Yes... it's still going!
13) When through bad planning you find yourself with a lot of people on site expecting to lift a frame that is far from ready, you have to dedicate yourself to management. You can't cut anything. You should just make sure that everyone has something to do, and take responsibility for checking the joints as they're cut to ensure (as best as possible) that they are correct. Trial fitting should just involve pulling timbers together to confirm that everything fits, not spending 4 hours recutting all the joinery which has somehow managed to end up about 2mm out in the worst possible way and in every sense! :-)
14) When raising by hand (using a chain hoist), be aware that depending on your set-up, up to 50cm of chain may be used simply taking the slack out of all of the cords. This means that if you have 3m of chain and you've calculated that it's just enough to lift the frame, you'll run out of chain while the frame is still at an angle.
We had a few screw-ups, and a few scary moments, but one half of the house structure is now standing and pegged. We're having to raise bits before it's all complete because of an imminent shortage of hands. If we're going to find ourselves alone on site with a pile of timber, better to have a few joints left to cut, than to have a large pile of completed timbers and no ability to raise them.
