We’re going to be building our timber frame workshop this winter, and we needed a sheltered place to work. We didn’t want to spend a few thousand dollars on a big tent, so we built our own out of a few spruce trees from the woods and a clear 20x30 tarp. For the time being, this is going to be the workshop’s workshop.

The challenge was going be the peak of the roof, which needed to be pretty tall (to shed snow), and heavy (to stabilize the base). We didn’t have access to a crane, so we made a gin pole. A gin pole is just a tall pole (traditionally spruce) with a block & tackle lashed to the top, and a few guy lines to stabilize the whole thing once it’s upright.

After messing around with knots and pulleys for a little while, we got the pole up and started moving heavy things against gravity right away.

These things don’t look that heavy, but they were really heavy. We didn’t know how to assess the weight, and broke a couple ropes and pulleys before we figured it out.

We’ll be working on timber frame joinery here in a couple months, and keeping the tractor out of the snow in the meantime. Some video on the process below.