It was very cold and the roof was covered in ice.

Whenever I went up on the scaffolding I had to be very careful not to slip and and had to wear gloves because even the scaffolding pipes carried a thin layer of ice.

Firstly - I had to drop the corner section of scaffolding down to a lower level so that it would not interfere with the installation of the diagonal.

This took a couple of hours - I needed to install two lower cross bars, move down the planks and then install new safety rails at the height transition.

I will test out if this gives me a comfortable working height and then drop the entire scaffold down to this level to install the back veranda purlins.

Now that I had easier access to the corner of the building I could work on shaping the length of steel I created last week.

I used a piece of cardboard to capture the profile of the beam corner and knee brace that the diagonal needs to mate with.

I scribed this on to the diagonal beam and then clamped some guide steels on to cut the profile with a 1mm angle grinder blade.

I remeasured the length of the diagonal using a long straight edge and roofing bevel guage.

I transferred this on to the other end of the diagonal beam and made the angled cut.

After this I cleaned off all the loose flakey paint and rust using a rotary steel brush and then applied rust converter.

I can't go any further on the diagonal as I have not yet created the cleats, so I moved on to the last steel section on Rosses' side.

I had prepared this one and a half years ago and it has been waiting all this time to be cut to length and mated with its fishplate.

I measured and cut this piece of steel and then welded on the fish plate.

Then I tack welded on its cleats (prepared two years ago)).