Making the sandwich..

So after we have the number of small pieces of plywood cut up we moved onto to making our sandwich. Watch the video for more details on the process. Basically we laminate two pieces of 5/8 inch plywood to the side of this TJI wood beam. We will add some screws/nails tomorrow when the glue has cured also. We are using PL Premium construction glue. This stuff is quite amazing. We have used it before to glue stair treads and they haven't moved in 10 years of heavy use in a commercial setting. The glue is likely much stronger then the wood once cured. The air powered caulking gun is very handy to dispense the product, squeezing by hand would be very annoying for this volume work.

Anyhow, the process is as follows. You lay down your TJI. You mark your position where you want to put these (above beam where this will sit). Then you setup a bunch of these plywood pieces. You apply glue to a bunch. Then you put two face down where you want them to sit. Then apply two glue face up. You carry a new TJI and place it exactly flush with one edge / end to the others. This will laminate the underside, now you go ahead and place a piece again face down. You get the idea. Keep going till you have what you need. We needed 41 in all. However, only 26 pieces actually needed them on both ends. The other 15 pieces will not be sitting on one beam but instead be hanging in the air and un-supported from underneath. So they only needed the gluing on the front section of the TJI.

Completed TJI's, all 41 pieces.