Saturday, January 4, 2014

(Jan 4) Rafters Ahoy

Whew, David, our son-in-law, was a huge help this day. Kim was on the deck handing the rafters up as David and I screwed the braces into place. Another great thing about working with steel.  Much lighter weight than it's wood counterpart and when you need a little extra strength, just spec the gauge up without changing the dimension of the board. On the structural steel, we had from 18 gauge to 12 gauge to choose from. All cut to exact length. I could have saved us some cutting time on site if I had been a little more careful with the CAD drawings. The other nice thing about the steel is that it is the same cost per foot no matter then length. Wood always gets more expensive as it gets longer because the taller trees demand a higher price.



To be able to attach both sides of the rafter to the brace, we cut and attached small pieces of track to go over the studs and give it a full wrap around surface to screw to. This was the only place I used 16 gauge steel. I just felt that the rafters were going to take a lot of weight with the overhang and the 12' gap over the interior of the building.


Starting to shape up!


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