Parting Shots

A few years ago, Lumber Specialties, a component manufacturer in Dyersville, IA, wanted a way to show proper bracing in a residential home. They asked Jason Gross, an intern in their design department at that time, to build an exact scale model of a roof truss system to accurately show diagonal bracing, lateral restraint, and T-bracing per BCSI.

Jason, who now works as a draftsman for BT Engineering PLLC, started by printing the truss design drawings out to ¹/₁₈ scale. Using the printed trusses as a template, he hand cut each chord and web from basswood sticks. He then assembled each truss using wood glue and cut to scale each miniature connector plate. Finally, he installed color-coded bracing per the BCSI-B3 Summery Sheet.

It took Jason just over 100 hours to complete the project, which included 701 truss members and 1,328 truss plates. We think you’ll agree it’s impressive.