Oxfordshire Woodland Group

After felling, extraction and conversion of timbers needed to frame the bodgers shed work commenced to line and level pads on the Bodgers Shed framing ground.

The long sills were then laid out on top of the pads and and match marked with their top sill mortice locations.

The cross sills were laid out on the opposite set of pads.

Drilling of the mortices was done using a 1" auger & also using brace & bit.

The use of a battery powered drill was trialled to speed up cutting mortices and to help reduce the load on the drill and wrists especially when using a brace & bit to drill holes.

We employed a 6" long 19mm dia hex headed single spur augur driven by a Dewalt drill and this worked well.

We established that a 4ah battery can drill 2 off x 8" x 2" x 6" deep mortices (20 holes) with another 4 centre line holes being drilled using a 1.25" dia Forstner type drill ready to then chop out the mortice using chisels.

Given the heavy weight of the sills it must be recognised that turning same to knock out cuttings is not practical and so a battery powered Dewalt shop vac was used to good effect to clear cutting arisings using the hose nozzle.