Page:Australian enquiry book of household and general information.djvu/204

 The groove must be always one inch deep and one inch wide.

Showing slabs fixed in groove on wall plate, and between battens on sleeper, the easiest way to fix the slabs is to nail on one batten first, and when all the slabs are in their places nail on the second.

Having learned to face the posts, wall plates and sleepers, it will come easy to dress the slabs, though in this sort of hut they need not be very particular. Many experienced bushmen are expert hands with the axe and adze, and can dress their slabs as smoothly as sawn timber.

Now to return to the work of putting up the hut. Having your ground pegged out, dig the holes for the four main posts, and having marked and faced them, put them in, and be sure that they are not too low in the ground or too high out of it. To make sure of this do not fill in your holes till you have all your posts in, and to ascertain whether they are even or not place the posts in the holes and across from one to the other lay a batten, and on top of that your spirit level, which will at once tell you when it is on an even surface. Having got your four posts exactly even, fill in round them, stamping the earth down firmly. Now do the same by the skillion and verandah posts, trying them all with the spirit level before filling in the holes. I am supposing that your posts have already been mortised to receive the sleepers and the tenons cut for the wall plates.

Face your sleepers and cut tenons and shoulders like the diagram, there are ten of them of various lengths according to their place in the building. See ground plan. Make the sleepers fit securely which they will easily do if the mortises and tenons and shoulders are properly cut. Next fit in the studs where your doors and windows are to be. Look well at the ground plan and you will see where these are to go. For the windows two studs are placed from sleeper to wall plate, and shorter pieces placed to form top and bottom, which pieces must be mortised into the studs, the same to form the door ways, have a short piece of studding across the top securely mortised or fitted into the upright studs on each side. The wall plates rest upon the studs and are fitted together at the corners and a spike driven through to keep them firm.