Heavy Metal, Mill Scale, Angle Grinder

So my first order of Steel showed up from Benco today, though 2 business days late, around lunch.  This batch of material will make up the main bed of trailer.  It was actually quite good that it didn't show up Friday.  I got to go to a community workday and hang out with the AWESOME Jeff Goodman and make some progress on a greenhouse that will be growing tons of food through the winter.

I'm very fortunate for my work situation.  We have a business address and a modified driveway that allows tractor trailers to back down.  Ed, the driver from Benco, made it look like he was backing a Honda Civic hatchback, and he was pretty proud of it too, letting me know that some customers know it's him before he's even halfway down the drive cause, "he can back it up soooooo gooooood" {not an actual quote}.  My Employers are happy to let me receive these big deliveries here and work on the structure here in and around the two workshops.  Without that I'd have a much harder time doing all of this.

We got our priorities straight!

I was very glad I paid the extra money to have them pre-cut the materials.  Since I don't have a forklift like most of their customers I was up on the trailer throwing off the pieces one by one into the grass.  The 6" x 8.4# channel was quite heavy and cumbersome at 170 pounds for a twenty footer.  I then loaded it up into my truck and backed it into the garage and started measuring, marking, and grinding away the mill scale where I planned to be welding.

Interestingly, the 20 footers are about 3" longer than 20'.

It was quite exciting, but I felt much calmer than I usually do when starting a big project.  This is definitely at the top of the biggest, longest projects I've done next to renovating my Mom's kitchen and single bathroom in an 800 sq ft house that She, my brother, his two-year old son, and I were all living in and growing One Thousand plus pounds of food this year.  Anyways, I think I was so calm because I had planned this out so thoroughly.  There was no second guessing, or really even second measuring.  It was quite nice and hopefully the forecast for the rest of the project.

Safety First!

Tools Second!

Grinding and Cutting Third!

I started off by marking the 4" x 5.4# channel that will make up the "rim joist".  I was grinding off the mill scale where the 4" x 1/8" square joists will butt into it.  A Simpson plate laying around the shop fit perfectly in the channel and made a nice square.

Next I ground away the mill scale in the general vicinity of where the weld would be happening at the end of the joists.

I checked my square, assuming the channel was a true straightedge.  Glass is probably best for a true edge.  Just flush your square up to the edge and mark the perpendicular line.

Then flip it the other way and see if it's the same line.

SWEET!

Before marking the ends of the joists I ground away the mill scale.  It's so much easier to do this with the squared end than it would be to do after I got it all notched out..

I then cut off a 2" piece of the 4" channel to mark the ends of the joists.

I put the weld on the side instead of the top of all the joists to make sure I wouldn't be trying to screw my subfloor into a weld.  After marking the cross section of the channel I square a line across the top.

Then flipped again and marked the channel cross section.

Then marked the final square line and checked to make sure that I was marking things properly.  Working with steel thus far is much easier than working with lumber.  It's so uniform and perfectly straight.  So nice that it will be what I'm building off of for all sides of the building.


I cut all the bevels first.

Then made the larger square cuts.

Voila!

After all that cutting, this disc was pretty much done.

Next, I ground away the remaining corner to nicely fit the rounded curve inside the channel and checked the fit with my 2" scrap piece.

I then ground off the scale where the bottom of the joists will rest on top of the main girders.  They are offset because the back wall will come 6" off of the metal framing while the front wall will have it's cedar siding directly on the metal with a layer of moisture barrier between.

I ground away the mill scale on top of the girders where the joists will cross them.

Finally I came in and washed my dirty hands so I could sit down for four hours and write out these last four posts to get myself caught up on this blogging thing.  I'm kinda diggin' the writing and sharing of the experience.  Hopefully I'll keep it up and remember my camera cord so I can fill in all this text with some photos( I remembered!).

Jambed finger count: 1

*Unloading the 4" channel*