Today I moved up to the cutting tent following the pieces that we laid out, and began cutting. Many of these joints on the bridge need to be really precise because of the huge forces being exerted on them, so the cutting needs to be very precise. All of our cuts are knifed along the drawn lines, and then I ran my saw right down the line. Occasionally the saw (I'm using Japanese saws) would wander a bit in some of the deeper cuts, and I would have a belly on the face to chisel or plane flat.
My cutting was periodically interrupted for the sake of moving some of the larger timbers for the second lay up, as well as for the false works (aka cribbing or trestles) that we will use to move the bridge in to place.
This is Bruce drilling some holes with a precise jig he built earlier. These holes need to be pretty spot on to line up with the corresponding points on the top of the bridge. These will hold the tension rods that connect the top and bottom chords, which are the long single sticks that run along the top and bottom of the truss.
Baron enjoying the big square mortise machine.
Me using my new saw to cut a joint, and the pile of sticks with completed joinery.
This evening I took some time and roughed out a couple of spoons from an Apple tree that we trimmed when setting up cutting stations.
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