Again I worked pretty efficiently today.

I trimmed the knee brace I had started working on last week.

Then I used this as a template to mark up and cut the LHS brace.

The tank is not symmetrical within the tank pad (see story about tank installation) and so I had to notch it to prevent the brace gouging in to the top of the tank in case the house racked at all in high winds.

The RHS brace clamped in to position relatively easily and welding was quite quick.

The LHS brace for some reason seemed awkward to work on and took me a lot of time to clamp and weld.

By the time this was completed and I had packed away a lot of the tools I had used it was 1 pm.

After a break it was time to move on to installing the end bracing.

All the fixing points were in place after my work last weekend.

It was mainly a matter of drilling 12 mm holes in the tags welded to the rods.

I thought I would try a different approach to the setting out this time.

Previously I have used string lines - but sometimes this yields inaccurate results for the lengths of the rods - so I tend to measure, cut and install one rod at a time. The rods interfere with string lines - so the whole process does not work very well.

This time - I bolted all the rods in position and roughly joined them with gaffa tape.

Because the joined lengths slump I measured out the theoretical cross over point and rigged a small piece of rope to hold the pieces in the correct position. Then I could make accurate measurements directly on to the pieces of rod involved.

Then marking up and drilling the holes in the central bracket, cutting each piece to length and applying the thread.

I am still finding the threading process very slow and very hard work.

The end brace was finished by 4.30 pm and then I continued on to the set up for the last remaining front brace..

Then some packing up in the dark and time to leave.

Sunday

Linda was off to a special course all day and Ian couldn't make breakfast so I decided to have a bit of toast and coffee at home and then head out to Wooroloo to finish off the very last brace.

I had expected to knock this over in just a few hours and then spend the rest of the day in coffee shops or taverns - but as usual everything took much longer than I expected.

Ian managed to nip out for a while between his jobs and gave me some help cutting the last few threads.

It certainly is much easier assembling the braces with more than one person.

He found the thread cutting very hard work as well - it turns out that I should have bought a much bigger hand piece and a bigger die - it gives far more leverage apparently.

I was very relieved to have the final brace in place.

After this I spent about an hour painting the last bit of "Kill Rust Mission Brown" over the top of the priming of the front beam.

Next week I will dig out the flashing I bought three years ago and stick it on using silastic, plus mark up the cleat positions.

Then I will be almost ready to move the main front outer beam in to position.

I might finally be making some progress on the veranda.

Thursday

I realised that this coming Sunday there will be an organised walk from Wooroloo to Wundowie starting at the park across the road.

With several thousand people potentially being present I thought it was urgent to improve the safety and the security of my building site.

I brushcut the high grass at the front of the property, erected a safety barrier, and brought all the steel members inside the safety barrier (lots of nasty sharp cleats if a child should fall on them).

Hopefully I have now done everything humanly possible to secure the site.