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The school of YouTube

I need to knock up a couple of walls using good old 4x2 timber which, as it turns out, is now only 45x90mm.

Now I'm no builder, but I'm not stupid either -- so I thought I'd take a little time to learn about this timber framing process.

Of course in "the olden days", I'd have wandered off to the library and found a book on such things then committed an evening or two to reading through its pages, making some notes and doing my best to assimilate all the information it offered.

These days, things are different -- much different!

The first thing I did was jump online and find out what size of timber I'd be needing and any other structural considerations that might be involved.

Although I found plenty of info for countries such as Canada, the UK and the USA -- the necessary compliance tables for NZ don't seem to be online, you have to actually hand over coin and buy them.

What the?

Surely if you're going to specify certain minimums for things such as joists, rafters and framing timber sizes then you ought to make that information freely available to those who may need to use it. Charging for what is essentially safety information is ridiculous.

That aside, I soon found some useful information that would allow me to ensure that my (non structural) wall, which I'll call a movable partition (;-) will be sufficiently strong and fit for purpose.

The next step was to track down some help in the basics of knocking some framing timber together into a sensible shape and in a way that would ensure I ended up with the same number of limbs and digits I had before commencing the process.

YouTube to the rescue!

I found a huge number of videos online that show exactly how to measure, cut, lay-out and nail up such a structure with ease.

It was interesting to note the differences between conventions in NZ and the UK versus the USA.

Here in NZ, we have horizontal members at regular intervals in our walls. In the USA, they don't seem to bother -- or simply insert a single horizontal member about half way up the wall -- apparently to reduce the spread of fire within the wall, rather than for structural purposes.

I was wondering why this might be -- until I got to the section on fitting the Gib (or sheetrock as the US calls it).

Here in NZ, we tend to fit our lining material with a vertical orientation so that we need the horizontal members to ensure adequate fixing. In the USA they fit their lining sheets horizontally and therefore they don't need those horizontal members.

Of course filling the cracks is much easier with a vertical orientation because the side-edges are slightly tapered to allow for the thickness of the tape and jointing compound, whereas the end-joins required for horizontal sheets is a far trickier task.

The more I investigated, the more interesting this whole process became -- however, one thing was clear...

Video is a far, far better medium for gaining the knowledge needed to undertake this type of task and YouTube must surely be the new DIY man's encyclopedia for such things.

After years of making "how to" videos for others, I've finally realised why such things are held in high regard by others. Having watched a couple of dozen videos on the subject, I feel very confident in my ability to knock up these "movable partitions" and am pretty sure the results will be everything I'm looking for.

Bloody marvelous!

Have readers used YouTube as a DIY manual for embarking on tasks or jobs that they might otherwise be struggling with and if so, what was the outcome?

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