Hello folks. Clearly I have been slacking in keeping this blog updated. Sorry about that.

How about a little story about this trellis that I recently finished?

The story begins with the wavy shingle pattern that you can see in the photo just above. Pretty cool huh? Well, I used to have hops strung up to the second story. (Yes, this is a personal project.) In order to install the shingles, I had to cut the hops down, and sure I could just send them back up on strings to the second story again. But, that wouldn’t be terribly fun or interesting. They needed a trellis to hold them. A trellis that would add visual interest to the house. So, I started puttering around with a few ideas, and the one that stuck was this … a big circle that would frame the window. Of course it would have to be held up off of the ground, so naturally one of the ideas to hold it up was to support it with a section of the circle. There were other ideas, but that’s the one that stuck.

As for the construction details, the whole thing is basically what we call a bent lamination. (A construction technique where thin strips of wood are bent around a form and glued together. When the glue dries, the strips of wood hold the shape of the form.)

So, here’s a photo of one of the arcs during glue up. I ended up needing 10 of these arcs to complete the circle because I used 8 foot long cedar 2×6 lumber, and stacked them up to create a finished 4×4 circle.

And, here you can see the circle coming together. The arcs are offset, stacked, and glued together.

Yep, I had to move outside to complete the construction. This thing is big!

That’s about it. The base overlaps the main circle, and is glued on in the same manner. A little trimming, a coat of stain to match the wavy shingles, a little concrete to hold some post bases, and there you go.

Now, we wait for the hops to grow.

Why the Moon Door? The name was tossed out by a passing biker. I like it, my circle lets the moon in. Of course, you can call it the Big O if you must.