Home Building Technology, Part X: Competing Connectors

Issue #17315 - October 2025 | Page #10

By Joe Kannapell

In multiple jurisdictions across the country, building code authorities questioned the viability of the curiously shaped metal plates being used on trusses during the last half of the 1950s. In South Florida, for example, four radically different looking plates appeared, with different supporting data. One was applied on the jobsite, while the others arrived at the jobsite already installed on trusses. Building inspectors did not know how to make sure that these products met Code requirements, as they were able to do with conventionally framed roofs. Such was the level of uncertainty in the building business as metal plate connectors proliferated in the market. [For all images, See PDF or View in Full Issue.]

This uncertainty could not be tolerated by the main guarantor of home loans, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). In late May 1960, FHA gave plate manufacturers 60 days to submit a uniform design criterion, otherwise plated trusses would no longer be allowed on homes insured by their agency. Fortunately, the plate business had grown just fast enough to attract individuals with sufficient depth to respond to this imposing threat, and they met together in early June.

Three of the respondents were engineers who had already earned their stripes satisfying the concerns of building officials – Cal Jureit, Bill McAlpine, and Jerry Akdoruk – and a fourth attendee, Charles McAdam, had the longest experience providing connectors. Although I’ve discussed the pinnacle meeting of 12 men in The Development of the Truss Plate, Part V: Frenetic First Get-Together, it is worth underscoring the unique contributions of these industry legends.

Cal Jureit had 20 years of entrepreneurial engineering experience, including his stint in the U.S. Navy Construction Engineers in World War II. After the war, he went on to develop two brand new engineering design methods, and to shepherd them through to approval by the City of Miami’s stringent code authorities. When Jureit subsequently entered the plate business, he knew that he would need broad-based product approvals, and he had already begun developing a relationship with FHA officials in Washington prior to the imposition of FHA’s deadline.

Bill McAlpine had only two years overseeing truss designers when he came to the meeting, but he arrived at Carol Sanford’s business with five years of prior professional engineering experience. There he was handed a core group of truss designers who had produced an impressive body of work (for more on this, see also Home Building Technology, Part VIII: The Engineering Advantage). Undoubtedly, it was McAlpine who suggested that they should fashion the new truss design standard after the code of the Steel Joist Institute (SJI), because both trusses and steel joists were built offsite and both were subjected to similar loadings and site conditions. Also of assistance was the fact that the SJI Code had been accepted by national codes for over 25 years and provided an ideal template.

Yilmaz “Jerry” Akdoruk had emigrated from Turkey as a young engineer, along with a cohort of others who had settled in South Florida. Perhaps because Jerry had to learn a second language to pass the engineering exam in the U.S., he was able to become a prolific trainer of young designers, including Mehmet Ilter. At Ronel, Inc., Jerry had developed the first roller plate that required no supplementary nails, challenging Sanford’s Grip-Plate on his home turf.

Little is known about Charles McAdam and the H-Brace company, except that their H-Brace connector had attracted a considerable following in the Southeast, mainly because no machinery was required to apply it. This connector, shaped like the letter “H”, could be nailed onto trusses like Sanford’s, but due to its unique configuration, it required far fewer nails than Sanford’s Grip-Plate.

With only three weeks remaining to meet FHA’s deadline, these four individuals assembled a reasonably comprehensive draft code, disseminated it to other aspiring plate manufacturers, and invited them to discuss it at a July 9 meeting in Miami. Nine companies agreed to send representatives. Four were from South Florida, four from the Midwest, and one was from the West. Five of them were already producing their own plates, but their design methods were as yet unknown. The similarity of their offerings to the plates patented by the meeting organizers opened the possibility of future contention.

Adams and International Truss Plate used the same short, wedge-shaped teeth as Sanford, but with much increased density and without nail holes. Troy Steel and Truss-O-Matic mimicked the long Gang-Nail teeth, but with slightly different shapes. Templin, however, introduced a unique plate that had two nails struck from the same slot, presaging the future of connector plate design. Even though this first meeting brought together present and future competitors, their differences would have to be temporarily set aside to establish their credibility and protect their future business opportunities.