Huichol page 33 June 21st - 24th trip
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I have to admit I was surprised when I returned
to find all three trusses up in their brackets on all three sets of piers. They
weren't where they needed to be, they weren't tied off on each end as I
requested, but they were up on the posts.
Here they are using the block and tackle chainhoist I found at a roadside
fleamarket along with their "tripod" as we engine pullers call it, to
adjust the position of the trusses so they are parallel to the ground and have
the same amount showing off both ends from the pillars. The biggest problem here
was drilling the 1/2" holes through the 6" U channel so the truss
could be bolted securely to the U brackets imbedded in the concrete pillars.
Drilling 1/2" holes in thick steel using a drill press is easy; doing so 8
feet in the air with a hand drill is a whole 'nother story. Thank goodness I had
the presence to buy a cheap 6" bench grinder so we could keep sharpening
drill bits to get through this phase; it took much of the afternoon just to get
the 12 holes drilled
to be able to install the 1/2" threaded rod.
Next phase was setting and welding the
small 4" pieces of angle iron to the trusses so the 6" U channel that
would support the laminar could be secured.
One of the hardest parts for me personally was
welding the 1 meter
piece of 14 gauge 6" U channel in between the two 6 meter pieces so
we had one long 13 meter piece of 6" U channel to actually secure to
the
trusses to support the laminar. For those of you who do arc welding you
know how difficult it can be to arc weld metal less than a 1/16"
thick
without burning holes through it. The Infra Arc Welder at 65 amps
did
amazingly well even though it was very difficult to get an arc started
with
such low amperage. You can see the long piece resulting in the middle
near the floor in this pic. We had to make 6 of these. All the 4"
support
brackets are now welded on and we are ready to install these long pieces;
which also presented challenges as 13 meters of 14 gauge U channel
wants to play the twist game in stead of sitting square on the trusses.
Luckily I brought my collection of metal clamps, wood clamps and ratchet binders
which allowed us to make the proper alignments.
Welding in the cross supports was very time
consuming. Besides welding
the 6" U channel to the 4" angle bracket, an 8" piece of
flat bar was also
used to hold it into position and then a 20" piece of angle stock to
cross
brace it so there would be no lateral movement of the whole structure.
See second pic below for a closeup of that detail. That's Ber 16 feet in
the air welding the long 14 gauge laminar support beams.
