This week there was a lot of visible progress, both inside and out. On Monday morning the roofing crew arrived, and on this truck you can see some of the very special equipment and materials that will be used to finish up the lower roof (and later the upper roof, too), a spool of copper flashing and a sheet metal brake:
The copper flashing is unspooled:
And is then formed into the appropriate shape for the roof:
Continue reading “Week 108 (Lower Roof Shingling and Booth Windows)”
The installation and illumination of lights in the upper exterior soffit has created a dramatic change to the look of the studio, even in daylight.
The lights, and the mirror-like finish of the final coat of varnish, merely stoke my anticipation all the more:
This week the framing crew put some skin on the Control Room roof rafters, and we’re now technically dried in!
But that’s not nearly all that’s happened, and of course the journey of how we got here is interesting in its own right.
Two weeks ago I posted a construction update titled Dropping the Hips, which marked the most significant progress point yet reached in terms of framing the Control Room roof. This week we reached another significant progress point: the placement of all roof rafters. We are now all set to sheath the roof next week:
Now for those who want to know the blow-by-blow of how we got here, read on…
The last few construction updates have focused on the framing of the Control Room roof with the Annex masonry work visible in the background. This week the Annex masonry takes center stage, with the completion of the top bond beam. If you’ve been following the blog, you know why this is such a major event. If not, refresh your knowledge with the postings from Week 81, Week 82, and Week 83. (And if you want a really complete refresher, Week 86 and Week 89.) The bond beam in question this week is the longest one of the project, and with some deep pilasters also to fill, there’s 25 tons (!) of materials to lift into place. Let’s start!
Here is the last gap in the blocks to be filled before the bond beam can be established:
And here are the 100 bags of concrete which will combine with 8 tons of gravel, 12 tons of sand, and a ton or so of water to make our 25 tons of grout:
I came across Jerry Tubb’s website TerraNovaMastering.com, which not only lists an impressive number of 5.1 surround credits, but also an encouraging statement against the Loudness Wars, quoting the full text of Joe Gross’s Everything Louder than Everything Else.
Here’s the excerpt that explains the phenomenon (for those not yet familiar with the term):
Continue reading “Another sane voice against sheer loudness”
Wendell Berry has become one of my heroes. His writings and ideas are among the most penetrating I have encountered in any living author, and he has a wonderful and luminous presence. He was featured on the Diane Rehm show earlier this year, and that conversation was selected for re-broadcast on New Year’s Eve, a fitting editorial choice about what we Americans should be thinking about as we compost the years 2000-2009 and decide what seeds we will plant in the coming decade (with what little fertile soil is left).
As I was driving around town and thinking about the extraordinary costs going into both the construction of Manifold Recording (not to mention the equipment budget), I was struck by these comments (at 17:16 into the one hour program):
Useful criticism always begins with an appropriate standard. And consumerism—the flourishing of consumerism—is not an adequate standard, just as economic feasibility is not an adequate standard for human behavior.
!
What might this mean?
Continue reading “The conservative (and generous) economics of Wendell Berry”
Before this past week, I had thought that the maths involved in framing a 5:12 pitch roof was fairly straightforward: for every 12 feet of run, there’s 5 feet of rise, and so there’s not much to figuring out how to cut a rafter and put it into place. That may be so for rafters that are running perpendicular to the walls and/or roof pitch, but things get a lot more interesting at the hips, when two facets of a roof come together to form one common line. If you don’t believe me, check out these hip shift and hip drop calculations. With many tangents and arc tangents, it’s not for the faint of heart! And so our brave carpenters begin the most complex part of the Control Room roof yet: the hips…
With the masons and the carpenters running full tilt, and more trades beginning to participate in the project, the idea that I could write a weekly blog posting with a suitably descriptive title now seems quaint. Yes, we have begun putting up the rafters on the control room roof, but that tells less than one third of the story of what’s been happening this week. So instead of trying to make the title tell the story, I should let the pictures do the talking.
The first step of the raftering process was the installation of wooden members into the bent steel beam. Here’s what was built:
according to this detail drawing:
Continue reading “Week 102 (Control Room roof framing begins)”
Fleur-de-Lisa is an a capella quartet based in Durham, North Carolina, and they were guests today on WUNC‘s The State of Things. Frank Stasio talked with them about Hai Ka, which can be translated as Haiku Song.
Manifold Recording / The Miraverse 
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