On Wednesday, Oct 9 the installation of the 1 x 4 wood strips to the existing 1/4 steel frame was complete. The wood strips were placed to the steel to allow for an easier installation of the 3/4" thick plywood. During the installation of the plywood on Friday, we had trouble securing the plywood to the steel frame. It appears the first metal/wood screws we used were not long enough to hold into the metal. A second problem we had is that the drill we were using to make a hole in the metal was not large enough causing the screw to jamb when being drilled. The third problem we encountered was using battery-operated drill motors versus electric drill motors. The solution we found was threefold to our problems. First, we used a larger drill bit, the second was larger screws and the third was using an electric drill versus the battery drills we had been using. The electric drill seems to maintain a faster drill speed and more torque. On Tuesday before switching to the electric drill we broke 5 out 6 drill bits when either drilling a hole into the metal or drilling the screw into the metal. Once we began using the electric drill we did not break a bit.
Another reason for going with the 1 x 4 firring is to save on the cost of the screws to secure the plywood to the trailer. The metal to wood screws purchased from Lowe's cost $10.43 for 42 pieces to secure the 1x4's. We installed 14 1x4x8's securing to the 1/4 metal frame at 2'0" OC, 5 per board. Total 70 screws. We then installed the four 4' x 8' sheets of plywood to the 1 x 4's. Each piece of plywood contains 25 screws per sheet for a total of 200 fasteners plus since the trailer is 8'6" wide we added another two 6" x 8'0" plywood pieces, each received 20 screws.
No comments:
Post a Comment