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How to scratchbuild a handcar shed


Using these weathered planks, I be- gan assembling the floor of the shed. It was important to me that the finished floor would have the look of individual boards, with the ends of the boards “staggered,” not all ending in the same place. To accomplish this, I installed the planks in a linear fashion, end-to- end, using the leftover length from one row to start the next one. For example, I began the first row with a full 10′-0″ plank, followed by another full 10′-0″ plank. Since the shed is only 16′-0″ long, this left 4′-0″ of that second plank extending over the edge. I cut off this remaining 4′-0″, and used that to start the next row. Another full 10′-0″ plank was added next, leaving only 2′-0″ re- quired to finish that row. I used 2′-0″ from the next plank to finish the sec- ond row, and started the third row with the remaining 8′-0″ from that plank. I repeated this until the entire floor was covered, producing a distinct “stag- gered” look


Walls For the next phase of construction, I moved on to the walls of the shed. For these, I used scale 2″×4″ lumber to build framed walls, including top and


The base of the shed consists of a wood beam foundation, floor joists and a floor made of individual wood planks (top). A look inside the shed (left) reveals the framed walls with 2″×4″ studs and the rafters that support the roof. The boards used for the siding were cut from a heavy craft paper. The shingles were also made from paper and cut with pinking shears to obtain the diamond pattern. They were ap- plied over a ¹₁₆″ balsa wood base (below).


assured that no plank would end be- tween floor joists). Through the magic of math, I determined that I would need 32 of these planks to cover the en- tire floor (area of the floor divided by the area of an individual plank). With that number in mind, I began feeding 2″×6″ stock into my trusty Chopper. Before installing the planks, I decid- ed to pre-stain them using a solution of india ink and rubbing alcohol. The “standard” recipe for this solution is to put a few drops of ink into a full bottle of alcohol. I poured a little of this solu- tion into the lid of a cottage cheese container, and then just tossed the wood planks into that. Some of them I removed immediately, others I al- lowed to sit longer, soaking up more of the solution. The result was an assort- ment of wood planks of varying de- grees of “weatheredness.” Before dis- posing of the leftover stain, I brushed some of it onto the foundation and floor joist assembly.


50 DECEMBER 2011


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