Brackets For Wood Beam

[Tomtint]

Hate to always sound like an engineer (I R One) but brackets such as you posted need to be disigned and built according to the loads they are transfering. The size and number of lag bolts on the vertical post would be determined by the anticipated load coming down the rafter or sloped beam. If it is extremely overbuilt you can get by but how do you decide what is severely overbuilt or what is the bare minimum required? Sorry, but that is how I think and how I was trained.


Carry on!

Iffin the roof falls in on your tractor,....it wasn't over built!

 

[Kyle241]

Had a local welding shop do up mine for a post & beam home I built. They were 1/4" steel, nicely made and worked perfectly.

 

[kco]

Here are photos for the beams in our house, which was built in 1981. As already mentioned, it is good to over-design structural members like these. The plates appear welded from 1/2" thick x 4 1/2" steel.

 

[kco]

:laughing:

Rereading this thread in the listing, I noticed it has over 15,000 views. It was started in 2007. Hopefully the OP already found his solution.

 

[sdkubota]

Here are photos for the beams in our house, which was built in 1981. As already mentioned, it is good to over-design structural members like these. The plates appear welded from 1/2" thick x 4 1/2" steel.

View attachment 299576

View attachment 299577

View attachment 299578

In most cases my concern would not be with the steel but with the connection hardware (lag bolts) and whether it can transfer the loads.

 

[kco]

In most cases my concern would not be with the steel but with the connection hardware (lag bolts) and whether it can transfer the loads.

Although this is an old thread, it's still an interesting discussion.

That's a valid concern about the connection sdkubota. In this case I'm not concerned. I was fortunate to meet one of the carpenters who helped build the house. The owner was a professional builder who raised his family in it. The lumber came from a small mill a few miles from here. That includes all the moulding, tongue and groove, etc. You can tell by the plain design fo the moulding.

One exception is the top roof 2" x 12" fir joists which are 28' or 30' long. Although the maximum span is 14' he insisted they be one continuous piece. They were shipped from a Vancouver mill.

The steel plates connecting the beam are "Z" shaped and thus hung from the supporting beam. The beams are 5" x 13 1/2". The stair stringers and 3' wide steps are 3" x 13". They were built by a neighbour who still lives in the area.

A few years back we replaced the lower roof's cedar shakes with shingles. We added 1/2" plywood to the 2" x 4" strapping that held the shakes. I asked the roofer how the roof looked. He said: "It's solid, real solid". They are 2" x 12" for the 16' span.

It is a different story today. Most small mills have been forced out by government and big mills and the best lumber is exported. It is still possible to get good lumber from some very small, private mills.

 

[sdkubota]

Just to add a little bit about "good" lumber...old growth forests supply the highest structural quality lumber and still used in critical stringers in trusses. The old growth has numerous growth rings very close to one another as the trees grew very slow and were allowed to get very large. Modern lumber is mostly hybrids that have been developed to grow quickly and harvested at fairly small sizes. The growth rings on most modern lumber are huge showing just how quickly these trees grow. They are also harvested in some pretty small diameters but do create sustainable forests. The lumber from these modern hybrids are roughly 1/3 the strength of old growth but work fine in most uses.

 

[Grumpy Old Man]

I am interested in where to find brackets for wood beams, such as in the enclosed photo, any medium and heavy duty brackets for wood beam construction.

I went to the local big box hardware store last weekend looking for some of these for a future project. I did see anything close to this.

Please let me know any good sites on the web for this or other sources.

Rich

Most any real lumber yard has connections to have these built for you just ask !