luckily, the item was discontinued and I did not get it.  I say luckily because my dad came up with the idea to use the joiner I had upside down.  When I did this I was quite amazed how well it worked.  The joiner even has two convenient bars on the bottom that function well as handles to hold the joiner as I guided it along the wood beam.   Its almost as if the joiner was made to work upside down.  After working so well my opinion of my little joiner had changed from I want to get rid of this piece of shit  to I kinda like this useful tool.  I think I'll keep it.

After planing the 20'2" beam I worked on the post joints.  By this time dad was gone and I had to do the rest of the work myself.  For the post joints Dad and I had designed a mortise and tenon joint with two oak pegs.  The joint was stronger than hurricane ties but also provided the beauty of a natural wood joint.  The mortise was designed to be 5" deep by 2.75" by 5.5".

To make a 5" deep mortise, I turned to youtube for instruction.  I found this video which makes use of chisels.   After watching several videos like this I decided to buy the cheapest mortise chisels I could find which are still pretty expensive.  They are Narex mortise chisels from the czech republic found on amazon.com.

I also saw this video of a chain saw mortisor and started drooling.  A chain  saw mortisor would have been so nice for this project but its hefty price tag of $1700 dollars put it out my reach.  I did think of using my drill press with a Forstner bit or mortise attachment on it but the beam height of 12" made it so that it would actually not even fit on the drill press once the bit was in the chuck.

What I actually ended up doing was using my milwaukee router with its plunge base and a 5 inch straight bit.  The five inch bit was the longest I could find.  I really wanted a 6" one, but this is just another example of why its so hard to make anything custom in the world today.  For making such a deep mortise I found that a 1/2" shank bits work best because I actually burnt my router out on a previous project with a 1/4" shank straight bit that bent.  Because the bit was bent, it vibrated the armature and then the router went up in smoke.  Long story short I got a professional to fix it and he screwed up the repair by not torquing it so that it fell apart when I was using it.  Luckily I was not hurt.  I had to buy the expensive tool to fix it and I decided not to ever let that guy repair my tools again

To aid in the making of the mortise I used a wood guide so that the mortise came out accurate.  Unfortunately, the mortise I made was only 4" deep. 

 

To carve out the final inch I resorted to a using a cheap drill guide,  drill extension and a Forstner bit.

The Forcner bit left a pretty rough bottom in the mortise so in the end I used my czech mortise chisels to clean the mortise up.  The end result is shown below.  Luckily the shoulder of the tenon covers up the roughness of the mortise edge so it is not seen

The next step was the tenon.  This was easily done with my harbor freight dado blade on my Dewalt table saw.  I also used a table saw sled that I had made previously from this video so that the shoulder and tenon would be square and accurate.  Shown below is half a tenon cut on the sled.
  

 

Once the tenons were cut it was time to fit them into the mortises.  Because I made the mortise and tenon accurately it was a tight joint.  There was a little clean out of the mortises to get the tenons in all the way and in fact it was necessary to apply Johnson paste wax to the tenon to prevent the tenon from getting stuck.

The next step was to drill the holes in the beam and tenon for oak pegs.  There were two pegs per tenon and I made sure to drill the holes when the tenons were fully engaged in the mortise.  I also made sure not to mix the posts up since each had a custom mortise and tenon joint.

To finish off the beam I ran a router bit down the edge, sanded the whole beam with my Makita half sheet finish sander and put Olympic elite natural woodland oil on all the wood pieces.  

Before I move on here I would just like to say that through this process I was sweating bullets and was stressed.  I feared making a mistake on this beautiful ancient wood and rendering it useless for the project.  What a waste that would be.  This is kind of the way it is for all my wood working projects.  All tasks have to be done with precision which requires great focus.  It pays not to rush things.

Once the wood was dry I was ready to put them in place.  But the question was, how could I possibly do this?  The wood was so large that a helper seemed to be the only way to mange it.  But because of liability concerns with bringing uninsured people over to help I came up with another way. 

To get the wood out of the garage and onto the patio slab in the back yard I made two dollies out of harbor freight caster wheels and some leftover wood.  This allowed me to easily transport the lumber to the porch.

 

Next I assembled the posts and beam and secured them with the oak pegs.  I then installed the ABU66 Simpson brackets on the cement pad which already had the anchor bolts sticking out ready to accept them.  With brackets in place I made use of a harbor freight winch and wood crane to erect the wall.

 

The winches from harbor freight are great for short time use.  When I buy them I use a 20% coupon that I can find online on my phone when I'm in the store.  I actually have owned 5 winches now and had to return 4 of them before the 90 day deadline because they broke.  I actually had to pay for one because it broke after the 90 day period.

Notice from the picture, I took care to protect the wood from the cable by wrapping it in wood and cardboard.  Once the beam wall was up I made sure the posts were plumb and the right distance from the house and nailed the posts into the Simpson brackets.  I left the top secured to the crane because it turns out that you cannot rely on the nailed Simpson post brackets to keep your wall up.  The nails could pull out and the wall can come crashing down.

In addition to the nails I put two through bolts in each post to fasten it to the  Simpson bracket.  The bolts are required because a hurricane could  strike my location and the roof would tend act like a giant sail creating a great force on the posts that could cause them to separate from the foundation. The bolt nail combination provides 2300 pounds of uplift protection through each post.  The porch would eventually have 5 posts.

Now that the main beam wall was up, it was time to start thinking of putting the rafters on.  This of course required more ingenuity on doing the task myself.,  This time the heights involved  were as high as 15', the rafter lumber dimensions were 4" x 10" x 14' long and the rafter weight was about 150 pounds.

In the next blog I will explain how I mastered putting these rafters up by myself.

Happy Building

The Dr.