New Beams

Jay Lock

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My friend Cliff the electrician needed to put some replacement beams in his house and I offered to barter with him for some electrical work at my place.

He brought over a bunch of fir 2 x 6, around 11' long
We needed to laminate up four layers for each beam, two beams in total.

Try jointing that length of a board! It was a first for me but we got a decent job done.

But of course, he left the "straight" material in his truck for several days, one end on the bed and the other propped up on a seat back. So of course we had some "sway backs"

One was so bad I had to cut the board in pieces to get it to align with any accuracy to the other boards
The others I was able to get to align by starting at one end with clamps along side the board and the one I was going to clamp it to

Put the gorilla glue on, put the board together, clamped them straight, then clamped them together.

Once the whole mess was locked down tight I was able to remove the side clamps and clean them off

Here is my friend and one of the finished beams

And here is some of the work in progress, got a little carried away with the amount of glue in one lamination.

Once glue dried, then we cleaned up the faces on the planer, re-jointed two faces square and then dimensioned the bad boy in the planer -- no way was I going to try to put that through my little bench top saw.

He is going to use 12" lag bolts to attach it to the existing structural members in his house.

LOVE those Bessey clamps, got to watch out for more Amazon sales.

And now my wife understands why I say "you can't have too many clamps!"

Jay
 
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Steve

I really don't know, but I think it is more decorative than structural. He is putting 2 in the living room of his house.

The guy is super obsessive/anal and has been around the building trades quite awhile -- in fact he told me he used to be a contractor before he went back to being "just an electrician "-- so I'm sure he is aware of the demands that a span of that length would place on a beam with these dimensions.

I just produced what he asked for and told him what I expected done at my place in return.


Jay
 
SWMBO doesn't agree about the clamp assessment, but then again I have to say that she hasn't every given me grief for buying tools. Woodworking Show coming up in March! Maybe Amazon will come through with a sale or two before then.

All of you can rest easy, this isn't a support beam, it is a tie beam according to my friend.

Jay
 
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