The Shearing Shed Roof

Finally there is a day when I can start the process of dismantling the sheds on our friendly farmer's land and drag some materials back to Opportunity Farm for our shearing shed and workshop. The night before I load up all sorts of tools that might be useful and pack myself a lunch. The day dawns and after the children have headed off to catch the school bus I set off. The only problem is the howling gale, frequent squalls and icy blasts. I start with the easiest job.   

 

The hay shed has collapsed leaving its roof easily accessible on the ground. The nails come up easily with two hammers in sync and a tyre lever to prevent the corrugations being squashed. Once a sheet is free I have to battle the wind which tries to hurl the sheet into the next paddock. The sheets float horizontally over to the trailer and only settle when below the sides as the trailer is parked across the wind. Once the tin is removed and loaded then I can dismantle the rafters - 4 by 2s and the battens - 3 by 1s. The central ridge pole is a score - two lengths of 6 by 2.
I crank up the generator and set to with the reciprocating saw to zip off all the nails. Each rafter takes about a minute to clean off and stack in the trailer. All that is left are the round poles used as top plates and the posts that were holding the roof up. I will return later with my chainsaw to deal with the most promising of these.

 The farmer has a tidier paddock and we have all the tin needed for the roof of our new building and enough rafters to be turned into joists for about a third of the floor space.Then I can head up to the main game - the collapsing shearing shed.