He’s such a great problem solver of the Redneck Engineering variety.
Problem: A corbel (bracket) on one of the gable ends of Ye Olde Wreck has given way and let a corner of the roof sag. The corner has to be jacked up and the corbel repaired or replaced. But that corner is over the junction of two lower roofs. There’s simply no place to set a jack or even safely wedge a prop to hold the sagging structure.
The Monk’s solution:
A lever made of two laminated 2x4s. We had plenty of scrap wood of various sizes to hold the lever stable on the left while raising it with a smaller lever and shoving blocks under it on the right.
To work on the corbel, he had to squish underneath, being careful not to touch the 2x4s, which were under a lot of pressure and not engineered to OSHA standards. The only thing holding the fulcrum end (which you see in the next photo) was friction. On a steeply pitched roof. But it worked.
In the next picture, taken after the job was done and just before all that wood went right back on the scrap heap, I’m not sure whether he’s laughing at something I just said or with relief.
We were anticipating having to remove the corbel and to discover it was full of rot. Instead, the wood was beautiful — solid, full-dimensional 2x4s from the olden days — and the problem was the usual Jim Beam/Jack Daniel construction method: four 8d nails where the Monk would have (and eventually did) use 12 3-inch screws.
The four tiny nails had rusted into effectively two tiny nails over the decades, but otherwise the corbel was sound. The only thing needed was to remove the angled 1/3 of the corbel, bang the nails out, and re-set it higher up on the vertical 1/3.
A job we thought would take half a day took an hour and a half, and we were able to move on to preparing to paint and trim the final unpainted, untrimmed upper sections of the house.
Yeah, I’d be smiling, too.
—–
Eventually the (damn) sun came out and it got too hot to work on the black, tarry roof. Since then I’ve been painting trim boards set on saw horses on the cool back side of the house. The Monk went off to take care of other clients.
We’re set to start again tomorrow around 7:00 — an hour of day I don’t think the Monk often sees. I’ll remind him when he shows up, grumbling and insufficiently caffeinated, that it was his idea.
Well, yes, you could remind him. Or you could just have him some coffee ready. If I were him, I know which I’d vote for …
He followed the first rule of the redneck jack up; immediately stick a body part under the newly supported structure, preferably your head, heh.
Too hot to be on a roof? You have very lax OSHA standards indeed. Back in the day nobody told me not to tear an old roof off, hump 100 pound stacks of asphalt shingles up a ladder and nail them down, all day long, every day. Needless to say I didn’t stick with that particular career long, venerable as it may be. I’m not that tough.
Or you could just have him some coffee ready
He has already placed his order. 🙂
I can still remind him it was his idea, though. (And I’ll be surprised if he actually shows up that early.)
I love redneck engineering! It works (usually) and is a heck of a lot cheaper than hiring an engineer to stand around and assess the situation. Being of Native American decent, my dad call that “Indian ingenuity”.
“He followed the first rule of the redneck jack up; immediately stick a body part under the newly supported structure, preferably your head, heh.”
Very true. We’ve all been there, haven’t we?
But it’s important not to forget to use the Redneck Engineering Incantation, too. That’s where you get your precarious rig in place, give it a couple of half-hearted test shoves, and say:
“It ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
That’s how we do it in Indiana, anyway.
Being of Native American decent, my dad call that “Indian ingenuity”.
I love it. I saw quite a lot of Indian ingenuity while living in Wyoming, then later in the Four Corners area. But I can’t call it that because, not being of Native American decent, I’d probably get in hot water with somebody or another. But yeah …I like it.
“the first rule of the redneck jack up” “It ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
Oh yeah. Ain’t that the truth? At least he didn’t say “hold my beer” first. (He doesn’t drink, which may make him not a true redneck, but leaves me a lot more confident when he does something like this.)
“But why do we have to study so much math/geometry/physics? We’ll never use it again!”
And, sadly, most of “them” won’t (or be able to).
You got it, fred. About the only job worse than asphalt shingle roofing, particularly down here in the Southwest, is the mop-and-bucket version. Or asphalt road construction.
“He doesn’t drink.” Wow, he must be really thirsty. Unless he is a kangaroo rat, which has kidneys that concentrate urine so efficiently that it gets all the water it needs from metabolism of food.
I think that a perfect response to a cop that asks me if I have been drinking is to say, “Of course I have, and obviously, so have you. We’re both still alive, after all.”
Or, if you’re Irish(I am) and not a redneck, you could call that setup an Irish jig.
LOL, coloradohermit. Have you been nipping at the cooking sherry?
I am presently repairing my daughter’s detached garage. It was leaning a bit, so I told her I would staighten it out. It turns out the lean was because the plate and some of the bottom of the 3×3 roughcut studs was rotted away. At some time, the decayed wood had been swept away, leaving no evidence of its former glory. Cutting off the ends of the studs and setting a pressure treated 2×4 should stabilize it for a while. Putting some sheet steel under the plate, with prebored holes in it, and stacking 3 2×4’s with 12 inch eyebolts outside the wall and a 5 ton porta-a-power anchored to the concrete floor should let me bring the bottom of the wall back in the 4 1/2 inches it needs to be square. What else are dads for?