Deiselpig has got me wanting to post some pictures. So here goes. We just finished the house in the photo album. We’ll be back to hang windows on Friday when they show up and we’ll side it in a couple of months.
It was a really fun frame and I’d like to do it again. The I-joists for rafters were really easy to use and I’d use them again in a hearbeat.
Pics
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| Lot 35 Muirkirk |
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Replies
Tim,
Very nice! Thanx for sharing.
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Chuck S
Excellent work. Excellent photos. Excellent thread. Bob's next test date: 12/10/07
Wow! Thank you for all of the detail. Great job.
"It is what it is."
Wow, cool
I never knew you could cut curves w/ a circular saw. how is that possible
Yes, my best friend is a hammer.
Using an Arcus blade http://www.arcusblade.com/arcus_product.html makes curves pretty easy. I cut a 24" radius in one pass with that blade in 3/4" OSB.
You have to get the right blade though. They make one for left and right bladed saws.
I have always liked your picts.
Andy, you cab cut with a reg blade also. Only thing is, you go with 1/4" depth at a time!
I never bothered to get a different blade either. If it needed that amount of precision I'd hook a router to a trammel. The trick to cutting radii with a normal saw is to watch the back of the blade. I also used to run the saw backwards a lot, especially on the first pass. Of course, it helps a lot to have most of the extracurricular metal hacked out of the way. I don't think my table every touches the material on radii cuts. Bob's next test date: 12/10/07
once you use an arcus blade you'll wonder why you never tried one sooner.
I had one a long time ago I think. Is it a three sided thingy? Bob's next test date: 12/10/07
no Jim it's not three sided looks like a regular blade except it is concaved a little. doesn't look like it would do much better but if you look at Tim's photos you will see how nice of a job they do with little effort also they cut down to like a 24" radius i think with no binding or burning well worth the forty bucks to some one who cuts a fair amount of radi.
Jim,
Here are some pictures I took when I first got the blade.
Edit: I wanted to add that cutting the 24" radius in the 3/4" OSB was super easy and it didn't bog the saw down at all. On a blade left saw, you have to cut counterclockwise. They make a blade for left and right. View Image View Image View Image View Image
Edited 7/4/2008 9:06 am ET by Timuhler
It appears that the sawblade has aggressive chompers. I'd certainly try something like that. Most of our trim was rough sawn spruce. Cutting it was easy. A 7/8" trim board would take me three passes. I normally made the first pass working backwards, cutting exactly to the line. The blade naturally wants to arc. The next two passes would easily cut through. Of course, I did all this freehand: the blade was left at full depth and the table never got close to the wood.I would be interested to understand how that particular blade works. The thing I'm seeing is that every tooth clears the wood but the geometry of the cut doesn't change. When you plunge that blade into the wood 7/8" deep, the length of the straight cut still is significant. I would guess that you still have to focus on the back side of the blade to follow your cutting line. How wide of a kerf does it plow on a 24" radius? Bob's next test date: 12/10/07
Jim,
I think that it gets to be about 1/4" wide kerf.
Tim
Cool pic tutorial, nice job.
Doug
Awesome stuff as always Tim. You really put together a great frame. I like your barrel vault technique. We just did one on that addition I've been posting photos for. The barrel vault pics are up if you're interested.
tim...took me awhile to learn how to manipulate the slide show... but worth it !
i noticed you use an IR telehandler... did any of the discussions here influence your company's decision to choose IR ?
We went with the IR VR90B back on 03 I think. That was prompted by what the company we were put in contact with had at the time and it seemed perfect for us. Then we were expanding and going to run 2 framing crews, 1 siding crew and 2 finish crews. So we looked at purchasing another machine. I talked to Frenchy and he had a lot of postitive comments on IR and the VR1056.
So we bought an 02' 1056 that had about 700 hours on it. It has been the perfect machine for what we do.
So to answer your question, the discussions here didn't really influence the decision. Frenchy did :-)
IR & Frenchy.....pure coinky dink.......
i'm envious...but telehandlers don't seem to fit in with our projectsMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
tim... spent about an hour & a half talking to Barbqara Robinson at Arcus...get my blade & trqammel sometime next week
got some big curved casing to cut out of 5/4 AzekMike Hussein Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Mike,
I really like the blade. It has worked for me pretty well, although it didn't fit most saws. It fits the Mag just fine. Learned the hard way which direction to put it in :-) The first blade that was sent to me to try was for a blade right saw. I didn't know that and put it in the Mag and got some sparks. Even so these were the first cuts I made. 4x 8 cedar.
View Image Something else you might give serious thought to is the HeatCon blanket for PVC trim. It was demonstrated at JLC and at Gary's Roadshow that I attended where you could take 5/4x 4 Azek and tie it up in a knot when it is at the right temp. I'm trying to get my hands on one right now because we could bend the trim to some arched, round windows for interior trim and then shape it on the router table. I've been talking to our finish carp about this. If you want, email me and I'll give you Mike Sloggatt's email address and you can talk to him. He used it on Trex and Azek for a couple of JLC articles. It is a very slick system.
One more think, the trammel is only good up to a certain DIAMETER I didn't pay attention when I bought ours, hence the OSB trammel in the pictures :-)
Edited 7/8/2008 5:46 pm ET by Timuhler
i thought about the heat and bend process, problem is you have to spend a lot of time making a mold and this is a one-off arched window
i'll keep you posted...... man , i could write a book about all the stuff Barbara told me...
quite the inventor.... reminded me of Dino Markoupolis, only a Kentucky accent instead of GreekMike Hussein Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Thanks for taking the time to post that... I love seeing new tricks... and getting the "inside" scoop... the stuff that once it's finished out, no one ever sees, or even suspects<G> Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
Thanks. You know the thing is that it is actually easier to assemble when its cut accurately. A lot of framing, it doesn't matter so much.
Plus it is faster than cutting with a jigsaw and way more accurate.
I've got some ideas though for the next cove ceiling that I might try out. I may do it out of metal, even though I've never done it before. Those ceilings are very lumber intensive.
Mike,
Got any tips from Barbara? I'd love to read them.
I know what you mean about the template and such. I was thinking that for us, we could just make them with a router trammel in the most common window sizes.
Mike,
Another possible option for curved &/or custom azek trim may be a local supplier.
I considered the heat blanket as suggested above but the cost outweighed the times I would use it. I have cut archtops for window casing using a trammel and router and a whole 4x8 sheet of azek! (not the most efficient use of mat'l).
Since that project, I have learned that one of my lumber yard distributors has a shop set up to do all kinds of custom Azek work. In my case, I could have told them the Andersen window model and they would have made the piece for me.
As I use Azek more and more, the options of prefab'ing parts becomes more attractive.
we're gonna be replacing trim from 1984, on a Brosco window
already figured on a 4x8 sheet of 5/4 azek
we can get all the trim for the straight casings on the other windows out of the rest of the sheet, ripping with our EZ-GuideMike Hussein Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
I knew you'd have it covered ;>)
I'd like to see how the arcus blade works with Azek, or any other finish trim.
Hope all goes well and post pic's if you can.
Thanks.
Tim,
Thanks for sharing. I have viewed many of your projects and always enjoy watching your progress.
Last year, I finally bought the head cutter to cut some 16" TJI rafters for an addition I was doing. I talked to Big Foot several times before I pulled the trigger and your name came up more than once (all positive).
My question is in regard to your comment about how easy the TJI's were and your willingness to use them again. While I found them easy to cut, lighter than conventional lumber and therefore easier to maneuver into place, those advantages seemed to be offset by the amount of special hangers and fastening requirements. Not to mention, if we installed all of the specified nails in the hangers and strapping, the flanges began to split.
For my project, the span was so small (16'wide 6:12 pitch) that TJI's wouldn't have been required other than to gain the depth for the specified insulation in the ceiling.
Would you share some of the advantages you found?
Thanks in advance.
I'd agree with you about the I-joists in most cases. The first time I tried it, I loved how light they were, but we had an irregular roof and the hangers for the valley jacks were $50/pc. Way too much money.
For common rafters, I love it. We just put the hangers on the ridge first and the rest was easy. There is more to it, the beveled plate, webstiffeners, etc. But if you production line it, you can make it go pretty fast.
Also, its good to work with the designer. There was a miscue with the designer on this one and he designed the dormer using I-joists and one hanger for the ridge and valleys was more than $200! I nixed that all out. I drew it up the way I wanted and all I needed was labelling but you know how that can go.
I highly recommend the bevelled rafter plate so you don't need any birdsmouth.
Any questions, just holler
Oh and yeah Big Foot. Bob and Emma are super nice and a funny couple. Now that they've met the crew and most of my family, it seems that we are all family :-)
Yikes! $200 hangers? $50 hangers? Is there no end to their nonsense? Bob's next test date: 12/10/07
350 milkbones.......
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Ironically, I've made hangers like that which were far stronger for few pennies and my time but I wouldn't have the engineering to prove that it would hold. Bring back the old days.... Bob's next test date: 12/10/07
Jim,
I wonder sometimes about the cost of hangers. We subbed a framing job a couple of years ago and the framer cut a tall glulam (16"ish) down to 2x4 truss tail on the 8" pitch. So we (me) installed a hanger spec'd by our engineer and welded by a friend of ours. I think it was two bolts per side into the glulam garage header below.
Don't know what the cost was on the engineering, metal was negligble and it wasn't much work.
when we get a truss package from Reliable Truss, they come with all the connectors spec'd in the truss diagramsMike Hussein Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Ours always came with the hangers too. In my subcontracts, I always specified that we didn't supply anything but single member joist hangers for floor joist. That got me off the hook for beam hangers or roof hangers. Bob's next test date: 12/10/07
What happened was that a glulam spanned the garage and beared on the garage header. The trusses beared on top of the garage header, so there would have been a glulam sticking above the roof. The framer just taper cut it.
It whould have been designed to be hangered in the first place, or better yet there should have been a girder truss.
So the sub and the truss company should have worked that out.
But for us, trusses or I-joists, the hardware comes with the packages.