A Venture into the Garden

[JimG]

I've managed to do a bit in the garden over the past week or so.



I've cleaned out the last corner of the top of the garden and the bird table on top of the frog Hilton has been re-positioned next to the birches. The azalea (I think) next to the wall has had the requisite hammering back in size and the bush on the lawn in the foreground has been reduced in height to make surveying and marking out a lot easier.



...and another large pile(s) of cuttings awaiting a westerly wind for a fire.

The next job was to establish the centres of the two end curves of the oval which I reckon would make marking out of these curves a lot easier if I could run a measure and a level from posts on the centres..



I clamped a piece of scrap wood on the workbench with a plumb line dropped though it and wiggled the piece of wood around measuring from three trig points until I got the plumb on the centre.



I then used a ring of the plastic pipe to mark the centre from the plumb bob and hammered in a dowel peg as a marker.


The next job was to get the height of the boards on the lawn. I made up a thirteen foot beam which was fairly accurate and set up an intermediate point to support it. I subsequently re-did this with the beam sitting on a block screwed to the end of the baseboard which was level with the underside of the baseboard top which would be a better reference for me. I forgot to take a picture of that.



Then I extended the beam from the intermediate support to one between the two centre posts (second post peg in the foreground. The level of the baseboard above the grass level is just about two feet which is slightly lower than I thought it might be, but I'm not too worried. I'm thinking of making a bridge over the baseboards to allow access when things are running and the lower height will make things a bit easier.



I then started digging for the post next to the tree and hit a problem which wasn't much of a surprise. What did surprise me was the thickness up the root at the top which was about the same diameter as the trunk of the tree. However I managed to saw through the smaller roots and that allowed enough clearance for the post.



As an aside, an interesting bit of wildlife under the paving slab adjacent to this hole which I had to move. I don't think I've ever see a green, blotchy slug before. There were actually two with the other disappearing out of picture top right.



I then set the post in the hole and supported it with a piece of wood clamped in the work bench. I set the height of the post using the level set earlier and set the post to be slightly below this so that I could fine tune the level when I put a wood plug in the top. There was also a fair bit of joggling around to make sure that the centre was in the centre of the post - much measuring from three trig points again.



A close shot of the post in the hole next to the big root with the cut out sections of the smaller roots in the foreground.



...and a quick jump to the end of the proceedings with both posts in place with the Postcrete poured round them, and set. I haven't filled these posts with concrete - they seem rigid enough to use for measuring and level purposes as they are. The next job will be to set wooden plugs in the top with an accurate level set and a hole for a pin for the tape measure. progress will depend on whether the local B&Q gets any Postcrete in. They seem to have delivery problems at the moment but their price is the best locally if you buy five or more. I got one bag from Jewson today to do the two posts but their price was a good bit more than the B&Q one. The other option is Wickes whose price is about the same as B&Q, but that's about a twenty mile round trip.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

With the weather improving a bit I was out in the garden again. The first thing to do was to establish a level on the two posts I planted last time out.



I established the level of the underside of the baseboard top using the long beam and the intermediate height point behind the tree, then set a wooden plug in the top of the post closest to camera, and the picture shows me setting up the level on the other post.

Once the two central posts had their heights set, I could start on the posts for the actual roadbed.



I made up a long lath from doorstop wood to give the centres from the northern post to the post centres on the northern arc of the layout. The lath was pivoted on the northernmost centre post and supported close to its other end and the plumb bob used to set a peg as a guide for hole digging. I had set up the post on a line between the northernmost post and the trig point on the back wall, so a string line was set up to align the plumb bob laterally.



Here's the pivot system I'm using - screw type vine eyes which go through the hole in the lath into a screw hole in the wooden plugs on the plastic posts. I only came on this system by accident - I was digging through the cupboard in the garage looking for some large nails to use as pivots when I found an unopened packet of these vine eyes and thought that these would be even better than nails. I suspect that they had been bought to do a job on my previous house - more than twenty-five years ago.



The hole was dug for the post and it had to be a bit deeper than I had intended because of the close proximity of the hole left by a bush root I had dug up previously. So a level was taken from the northernmost centre post and the plastic pipe was marked about half and inch below this level. the level of the baseboard underside will be set by the supports and I keep the level of the post tops under this so that I don't get any embarrassment if a post top was a tad high.



The cut length of post was then placed in the hole and supported from the workmate. The lath was set up from the northernmost central post and a wooden plug was fitted in the post to take the vine eye for the other end of the lath. A string line was set up again to ensure that the post was aligned properly, and the post was also fiddled about to get it vertical. the support in the centre of the lath provided by the saw horse and a bit of bent coat hanger wire was necessary since door stop is pretty flexible and the unsupported sag was taking a few millimetres off the measurement. The length between pivot points for the northern arc of this northern curve is 3422mm, or just under 11' 3" so the double track radii will be around 11' 0" and 11' 6"



...and the post in place with Postcrete poured and set and the earth level made good again around the post. I'm quite happy with the positioning of this post with reference to the north wall. It gives a reasonable width for an access path to the outside of the layout . I'll now proceed with the other posts on this northern arc using the long lath from the central post and a shorter lath from an adjacent post already in place. This should make the placement of posts quite quick and save on a lot of fiddly measurements from trig points.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

With more good weather today, I laid in a stock of the plastic down pipe and started to plant some more posts.


The long lath was pivoted from the central post and a new short lath, the pitch of the posts on the north curve, was pivoted from the first post planted.


The plum weight was fed through the lined up holes of the two laths to establish a centre for the post hole. A stake was driven in to mark the spot and the hole was dug. I had a few fights with roots and I also hit solid rubble about six inches down, so the hole digging was the longest part of the whole operation.



A post was cut to length, the length being measured by using a spirit level from the adjacent planted post and measuring from the bottom of the hole to the underside of the spirit level. The cut post had a plug of wood fitted to the top with a central hole for a vine eye. The post was planted in the hole and held in location by the two laths with a vine eye through their holes and into the hole in the plug in the post. The post was then adjusted for vertical all round and the height was double checked against the adjacent post with the spirit level. Then the Postcrete was poured.



After a good afternoon, three more posts were planted going round the curve between the rowan tree on the right and the plum tree on the left. This was one area that I thought might be a tight fit for the baseboards between the two trees but there's enough room in actual fact.

It's a slow-ish process since I have to wait on the Postcrete setting round one post before I start on the next one since I am using the previous post as a reference point. I'm also having the fight with the post holes already referred to. So I didn't get the number of posts done that I had thought I might. Next time out I'll add posts at both ends of the arc so that I can be working at one end while the post at the other end sets.

 

[JimG]

I finally got all the posts in the north arc planted by yesterday. Working in this very hot weather was not good for me and that slowed down progress quite a bit. And the hole digging got worse rather than better and I finished up on my knees with a saw, lump hammer, jemmy and chisel to hack the holes out. I'm hoping the conditions get better as I get closer to the house.


The laths are still in place for the last post on the north east end of the arc. I'm aiming to get this section of the layout in a complete state this year so that I can deal with the garden around it. I spent a lot of effort clearing this area out and I don't want to have to go through a similar operation next year. I'm also thinking of hedging the layout in this section rather like Steve Cook did on his previous garden layout. I've got a pretty prolific lonerica hedge at the front of the house producing plenty of cuttings so I would like to get the area under the layout planted out with cuttings so that the hedge gets going by next year.

I'm just about to start on the wooden supports to go on top of the posts and I had a bit of retail therapy at the weekend to help out.



I've got a lot of bevel cuts to do and I reckoned that my carpentry capabilities needed a bit of help. I looked at cheaper bevel/mitre saws at B&Q and I had memories of using a cheap chop saw which I borrowed from my son-in-law last year and I decided to lay out a bit more money and get something which would work accurately. I did a bit of chop saw work yesterday making the plugs for the top of the plastic posts and it worked very well. I'm just setting up a test to cut the angled members to go on top of the posts and I might get something fitted by the end of the day.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

I managed to have a quick session with the saw before rain stopped play.


This was the setup to cut the short cross-bearers from 100mm x 47mm wood. The saw was set over by 9 degrees - got from the CAD drawing - and a temporary stop was clamped on the left end to get the correct length and repeatability.


...and after a few minutes I had five pairs of cross-bearers cut with many more levels of accuracy and repeatability than I could ever have achieved and in a fraction of the time.


Here's a quick mock-up to show where I'm going. The two cross-bearers are held on the pipe by two cross pieces made from 100mm x 19mm wood. When the height is set on the pipe, the cross-bearers will be anchored to the post tops with screws through them into the wooden plugs in the tops of the pipes. I've just got to fine tune the length of the cross pieces so that the whole assembly will be clamped on the pipe when the woodscrews into the crosspieces are tightened up, therefore allowing the assembly to be clamped in position after level setting when the main holding screws are then inserted.

Longitudinal pieces of 100mm x 19mm wood between the posts will be screwed to the angled faces of the cross bearers and the plywood tops will be screwed onto these longitudinal pieces.

The next job is to make up a drilling template for the cross-bearers so that all the holes necessary can be drilled in one operation on my pillar drill and I'll also make a simple jig on a scrap piece of plywood to aid the assembly of the pieces.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

I had a fairly good session in the garden today and got a bit of obvious progress to show.

First I had to make a jig to construct the baseboard supports on the top of the posts.



I made up the jig on a bit of scrap plywood using a printout from my CAD drawing as a base. The stup of pipe was screwed in the centre and the other guides were made from small section stripwood screwed to the plywood.



This was the first dry run to check that everything fitted. I'm going to have to get used to the fact that wood "off the saw" has nominal measurements and didn't quite match my exact CAD drawing.



I also made up a drilling jig for the holes to be drilled in the bits of 100mm x 47mm.



The two bits of wood are handed so the drilling guide had to be double sided to cope with this. Again, a bit of 4mm ply and the same stripwood made up the jig.



The old Clarke drill was heaved out of the garage workshop to do the job since it is a bit better at drilling vertical than me. I just spotted through the jig with a 3mm drill then opened the holes out and drilled right through with 5mm and 6mm drills.



The part is being assembled using clamps to hold everything together while the screws are put into the 100mm x 19mm cross pieces.



The part was then fitted on the post with the screws adjusted to give a fairly good clamp on the post



The beam I had used earlier to carry levels from the station boards had a pivot added using a piece of scrap baseboard ply.



The other end of the beam was then put on the support with a piece of ply packing and the level was set by gently tapping the support down with the hammer.



The support piece was then screwed to the wood plug in the top of the post using coach screws.

This all looked fine until I put a small spirit level on the support and found that it was all over the place. It seemed that although the support part had been built square in the jig, when it got on to the end of a post it decided to re-arrange itself. So I took it all off and started again by lining up one side of the support to be level and at the correct height, then screwing it to the post, then fiddling and heaving with the other piece to get it level and square then screwing it to the post. This time round the support was square all round and at the correct height. I went on to do the next support using this method and it went quite well.



I then fitted the longitudinal pieces temporarily using single wood screws until I get some shorter coach screws for the job. There will be two 100mm x 47mm cross members between the longitudinals when I get more wood (I got the last bit of 100 x 47 from the B&Q rack on Wednesday) and I think this should make up quite a strong baseboard when combined with the 15mm ply top.

I'll get on with a few more bits tomorrow when I get some more coach screws.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

With another good day of weather, I opted to use up all the wood I had to get a bit more done.





Just another three segments, but that's all that I could do with the wood I had got last Wednesday. I'm learning that the job is a bit more agricultural than I thought because I'm using sawn timber. So it has been a bit of a learning process to build in a bit of play in everything so that parts can be nudged into a square and level position. I'm also glad I've got this corner mostly finished since the branches of the plum tree are gradually descending as the fruit grows in weight and working around it this afternoon was getting quite annoying.

I'll probably go on with some more posts on the western side of the layout until the local B&Q gets more of my wood sizes in and they are still there on pensioner Wednesdays.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

With the better weather this weekend, I got a bit more done - the first venture onto the actual lawn.


The first two posts to be planted in the lawn will support a lift-up flap for access to the centre of the oval for lawn mowers, etc. The posts were positioned using a string line from one of the central posts and the trig point on the corner of the house, and taking a distance from the central post.


This closer shot shows the posts being located with a lath from the central post. The string line actually lines up with the edge of a beam across the face of the posts hence the offset from the lath. The spirit level was used to line up the centre of the lathe with the string line. The beam behind took a level from the central post and was used to set the heights of the posts using the longer spirit level.


This is part of the CAD drawing I'm working from. The track is imported as a DXF file from Templot. The post positions are shown as the blue squares. The string line in today's setup is the red line from the extreme right to one of the centre points. I'll get some more Postcrete during the week and plant the other posts shown in the bottom right quadrant of the oval and hope that everything meets nicely with the other posts already planted in the bottom left quadrant. There is a bit of wiggle room to allow for the odd millimetre variance here and there.



I'm also thinking ahead to the hedging and I am trying rooting some cuttings from the Lonerica hedge in the front garden. I'll see what success rate I have.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

A week later and all the posts are in on the west side of the oval.



I was able to plant two posts a day when I was having to work round other commitments like taking the dog out and feeding my grandson at lunchtime. One big waste of time is having to clear up all my tools when taking the dog for its daily outing on Sodbury Common - one of the trials of living on your own.

I finished off filling all the posts with Postcrete this morning - a finicky job at best since it's not easy to assess the optimum amounts of water and Postcrete to fill the post, but I'm beginning to get the hang of guessing more accurately.

The next job will be to fit the support timbers to these posts and to start modifying the garden to suit the layout before I proceed further with the rest of the post work. I did the work on the CAD plan this afternoon and I should be able to start cutting wood tomorrow or Wednesday.

Jim.

 

[Scale7JB]

Very exciting!

JB.

 

[JimG]

For all sorts of reasons, I haven't got as far as I would have liked this month. The first was the realisation that I had to do some re-modelling of the garden before I got much further on with the layout. Moving soil from the centre of the lawn to the outsides of the garden would be quite restricted once the baseboard top supports were in place. So I had to source a barrow - our last one had disappeared into the wilds of Gloucestershire to undertake pooh-picking duties never to be seen again. So a new one was obtained via Amazon for £24 and it's not too bad for the money and will serve me well enough.



The barrow was put to good use in re-shaping the bed under the tree. The access to the centre will be via a lifting section between the two sets of posts on the left and the bed was too close. So it was levelled back by several feet and the excess soil shifted to the top end of the garden for the moment. At the moment I'm just tramping over the area to compact the soil again before turfing it. I would also prefer to wait until the autumn with more rainfall around before turfing. I also had to clear a path between the posts and the wall - top left - so that I could access the outside of the layout. There was a load of topsoil temporarily dumped there and the ivy on the wall and other bushes made access difficult. So the topsoil was moved and the ivy and the other bushes trimmed well back so that I can now squeeze the wheelbarrow through.

Once all this work was done, I got the cross-bearers fitted to the posts. I then hit the next problem. When I went to fit the longitudinal supports between the posts I found that my levels were anything but. I had been using a spirit level on the long beam to set the levels of the bearers but I hadn't appreciated the tolerances of this system, which is probably about +/- 5mm with a twelve foot beam and which can be unacceptable if one post is at the +5mm end and the next one, 1200mm away, is at the -5mm end. So I had to have a think about that. I was envious of Richard's (Dikitriki) system which has adjustable screw fittings to fine tune levels when built and I wanted to try and get something similar on my system. I've now opted to avoid trying to get the cross supports on the post level as I have tried to do to date, and to make the tops of the longitudinals the level points with these parts being held on the cross-supports with large coach crews and washers through slotted holes to allow for fine adjustment.

The next thing was to work out a system of setting the level with much finer tolerances. A super-duper laser level would no doubt do the job but the cost would probably be too much. So I opted to go back to the old water level which I had used years ago when doing the earthworks for a layout in Scotland. I ordered up a set from Ebay for £7 and I got it set up today. The main job is to fill the tube and get rid of all the air bubbles and that took a bit of time this morning. But I got out in the afternoon to try the level out.



This was the setup at the end of the station baseboards with one of the ends clamped to the level of the baseboard underside. The pippet is used to fine tune the level by adding or removing water until it's at the correct level. The two corks are to plug the ends when filled, courtesy of Aberlour distillery. They are much, much better than the plastic caps supplied with the set.



The other end was clamped to one of the existing longitudinals as a temporary measure to check out the level - I'll investigate some separate method of support for the tube end to make adjustment of the longitudinals easier.



...and a closer look at the tube shows that my level is about 6mm low at this point. So I can now proceed with getting the boards up level - when the weather allows.

Jim.

 

[martin_wynne]

Hi Jim,

Have you tried the central bucket method with a water level? A cheap plastic bucket, on a stand in the middle of the site? You can have several tubes leading from the bucket to provide multiple simultaneous levels round the site. It's dead easy to remove bubbles from the tube(s) -- just keep topping up the bucket and letting the tubes run to waste until they run clear.

A very tiny amount of washing-up liquid in the water helps to make it run freely and read accurately against the scale. In the old darkroom days I used photographic wetting agent (which doesn't froth) but I don't know if it is still available. Tubing is readily available from water garden/fish pond places, and nowadays connections to a plastic bucket are easy -- drill hole, insert tube, seal all round with hot-glue gun.

For some reason bystanders always regard the process with great amusement.

regards,

Martin.

 

[JimG]

Have you tried the central bucket method with a water level? A cheap plastic bucket, on a stand in the middle of the site? You can have several tubes leading from the bucket to provide multiple simultaneous levels round the site. It's dead easy to remove bubbles from the tube(s) -- just keep topping up the bucket and letting the tubes run to waste until they run clear.

Martin,

Many thanks for that - I hadn't heard of that method and it's so obvious now you think of it. It will certainly come in very useful even with only two pipes since I could set up both ends of a part at the same time. It's a bit of a fiddle to re-set the single tube when changing its location from one point to another. I might get another set off Ebay so that I then have the capacity for four tubes - I've got a spare bucket kicking around. I'll have to get some more malt whisky to get the corks.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

I've been away from the garden since the end of August - partly due to bad weather, but mainly due to having to do a fair bit of work as the S Scale Society Parts Officer, getting etches produced for the autumn meeting at the end of September and also getting some S scale pointwork built for another member to be delivered at the meeting. But I at last got out on Tuesday morning when the weather was excellent.

The first job to do was to see if I could re-jig the longitudinal bearers for the baseboard tops to allow some vertical adjustment so that I had the ability to fine tune the levels. My method up till now had been to establish the levels when fitting the supports for the longitudinals to the posts and that had proved a bit tricky at times. I had noted Richard's (Dikitriki) adjusters on every post on his layout and I aimed to get something similar.

I removed the longitudinal beams already fitted and made some slots in the ends for bolting to the supports.



Out came the router which is my tool that is always looking for a job. I am going to use 8mm coach screws, so the slots were routed with a 10mm cutter to give a bit of elbow room.



Back out at the track base, the end of the water level was set up using a small micriphone boom stand which was originally got to hold my small video microscope.



The two 8mm bolts are possibly overkill for the job but I'm aware that I'm screwing into end wood and a bit of over-tightening of a single bolt might strip the hole whereas lighter force on two bolts will probably be OK - especially when I'm using the socket set for the job with the hefty purchase I could apply. I will only do the inner longitudinals with the water level and line up the outer ones with a spirit level.

It looks like another fine day today so I'll get back out and see how many more I can get fitted.

Jim.

 

[Dikitriki]

Are you effectively then just clamping round the uprights, rather than screwing into them? Or do you do that later when you are certain it is all level?

Richard

 

[JimG]

Are you effectively then just clamping round the uprights, rather than screwing into them? Or do you do that later when you are certain it is all level?

Richard,

The supports on the posts are still firmly screwed to the posts. The only adjustments I have had to make is to drop several of the supports on their posts where they were set too high. Originally I had screwed the supports to the posts with their tops level with the underside of the baseboards. This was quite a tricky thing to achieve since there was a bit of elasticity when fixing to the plastic posts. My adjustment of the level of the track base is by the slotted holes in the longitudinals allowing vertical adjustment.

Today I've managed to adjust most of the remaining support on their posts.



The support coach screws were unscrewed and the supports were knocked down the post until their tops were about 5mm under the water level indicated. This means that the longitudinals will be proud of the supports and give me a bit of elbow room for any adjustments without fouling the support tops.



You can just about see in this shot where the water level is compared to the underside of the level.

All the existing supports have now been adjusted and I'll just wait on another good day to get the longitudinal members fitted.

Jim.

 

[JimG]

I took the first steps out into the garden this past weekend - the heavy clay was beginning to dry out a bit and it was almost safe enough to walk on it without it puddling.

The job to be done was to cut the grass, which had started to sprout quite quickly, then plant out some hedge cuttings. Further up this page there's a picture of hedge cuttings I took during the summer which I had done very carefully following an expert's words and music - and they all failed. So at the end of autumn, after the last clipping of the front hedge, I grabbed a handful of the clippings with no preparation, dunked them in rooting powder and jammed them in compost, and all, bar one, took. There's a lesson there somewhere.



Here's the bowl of cuttings just before planting out with plenty of new growth showing. Some of the failed cuttings are in the bowl behind.



I started laying them out between the supports on the west side of the layout. because of the width of the boards at this point, I'm laying a line of hedge on each side.



,,,and all of the cuttings planted, and I haven't got very far round the layout. I'm going to have to wait on the front hedge beginning to sprout and then get a lot more cuttings to do the rest. I think this area might finish up as a hedgehog retreat when both sides of the hedge thicken out.

I spotted my first frog at the weekend when doing a bit of pruning, and there is frog's spawn in the small pool.

Jim.

 

[simond]

Jim

Just read your thread from the top - most informative & many good ideas. Thanks

Looking forward to seeing your continued progress
Best
Simon

 

[Steve Cook]

Good stuff Jim
If I can offer some advice having used the same process, cut the top off each cutting as that will encourage it to spread out and divide. I have to be honest, if they were mine, I'd be chopping them in half, planting the top half with rooting compound and then topping that bit as well.

I used that technique on both mine and Simon's lines and it goes a long way to avoid the top heavy look. Of course, if you are going for scale trees as I had in a few places, then carry on as you are

I'm looking forward to seeing you make more progress this year - I'm hoping to do likewise!

Steve

 

[JimG]

If I can offer some advice having used the same process, cut the top off each cutting as that will encourage it to spread out and divide. I have to be honest, if they were mine, I'd be chopping them in half, planting the top half with rooting compound and then topping that bit as well.

Will do - it'll give me another bunch of cuttings immediately.

Jim.