Bin shelter door

This one is about gate-building

But first, here is a new extension of the fence I made

Very neat. However it's not a fence. It's a place for popping the wheelie bins, so they don't have to sit on the lawn looking ugly and getting in the way of the car etc 

Here it is from the front...

 

The outer fence is actually a door

Within which the bins are all cosied up.

I had to build the door from scratch as it needed to be an unusual shape. Here it is before cladding.

It has a door closer, so it stays shut and doesn't bang about when it is windy. 

I enjoyed making this - it is a proper jointed door frame.

I made it all made from 4" x 2" rough timber scrounged from skips

It has some hefty mortices...

And tenons...

These were cut with a mixture of:

• power saws and hand saws (tenons)
• auger bits in a power drill and chisels (mortices)
• filing sander (cleaning joints up)

Construction

I've missed out most of the useful stuff about cutting the tenons etc (oops), but suffice to say, you need to mark them consistently with the square and the marking gauge. When using the marking gauge the two pins should be applied from the same edge on the face of both mortice and tenon that will eventually face together when joined.   

Once all cut, it is worth testing them by a dry-run on construction.

You need to do this to test the joints fit and then trim if needed...

And to see if all bars fan out in a flat plane as intended...

The joints should be quite snug when dry fitted. E.g. here, I had to use a mallet to get them totally closed. The frame should be pretty stable without glue.

Nice...

For wood joinery, you should always apply glue to both pieces being joined, so both pieces are in full contact with glue, which then closes any gaps between the snug pieces forming a fully solid joint. This includes the shoulders

Your mortice should be good and sloppy...

And your tenon slathered...

With the glue, they should ease together more easily than when dry fitting.

Halfway through connecting the crossbars to one rail...

Putting the second rail in place....

After fitting, I used sash clamps to pull the joints firmly together and keep them there while the glue set.

The corners were pleasingly square without needing any tweaking.

When in the garden fitting the gate, it is best to have a guard dog on hand.

Glazing the pizza oven dome

After toiling at building the pizza oven, 'twas decreed it needed to look a bit swisher...

And so, and after a while of deliberation, a gloss-black crazy glazing was decided...

Looking good...

Front on...

Lovely in the early spring, with the cherry blosson...

The crazed tiling was done using cheapish Wickes bathroom/kitchen tiles -

Cosmopolitan Black, no less! 

Too rectangular, so, with a hammer , I did go (to the back of the tiles obvs, not the fromt)

To fix them, I mixed a pretty runny mortar mix - about 5-1 cement-builder's sand. 

The application was using my fingers to slop a blob of mortar onto the dome shell, Then push the tiling pieces into it

You get the gist

Some hours later...

It's worth cleaning off odd stray cement blobs - they dry before you know it...

And clean off excess mortar as you go...

Another angle. This is not yet cleaned...

I also painted the wooden door frontage black to match - this is fireproof paint for wood burners...

Overall, a good job - like a big black beetle shaped mirrorball.

Happy with this.