Build Week 3, 25th Feb 2019
Build Week 3 underway.
A busy site in week 3.
Targets for this week are:
- More bark stripped
- Post holes finished
- Peg tenons on two roof posts to be done
- Slot mortices on thir roof post completed
But first, a late proposal for a small design amendment was received.
Mold is not all that far away from Beeston Castle. This discovery of a fantastic golden cape dated to the Bronze Age shows that our Bronze Age breathern were not all that disimilar to us in that beautiful, well made stuff was very much appreciated. I wonder if the owner of this cape ever visited our Beeston settlement?
The inner bailey and castle ward at the top of Beeston Crag has a ditch. It is not a moat and apparently if I ever refer to it again as a moat, English Heritage will dock my privilieges!
A moat has water (or can have), a ditch does not (or can’t have).
Over recent times, scrub has grown in the ditch and its is getting difficult to spot what an impressive ditch it is. It also looked like a potential source of materials that would be needed for the walls of the roundhouse. So a clearance party got underway…
The castle ditch before…
The castle ditch after…
Joinery practice continued, with some of us graduating onto more traditional mortice and tenon configurations.
During the week, numerous Ash logs turned up. These would be used to make the Roof Beams. But guess what, first of all all 28 of them needed their bark stripping.
During the course of this week, we received a complaint from the Explainers Team that they were getting very tired standing around all day, explaining. They pointed out that they really needed a place to sit and to recuperate. So, we took one of our practice pieces. A lump of Silver Birch that had been used to practice Log Splitting and the use of Bronze Axes and Adzes. We made four legs from some oak bows and voila!
Now, our Explainer colleagues have a seat to take a load off between their explaining sessions for visitors.
After all the joinery practice, we now could start on real joints. The three central roof posts needed to be prepared with peg tenons and mortices to be able to accept and support the central ring beam once raised into place. One Post would have a Peg Tenon, another would have two Peg Tenons taking advantage of then nature of that particular Posts configuration and the third would have two mortices at suitbale angles. We opted for doing all the joinery exclusively with our Bronze Tools and making certain measurements and records whilst doing so to satisfy our archaeological team leader.
A Roof Post with a Peg Tenon A Roof Post with a mortice.
As the above photo puts me in mind of a piece of still art, “A Study in Bronze”. Here is another arty piccie.
So, week 3 is over. A lot of work done. A lot more yet to do. Last job is to tidy up the site and leave things in a good place for the next Build Week, which won’t be for a little while now.
Tidy Friday!
Last modified on 2019-03-03