sort of like a giant wheel....

With the help of Brad's brother Paul, we have gotten the 10 'inner main beams' up - which was the next step of the house frame.  These beams were about 4.5m long, and pretty heavy to move about.  It took about a day (although it was in 2 half days) to get them all up and it was a bit fiddly fititng them in once a few were up. 

Firstly we built a tower out of the standard house framing pine timber, and got the collar up on top of it (we used our trusty 'lifter').  Then it was just a matter of lifting each beam up with the lifter, and jiggling it till it got into the right spot so that the bolts would feed through the holes in the collar and the bracket.  Again, I say its a credit to Brad that it all fitted together so well.  There is alot of maths involved in building a round house!  And with timber like this you really do want to follow the rule 'measure twice, cut once' or in our case 'calculated twice, cut once'.

the centre of the roof - note that when the photo was taken, the 'tower' was still in place.

 

So the frame is really starting to take shape now, it looks fantastic, so photogenic against the amaing blue skies we are having.  Very proud, and very happy with it!

Since the photos were taken the central tower was partially removed, and the frame is self supporting.  The next stage will involve putting up the 'outer posts' and the connecting beams to the brackets seen in the above photo.