Wow, it's been a very long time since my last post.  Have done nothing new to the tractor (the purpose of this blog) but did make a good deal of progress on the timber-frame shed project.  The two top plates that joined the top of the three "bents" were a real challenge.  They are 8 x 8 inches and 16 feet long so just moving them around was a struggle.  Heck, just rolling them over while working on them was a struggle.  The real problem I had to deal with was that in spite of my best efforts to dry them properly they both ended up with pretty pronounced twists and one was bowed.  Getting the mortises all on the same plane and in the right spots took a lot of measuring and some string and level gymnastics that I'll not bore you with.  To my surprise they both fit!  Getting the beasts up over 10 feet in the air was another feat.  During the past few days I've been putting up the rafters which I had made a couple years ago and have been storing.  More twisting issues but nothing insurmountable (so far).  Here's a couple of pics of what she looks like today.



After the rafters are up I'm going to bolt them to the top plate to make sure the roof doesn't blow off during a storm.  This will be the first metal used; up till now all the joins have been with wooden pegs.