The Development of the Truss Plate, Part V: Frenetic First Get-Together Joe Kannapell Twelve competitors faced one another for the first time—but only because they had to. Each of their fledgling plate businesses was threatened by a July 31 deadline from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and they had less than three weeks to put together a design criterion for... Read More December 2022 Issue #14281 Page 10
Understanding Plate Tooth Count and Placement Russell Tangren, PE Imagine a third-party truss inspector is in the yard checking truss plates as part of quality control. The plate placement diagram indicates the web needs twenty-five teeth; however, the inspector counts twenty. Even though the shop positioned the plates as designed, is the plate placement... Read More December 2022 Issue #14281 Page 80
Building Confidence: Understanding the Technology Behind MSR Lumber MSR Lumber Producers Council In our October article, Because Good Ingredients Matter, we focus on the word quality and the many ways that MSR lumber has become synonymous with high quality structural building components. Having laid the groundwork for why MSR has become so important for optimizing truss designs and an... Read More December 2022 Issue #14281 Page 94
Design Connections: “Making” a Truss Designer Geordie Secord Reading Thom’s article in last month’s issue, “JobLine Turns 30!”, brought back many great memories of the times I have worked with him. I’ve known Thom for over 25 years and worked with him numerous times, with one of our best projects being the training business... Read More December 2022 Issue #14281 Page 102
The Development of the Truss Plate, Part IV: Competition Intensifies Joe Kannapell After Cal Jureit’s impressive debut at the 1958 NAHB Show, lumberyards and builders across America were anxious to start trussing, but they encountered several obstacles. Their deluge of inquiries couldn’t all be answered, and most were far away from the South Florida source of... Read More November 2022 Issue #14280 Page 10
Design Connections: Resolving Our Inevitable Mistakes Geordie Secord I once had the sales representative for a software company looking to secure our business tell me that, in his view, being a truss designer (or panel designer) was like taking a never-ending math test in which any score less than 100% was failure. He was certainly of the “old school”... Read More November 2022 Issue #14280 Page 90
Take a Tour of Our McKinney R&D Lab Simpson Strong-Tie Staff Did you know that Simpson Strong-Tie has a research and development lab in our McKinney, Texas, branch? In the following article, Francisco Hernandez, the McKinney branch lab manager, talks about the history of this lab and what we do there. History of the McKinney Lab Jeremy Gilstrap and... Read More November 2022 Issue #14280 Page 114
The Development of the Truss Plate, Part III: The Ingenuity of Carol Sanford and Cal Jureit Joe Kannapell Carol Sanford’s invention didn’t equal Cal Jureit’s, but he made up for it with his head start and his aggressive marketing. Sanford had filed for his patent in March 1954, two years ahead of Jureit’s September 1956 filing, and had a plate design that was relatively... Read More October 2022 Issue #14279 Page 10
Because Good Ingredients Matter MSR Lumber Producers Council Since the 1960s, fabricators have used machine stress rated (MSR) lumber of all species to improve the performance and reliability of their engineered components and structures. Nowadays, you don’t have to look far to find a successful component manufacturer who relies heavily on MSR... Read More October 2022 Issue #14279 Page 90
Hurricane Andrew — a 30-Year-Old Learning Experience Randy Shackelford This August marked the 30th anniversary of the Florida landfall of Hurricane Andrew, one of the most damaging, and influential, hurricanes ever to hit the United States. Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida with Category 5 winds early on the morning of August 24, 1992. Andrew caused damages of $25... Read More October 2022 Issue #14279 Page 122