Jim started the day by first working on the steel plate. This is 12 gauge steel - so the heaviest steel we've used. But this valley rafter is going to carry a lot of weight and force so it needed to have an extremely strong connection. The steel was too thick for Jim to use his punch, so he had to drill the holes. Unfortunately, his drill bit had seen better days so first he had to get out his drill doctor tool (recently unearthed from storage!) and sharpen his bit. Then he had to drill all the holes - there's another plate just like this one for the other rafter also. Jim is going to order some special hardware to drill through the center also to connect everything to the truss below. This area is where there is a triple stud underneath to also help carry the weight. So lots of planning and preparation before we could even begin to think about putting up the rafter.
There won't be a lot of pictures of us actually doing this work - because I had to actually help and not just take pictures!
We had to carry the steel from the yard and then Jim walked it up the ladder with me holding the other end until he could get it to reach the deck. We had to carry it by the flanges to make sure it didn't buckle since it was so long. Plus, there is so much bracing and scaffolding that it was even hard to figure out exactly where to put the piece so that we didn't have to keep moving it around on the deck too. But we did it! First step accomplished!
Then Jim got busy marking and making the rafter. He decided to do that on the deck to prevent any damage to the tail pieces during the move.
Using the grinder to shape the rafter...
Jim put up a temporary brace to help hold the rafter once we got it lifted until it could be clamped.
It took a lot of maneuvering, but we were able to get it into place! We each took a side, had to do quite a bit of maneuvering, but then Jim was able to prop it on the scaffolding, get up on the scaffolding, and then we guided it into the clip angle at the bottom and the right place at the top. Big sigh of relief!
It took some tweaking but Jim was happy with the placement and started fastening it down.
Wow - looks great!
But that was just the first piece. Next was the track. Although this piece is lighter, it was harder to move because it was more flexible and difficult to hold straight so that it wouldn't buckle. We somehow managed to get it up on the deck!
Again - no pictures but the track went right next to the channel piece - flat sides together. This was even scarier trying to lift it into place because of the flexibility.
Then one more piece! This was another 26' piece of channel that will fit inside the track to make a big box beam. (There will be another piece of track on the other side but it wasn't on this steel order so we'll do that later.)
We got it up on the deck and then Jim had to make the mirror of the first rafter.
Although Jim hated to have to use the grinder on installed pieces, he wanted to cut just a little corner off the track so that he had more play to move things into place.
Then we got the channel into place - in addition to how hard it is to maneuver these pieces, this piece had to fit inside the track, still fit into another clip angle Jim installed (and there's no room because it's right next to the sheathing!), and fit precisely straight and at the right angles next to the other piece. Once we had it into place, Jim had to stand at the top, pull it into place while I clamped it at the bottom and then he could clamp it at the top. Once he was happy, he fastened it down at the bottom to hold it.
It's all in place! That is one happy man standing next to the valley rafter!
It looks great!
It was getting dark and really chilly so Jim put in enough screws to hold it securely - check out the way he had to fasten the screw at the top! That is one big piece of steel! He can finish putting the rest of the screws in tomorrow.
Dark comes quickly now - you can see the sliver of the moon in the background of our newly-installed rafter.
The front view looks amazing too!
We are so relieved and quite frankly, pretty proud of ourselves that we were able to get these pieces up and installed with just us! No resting on our laurels though - there's another valley rafter on the agenda tomorrow!
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