End of MOTs for pre1960 bikes

Here's a bit of interesting / good news.  A snippet from a VMCC Section newsletter I get "As you may be aware from today (18th Nov 2012) it is no longer necessary to have an MOT for a pre 1960 vehicle, so *A Member* taxed his Francis Barnett online (no MOT for 7 years) and it went through no problem".

Sheds up.

Yep, finished half an hour ago.  That's 22:30.  It looks good in the dark, hope it still looks good in the morning!  Pics to follow.....

.....Ok, so the weekend went like this.....

Saturday morning - late start though due to other commitments, and I set MFM to work levelling up the sleepers for the base.  Had to make do with some scrap bits but no one will know once there's a whopping great shed on top of them.

My job was to drown them in a mix of Creosote and Cubbie engine oil - recycling is most satisfying sometimes!

Then the floor panels, which had been cut into 4 pieces to enable transportation on a small trailer, were put back together....

...and the levels checked in both directions....

....good enough, huh?

With so many joins in the floor, a layer of thin ply went down next to try and hold things together a bit more securely.

Oooooh, excitement, and then the roof when on....

I'm joking of course.  

But it wasn't long....

I said it wasn't long.....

No, really, it wasn't long before we started on the roof.  It was in fact, only the next day.  The cross members had to be notched at each end so that they would site on the trusses and not fall on my head three times.  I measured, MFM cut.  Not my fault if its wrong then.

All was going well, the sun was shining and we were cracking on....

Then, it being winter and all, it started to get dark...

Quite rapidly.

A layer of chip board was next for the roof, as we were using corrugated bituminous sheets which are quite flimsy, and given the amount of snow we have around these parts, anything we can do to strengthen the roof has to be a good thing.

But it did mean we were out there in the freezing cold until after dark, with MFM going up on the roof to start nailing the chip board on.  The head torch was great until the batteries started to feel the strain....

...so we set up the work light....

But when it came to cutting the wriggly sheets to length, we cheated and went into the steading where there are lights, and buckets, and straw and wheelbarrows, and feed bins...and not much room really.  Measured in the dark, I just hope they look ok in the daylight.

The jigsaw gave a very neat and accurate cut.

The shiny bits on the wall, that's frost......brrrrrrrrrrrr

Is it a bird?  Is it a plane?  No, its the old inspection light from the shed, fixed to the end of what used to be a part of a football goal post, and when I wasn't taking pictures, I was wandering round holding the light in what I hoped was the right place so MFM could see to hammer black nails into black wriggly sheets on the roof in sub zero temperatures.

But come half past ten (22:30hrs I mean) this is where we called it a day.

And I'm pleased to report that this morning (Monday) the shed is still there and looks pretty good.  The only small hitch was that we were 3 ridge pieces short, so used some wriggly offcuts as a temporary measure to keep the building weather proof, but this morning the offcuts were exhibiting some severe flappage around the edges as the light Scottish breeze blew gently across the fields.  So I got the ladders out and slung 3 big heavy duty ratchet straps over the roof, and with a scrap bit of scaffolding board up there, its holding things firm, for now.  There are gales forecast this week....yikes....

And next weekend we pick up the custom made lambing shed for Mrs BC, then I suppose we'll have to go through it all again!

Its SHED TIME!!!

Crikey.  Have you ever shifted 16tonnes of stone by hand in two days?  Well for our sins, that's what the Muckle Flugga Man and I did this weekend.  I have to confess, he shifted slightly more than I, as my duties involved catching sheep with Mrs BC on Saturday morning.  After collecting a couple of trailer loads of stone last weekend, I thought one big load dumped in a pile on the shed site would be easier/quicker/less hassle than trekking back and forth to the quarry every weekend.  With the benefit of hindsight, I'm not sure if my old bones and achy bits would agree!  The pictures will surely tell a better tale than I can at the moment, 'cos I've only gone and contracted Man Flu for the second time this year.  Enjoy.  And think yourself lucky you didn't pop in for a cuppa today.....

Just as the light was going we finished the stone spreading and had a look at the pile of shed panels we'd collected a couple of weeks ago.  We had to load them back on to the trailer in order to get the floor sections.  

 And then, when we dragged the 4 floor sections over to the shed site, we could finally work out how they would all go together.  But oh dear, it had got far too dark to carry on, so we packed up and went indoors for slices of home made cake that Mrs BC had been slaving over.  Yum.  It's helped my Man Flu no end.

So next weekend, with a bit of luck and good weather, we should just be able to get the shed up.  It's 8ft wide and 20ft long, ideal for storing bikes and projects, which will free up space in the 'workshop' for working on bikes.....

Time time time time time.....

I'm hoping that if I keep writing the word 'time' over and over again, it might work and some more 'time' might just magically appear.  Think back to the Stafford show, can't remember when it was now, but in the run up to that the Cub Mag Team was in overdrive, getting the mags ready for taking to the show.  After the show, a bit of time was spent in Derbyshire.  Everything seems to happen in Derbyshire.  There were people to see and things to do.  On the Monday after the show, my Bultaco (which, incidentally, proved very popular at the show) was dropped off at Alan Whitton's pad, for safe keeping for a few weeks, as a contact of Muckle Flugga Mans had offered us two sheds at a price that even I couldn't refuse.  One will be a bike shed, and the other will be an extension to the old steading, perfect for lambing or hay storage or any other animally related purpose.  On Tuesday we went en mass, well, the two of us, to the shop where I got my 'awesome' phone, and after an hour or so, they sent us packing with no progress made as to why I can't get on Facebook, why sometimes it doesn't ring, why my photos keep disappearing, why the battery is so rubbish, why my emails vanish from time to time and why a whole load of other things don't work on it.  So that was successful.  The evening was more fun as we spent a few hours at the local bike club meeting, talking mostly to Bob the ex-grass tracker and looking at his great photos of the good old days, which were accompanied by many fine tales.  Ah, Wednesday, a visit to see Greengrass and his bikes in Derby - rubbish weather and a bad back didn't inspire me to accept his kind offer to try the Honda 400/4 or the Kawasaki KH250 but with a borrowed helmet and jacket I swung a leg over the Honda and tried to keep up with the lad.  It was going ok until he nipped off up a slip road while I was still in the outside lane!  Thursday saw us head to a local garage to have the brakes on the pickup truck fixed (life tends to be a bit calmer if the brakes don't lock up whilst towing a loaded trailer on wet roads) and then it was off to the Samsung phone repair shop.  Nice guy, nodded sympathetically while I went through the list of things that are wrong with my 'awesome' phone, and we left it with him and went and had lunch.  Some of the things are now fixed but the Facebook problem still exists.  That evening we collected shed number 1 and prepared for an early start on Friday.  Managed to get away about 7.30am and pointed the nose towards Leyland to collect a trials seat for a Cub project before spending two hours looking for an address where we had to collect something for Muckle Flugga Man's boss.  If he'd given us the right postcode it might have been helpful, but we found it eventually.  Is there room to turn a trailer, we asked, before going up the drive, oh yes, a big yard, she said, so we get up there and find that there ain't room to swing a cat never mind a pickup truck with a tipper trailer attached to it.  So I backed it all the way back down the drive and then we were on our way.  Over the hilly twisty northern England roads, narrow and muddy, lugging the trailer loaded with a shed and umpteen other bits and pieces, bales of shavings, a bike frame, Cub spares and so on.  An overnight stop in Kilmarnock was in order and let me just warn you, don't bother going for tea at the Asda on the big roundabout near the Travelodge.  Saturday morning and we called in to see Merv in Irvine who had been blasting and cleaning Terry's wheels and a carby for us.  Nice job, and he advertises in The Cub Mag too so if you're in that area, give him a bell for prices to have all your bits scrubbed up.

Phew, home.  And then it was time to get printing again and post out all the remaining Cub Mags.  I'm thinking they should all have arrived by now and I hope you're sitting back with a glass of wine enjoying the third issue of the only Cub & Terrier magazine on the market.

Last weekend, we collected a couple of trailer loads of stone for the base for shed number 1, but yesterday, I decided it really didn't look like being enough, and with the quarry shutting at 12 on a Saturday, there would only be time for another two loads, and we really want to make a start on getting the shed up this weekend, so, I'm just back in from overseeing the delivery of 16tonnes of recycled stone for the base of this, and the other shed, and any odd paths and potholes that need a bit chucking in.

And now I'd better phone the boss and get ready for workies.  Yippee.  Sorry there ain't no pictures yet, they're on my 'awesome' phone which still can't Bluetooth to my PC.