Some basic Pythagorus theory for you, and something I've not given a moments notice since I left school in 1988! It wasn't particularly helpful during my university years, since it had little application in my Computer Science degree!
Anyway, having built the basic structure of my roof the next step was to build and install the sloped sections for the roof.
The main issue I had here is that the instructions I have didn't give any clues as to what angle the roof should slope at. Therefore I had to guess at what was right and I was fully expecting to be wrong on the first go, and end up having to start again.
I took the view that with the sides of the roof sections measuring 43", I didn't want it sloping too much. I knew that I wanted a 12" square platform right in the middle of the roof for the lantern to go on, so working backwards, 43-12 = 31 which divided by 2 gives me the distance from the middle of the sides of the roof structure to the edge of my 12" square in the centre across the horizontal (i.e. when it was completely flat). So, given I wanted to raise this 12" square by an "amount" (as yet undefined), I measured out 15.5" inches and decided, purely visually, that I wanted the "height" to be around 6".
Taking my trusty formula, (A*A)+(B*B)=(C*C) and plugging in A=15.5 and B=6, I came up with a value of 16.62" as the value for C - the length of the hypotenuse. Now, knowing as I do how difficult it is to measure and cut anything with any accuracy, I took the view that 16.62" was going to be too hard to get to, and that at 16.5" I stood half a chance. So, plugged my numbers back into my formula, this time using A=15.5 and C=16.5, which gave me a value of B of 5.65 - close enough to 6" anyway methinks! ;)
So, I set to work on some birch plywood I'd picked up for the roof and within a short order I had this
Not bad for a first effort, but I needed 3 more! So, a little more work and I'd got all 4 roof sections cut. Now, when I laid them all together, one on top of the other, I noticed that one of them was a good quarter of an inch taller than the others, but I managed to trim that back with the table saw by holding all 4 pieces together and nicking off one edge.
Here's all 4 laid out on the floor.
Now, I know what you're probably thinking and that is that they don't fit together properly, right? Well, they won't when they are laying flat on the floor - the should only fit together when the middle section is raised up (by approximately 5.65"! :) ).
Now, the next step is to build some sort of frame for these panels to fit onto, but I really couldn't resist seeing how it might look, so I got hold of some tape and taped the panels together to get this:
Not bad at all even if I say so myself. But wait..... it doesn't end there!
Having put them together on the floor like this, I then decided that I wanted to see what they would look like on my roof assembly, so using some offcuts to support it at the corners, I placed it on my roof assembly.
It's really beginning to take shape now! Of course, it isn't perfect - when I kneel down to look at it I can see that one corner is a little higher than the others, but I'm sure I can make this a little better and anyway once it is all put together this is going to be somewhere around 7 feet up in the air, so it can afford to be a little off since no one will likely see it!
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