CMCC Work Study: Storage Cabinet Unit for Aluminum Planks

Aluminum Stage-plank Storage Cabinet 

 

This was a little shop project long overdue in the BCT department. Every year the students in this department use these stage planks routinely throughout the semesters and every year until now they were stacked up and ratchet strapped together and stored openly somewhere. So the assignment was to complete a unit that would house all 24 planks and still be movable by one person and a fork lift. In the photo above you 'll notice two little square holes down at the base of the unit. Those are for the fork lift that the BCT department utilizes to move the majority of everything in the shop that is far to heavy to move with just man power.

I am in the unit assembling.

  

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Building Concepts Course CMCC Week 18 - Timber Frame Rafters

Our timber frame project has an end in sight! This week we focused on rafters. The pictures above and the picture to the left illustrate the method of joinery that we exercised to bring our rafters together at the ridge. Tongue and Fork is the term for it. 

Tongue and Fork

You can see we dry fit them on the ground before erecting them on our building. Also for our birds mouth cut since their is not going to be any overhang assemblies we are going with a plane-old birds mouth cut only the plumb cut is on the opposite end-edge of the timber. This is because when it is in place, the rafter ca not slide off the plates or top girder. See the photos below to better understand what I am trying to explain.

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Building Concepts Course CMCC Week 17- Timber Frame Knee Braces

This week was devoted much of our time toward creating knee braces for the long walls of our timber frame. The purpose of these knee braces is to keep the long walls of the structure held square and also to offer support. Unlike the other knee braces we joined these 4 knee braces from the outside in instead of the true mortise (hole) and tenon (tongue) style joinery. Before any assembly happened their was a lot of planing and joining of the timbers to get them square and straight. 

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Building Concepts III Course CMCC Week 16 - Hip Mock Up Completion

This week our focus we set on completing the Hip/Valley Roof System mock up. Our tasks were to calculate the five different hip/valley member ahead of time with given building dimensions. Based on what we have been taught about determining opposite interior and exterior angles inside of a rectangles. 

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Hip- Valley Cripple Jack Rafter 

With regards to this image you can see a cheek cut, which is the line going at a 45 degree angle across the middle top of the member. The lines it crosses through are important as they are reduction lines for the hip rafter. Whenever a line length is determined you must take into account that members thickness so that the other member meet and connect perfectly. So to calculate angled reductions we determined that 1 1/16th" of an inch is the amount necessary to put you inline with the member on a 45 degree angle. Next you need to bring that back half the member thickness, in this case it was 3/4" and that butts you up right along the hip perfectly. 

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 Valley Rafter Seat Cut

Valley Layout Rule: Always add 3/4" (half the thickness of the member) to the plumb seat cut line. This accounts for where the member is going to sit tight to the inside corner of the building provided they are cut on 45 degree angles pointing toward the building. 

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Valley Rafter Tail Cut

Here is a series of layout and cut images of a valley rafter tail cut. Valley rafters are calculated using the same unit run as a hip, 16.97". With the given information that the roof system was a 5/12 slope, 5" rise for every 12" of run. Determining the valley line length requires you to replace the 12" run with 16.97". Now its a 5/16.97 slope. Using Pythagorean theorem we are able to calculate the line length and overhang to know what rough length member we will need to cut our valley or hip from. 

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