Tapping into wooden boards

In these days another phase have just been accomplished here at the Raw-Jah house, setting in place about 35 square meters of tapped fir boards on top of 12 leveled logs.

It's going to be the first out of the three layers in program.

So here is a few practical tips and handy tricks to set tapped boards in place... even the most tough ones.

First just a couple of tips that could sound obvious and simple... but help a lot, saving time and trouble if you do otherwise. Always consider that this is wood, still alive and irregular: so even if you expect some precision from machine-cut boards, every piece is different and this needs to be taken into consideration all the time.

1) Always make the time to give a good cleaning into the "female side" in order to avoid dust and splinters from making uneven gaps between boards.



2) Avoid that wannabe-macho instinct to hit the board with your hand to make it "go in". Hands need to last in good shape and hitting wooden corners is just going to make you tired or worse: use a hammer AND a wooden piece to hit the board with.
I recommend using a left over piece of board with the same tapped side so that you won't damage the edge where you need to hit.



So now here is a very efficient technique to squeeze in shape even the most bent boards. Imagine you have a big gap on one end of the board while on the other it's already in place... and if you hammer on one side you loose the other! They really do like that...

- Drill a screw to prevent the board from loosing the position where it's already set. Do NOT drill it in tight because we want to allow the board to pivot on that spot.
 

- Do your best you can achieve on the other side, hammering on the scrap wood.
- When you have done that, screw in tight a temporary support in a place where it does not make any damage and at the same time allows the board to move. Like this:

- Gripping on the temporary support, set a g-clamp horizontally in order to squeeze in the board (make sure to use another wooden protection on the peak of the clamp, always protecting the edges). You are going to need another clamp acting vertically to keep the board down tight against the log underneath.

- A few turns of the horizontal clamp and... the board is in place.

- Now you can finally screw it in and take out the clamps and the temporary support.

It's a really nice and simple technique that worked perfectly well for me dozens of times in this situation... especially because I had more clamps than hands!