We had several more days this week with snow and/or rain.  That means a LOT of mud at my work area!

When the work area is covered in 3 inches of red sticky mud, it is just not worth trying to work.  So my progress has been painfully slow.

However, I was able to get the parts for all of the trusses cut and all but one of them nailed together.

Building the trusses turned out to be a lot more challenging than I thought it would be due to the fact that most of the 2 X 4’s had a bad case of noodle-wood.  That meant trying to pull everything straight with pipe clamps before nailing them.  I am pretty happy that I was able to get them mostly flat and true eventually, but it was a lot more work than I expected.

There is one truss that the joint where rafter and the cord meet is off by 1/8 inch on one side.  But I will make sure to use that truss in the middle and if necessary, use a cheater piece if it does not look true when I nail the facia to the eve.

Then I did a really stupid thing.

I was cutting the angles on a pair of struts.  Because the angles on struts are too steep to be cut on my mitre saw (17° and 56°), I have to cut them by hand with a circular saw.  Somehow, I let the cord for the circular saw get caught in the blade and this was the result.

I have had my Skilsaw for almost 30 years and it is one of my favorite tools.

Fortunately, I am a firm believer in the adage: “Two is one and one is none”.  So I do have a backup circular saw.  In this case it is my dad’s old Craftsman saw.  I was able to just change the blade from my Skilsaw to the Craftsman and keep going.

But I do see why my dad never derived any enjoyment from woodworking or building things.  What a big, heavy, clunky, underpowered piece of crap that saw is!  At least I was able to use it to get the rest of my parts cut.

And with today being another rainy muddy mess outside, I was able to fix my Skilsaw so I will have my friend back for the rest of the build.

Next week I will start framing the walls.  So I broke down and bought myself a belated Christmas present – A Porter Cable Framing Nailer.  It will drive nails from 2 inches up to 3 1/2 inches and should work nicely for framing the shack as well as nailing on the sheathing and maybe even the siding.

The nails for it come in a strip that looks like a stripper clip.

And what is that switch just below the safety by the trigger?

That would be the select-fire switch!  That’s right boys and girls, this baby goes full-auto and I did not even have to present I.D. or pass a background check to buy it!