The chips are flying now...

Great weather and a good days worth of work. Alex showed up Saturday and we cut and assembled the six roof rafters for the South Wayne bridge. The extra help made "light" work of lugging the finished assemblies off the layout jig.

 Way to go Alex! In the upper left of the picture you can see the Primary Rafter pairs. Remember that these will be added after the rafter assembly is installed and anchored to the bridge trusses. The notch on the end of the Cross Brace goes over the top chord and the Secondary Rafter acts as a diagonal knee brace between the roof rafter and bridge truss.

Above Alex is chiseling out the notches in the Cross Braces that will fit over the top chords of the bridge trusses. Next using a 1- 1/8" diameter Forstner drill bit he starts making the mortise in the Cross Brace where the 1" x 6" Lateral Braces will be placed between the six Roof Rafter assemblies.

With all the pieces in place on the assembly jig each Roof Rafter can be drilled, screwed and bolted together. The Primary Rafters are numbered and marked as left and right, removed and stored. These parts will now be transported to South Wayne where Alex and Bruce will apply the finish and store them at the local Coop until they are needed in July.

As part of the total 21 Century learning process Alex and Bruce will be in for a little surprise when I get them to do a little paper "work". This will be a bit of an oxymoron to them but when we "work" on the spread sheets they will understand just how a three legged stool needs all three legs to "work". In this case the Community (paying for the materials), Business (supplying the materials) and School (Bruce and Alex are turning the materials into a bridge). Take away one of these three and nothing gets done, no materials, no work, no bridge, period! Thinking about all this is a good thing for high school shop students. Thinking is a good thing for everyone.

Puzzler - Without using a credit card how can you place an order with McMaster-Carr for 58 - 1/2" - 13 NC threaded rods 6 feet long? 

Tech Vocab -  1/2" - 13  NC  thread