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Component Manufacturing dverti$ dverti $ er
Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
July 2022 #14276 Page #10
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The Development of the Truss Plate: The Split-Ring Connectors Prequel
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or most of history, wood structures had been constrained by their connections. Nailed or bolted joints could only carry about half of what the wood could. As a result, our most abundant natural resource went mainly into homebuilding, where spans were short and stresses were low. That began to change, however, when the Timber Engineering Company (TECO) imported the splitring from Germany in 1933. Their connector dramatically changed wood truss technology, in similar fashion to the truss plate twenty years later. For the first time, a joint designed with the split-ring could carry “100% of the safe strength of wood members,” enabling “… structures (that) may be prefabricated at any distance from the site,” and quickly becoming “The most significant development in timber framing since the advent of bolts and nails.”1 After passing rigorous tests at the Forest Products Lab, the split-ring proved its viability by being installed in trusses which framed hundreds of government buildings throughout the balance of the 1930s. But it really came into its own in the build-up to World War II.
Joe Kannapell
From 1940–1945, split-ring connected wood trusses formed the primary structural elements of the tens of thousands of “temporary” military buildings erected in the War effort. These trusses were constructed onsite for barracks and ancillary buildings through which ten million men would cycle. By using wood almost exclusively, this massive construction effort was able to proceed at break-neck speed without compounding wartime steel shortages, even while being an exacting laborintensive process.
1940's 300' span split-ring trusses
1
Perhaps the multiple steps required to install these connectors did not intimidate the experienced carpenters of that day. First, a drill press had to countersink a circular groove on each of the opposing member faces that would receive the splitring. Then, when all joints were prepared, the rings would be inserted in the bottom member and the top
The Military Engineer, March–April 1936, pp 91–93.
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