Wilson Burnham Guitars

Wall framing includes assembling of vertical and horizontal members that form outside and inside walls of a structure. Willis H. Wagner, Modern Carpentry , 1992 Yesterday was Day Five of framing the new workshop. I replaced the header over the door with a longer header, the door opening was too close to the east wall, I was afraid that you would bump into the wall when you entered the building. The opening was shifted to the west. Then it was a matter of nailing up sheets of OSB shearing to keep the building from falling down. I need to buy some 3/8" thick exterior grade plywood to cover the OSB and finish the exterior, but I want to prime and paint it before I put it up. The temperature didn't get above 24 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, and there was a good breeze which made it feel even colder! Not the warmest day for swinging a hammer or for painting! It is nice to walk through the door opening instead of squeezing through wall studs! This shop will hav

When you work primarily with hand tools you don't need a lot of space or infrastructure. Jim Tolpin, The New Traditional Woodworker , 2010 I am building an new workshop/studio on the exact spot and using the same footprint as the old garage that I dismantled early this month. Working in the upstairs of our house has been a great joy, but I need to move on to another space and allow my wife and I to enjoy our house as a house again. The original garage was built in 1964, (I was born in 1962!) by some very capable carpenters, as I discovered when I took the building down, but it had no real foundation and no look outs on the eave elevations which was causing the roof to sag. After searching on the Internet, I found some wonderful plans for a shed building which I have adapted to build my own space. Those of you who have been following my blog know that I was a framing/finishing carpenter for many years, it is nice to frame again, but at my own speed without nail guns an

The trees of the West are a benign presence, mighty and healing... Donald Culross Peattie, A Natural History of Western Trees , 1953 The postage stamp that I live on has only seven species of conifer trees and one species barely grows big enough to be called a tree. The Continental Divide is about seven miles as the crow flies from our meadow, we don't get the howling winds that you find when you live closer to the Divide, but the winds do limit the height of trees and since this is the east side of the Rocky Mountains we live in a rain shadow. Not much moisture makes it to the ground. Twice a day, I walk our dogs across our neighbor's property to Forest Service land and we squeeze through a narrow gulch to reach the upper slopes. In this gulch there is enough moisture to allow white fir and Engelmann spruce to grow. The tall tree in this photo is an Engelmann spruce, one of five that live in this gulch. Ponderosa pine live on the very fringes of the gulch, the scient

All sheds take longer to build than you may think. David and Jean Stiles, Sheds , 2006 The new tool shed is finished - siding, roofing, windows and doors. It is 10'x12' in size, just barely big enough to hold what it needs to hold. With the exception of the sub flooring, roof rafters and metal roofing, all material used to build this shed was recycled from the old workshop that I dismantled. It's a shed because I didn't want to spend the time making a "standard" roof and I had a limited budget for materials. No lookouts on the "gable" sides, no soffit, no fascia boards, just a simple building to store tools and some lumber. The sashes are made out of redwood, and yes, I know I didn't clean my fingerprints from the glass! It's an outbuilding, not Independence Hall, it doesn't have to be perfect. The wind and the snow this winter will clean the glass! I made three shelves from 2x10 construction grade white fir boards an