Folding Tin
The last time I worked construction with Jake (the
guy from the last entry who cleans wounds with newspaper), we were "bending
boards" for a deck.
You see, wooden planks, however straight they might
look at first glance, can be quite crooked when you start lining them up against
each other, and they have to be bent into alignment. Basically, you stand on
the ground below the framing so the board sits roughly at shin or thigh height,
you bend down and lean into it with all of your weight, and once it's lined up
(you use large nails to space the boards correctly--I really should take a
picture of this the next time--hard to describe), you hold the board in place
with your shin or thigh while you put a screw in place to hold it. After that,
you go around the rest of the board and screw it into all of the braces
underneath. Easy enough, really, but you pick up a lot of bruises on your legs
by bracing yourself against boards that are trying to bend back against your
leg. (I might have picked up a few extra bruises because I was wearing shorts.
Yeah, talk about a rookie... but it was like 80
degrees!)
This last Friday, I was building a fairly large workshop. The framing had been done by another contractor who, apparently, had botched the job; he'd left things too long and a lot of the frame had become warped and twisted. Jake was hired to come in and fix the other contractor's work and then to finish the job. The whole thing was to be walled and roofed with tin sheets. (I assume some sort of insulation and dry wall will be going in at some later date or the winter will be a bit on the chilly side in there.)
The day started out with a somewhat embarrassing admission: I'm afraid of heights. It's severe enough that about three or four rungs up the ladder, I'd kinda start to freeze--you know, where you almost can't even force yourself to move? Never felt that? Lucky you! It's no fun. I did give it the old college try even though I knew it was going to be an issue, but it was pretty clear from the start that I would not be making any trips onto the roof. (Part of my problem, of course, was that there wasn't a roof yet. Straddling a beam about 12 feet above solid concrete just didn't make me happy.) Jake's an animal--I think I've already established that--no thought of personal injury at all. The other guy we had with us was called Orest, a Ukranian/Canadian who, I believe, is 67 years old. He never told me his age, but I know he retired a couple of years ago. I have yet to meet more of a curmudgeon--but an endearing one, I have to say. You can't help but laugh when you're on one side of a wall and you hear Orest climbing a ladder on the other side grumbling about how "they make these fuckin' things too narrow" or "why can't they make the fuckin' floors more straight. God damn those sons of bitches makin' these ladders outta fuckin' tin foil. Bunch of idiots. I'll bet those stupid cock suckers have never had to get their sorry asses..." Trust me, it really is quite hilarious (and that string of profanities was no exaggeration, either!). The other thing about Orest is he's about 5'4" and would give you the shirt off his back even if it wouldn't fit you anyway.
The job started out with the side wall... and rain. None of us had brought any rain gear although Orest and Jake had sweaters and hoodies. Me? I was wearing a button up shirt with a T-shirt under it and jeans. Also, it was about 55ºF (13C). The wall started smoothly enough with all of us on terra firma and two at-a-time on the sheets of tin which measured 12 feet by probably about three feet. Again, fear of heights was an issue, so I got stuck with a pair of metal shears, cutting nine and three-quarter inches off each sheet while the other two clambered around on ladders and scaffolding. No big deal--there were only a dozen sheets to be cut. Still, I'm the guy who failed arts and crafts as a kid--absolutely hopeless with scissors and paper. Cutting tin, I found, was infinitely more difficult. I had a few complaints from Orest that my cuts were a bit jagged (Jake cut himself on one of the sheets, in fact), but they were as straight and smooth as I could make them. Then came the roof...
... and even more rain. Perfect timing, really. Watching Orest climb an extendable ladder was enough to give me the willies to the point where I couldn't even watch; I just stood at the bottom holding the ladder in place. Jake was already up there climbing around like a monkey, but somehow, that didn't seem to bother me as much. Orest, I could see shaking as he climbed up--not from nerves (I have the feeling Orest is cut from somewhat the same cloth as Jake) but just 'cause he's kinda shaky. When he reached the top, I swear it took him ten minutes to get off the ladder and position himself on a beam, shaking all the while. I was convinced Orest was going to plummet to his death and that it would be on my hands because I was too much of a coward to get up there. As it turned out, though, this was probably the best arrangement.
The tin sheets were stacked on top of each other a fair distance from the workshop, so it was my job to carry them over and get them up on the roof. It's not so much that they were heavy (the total weight for each stack was 593 lbs, and a stack was, I believe, 15 sheets meaning each sheet weighed just slightly under 40 lbs. We used two stacks, incidentally, meaning that I shifted over half a ton of sheet tin--1,184 lbs!) The problem is that they're kind of ungainly; forty pounds spread over a twelve-by-three foot area is definitely hard to hold and I really doubt that Orest could've managed more than a few before petering out. The other complication is the wind: with the sheets being relatively light for their size, the wind can catch them and take them out of your hands pretty easily. You have to bear in mind that the edges of the sheets are really quite sharp! I rested a stack on my forearm early in the day as I tried to grab something that had fallen underneath, and one of the sheets nearly sliced my arm open just from the weight--had I moved my arm one way or another, it surely would've gashed me pretty badly. As Jake put it, "you'd better watch those, eh. If the wind catches one, it'll take your head off. I'm tellin' you, it'll take it clean off." Great.
So... anyway... yeah... there's a trick. You fold the sheet, not exactly in half, but enough so that it's nearly a cylinder. It was pretty rough on my hands and forearms, and by the end of the day, I could hardly hold a coffee cup. (Don't worry, I did wear gloves for the entire day.) The last stage was even harder--getting the sheets up to the roof. The roof was slanted and, at its lowest part, was fortunately only about 11 feet high. With the sheets being 12 feet, that meant I didn't actually have to get the sheet onto the roof myself. Still, I dare you to try taking a 12 foot sheet of tin, getting it up on its end (still folded in half), and resting it against the roof of a workshop with mild wind and rain! I kind of figured out a trick to this, too. Really the only way to get the sheet upright is to get an arm under it, so you have to grab the two opposing sides of the sheet with one hand. You jam the sheet back into the dirt, get as much of yourself under the sheet as you can, and work it slowly upwards. Very tricky but after a bit of practice, I could wrestle the sheets pretty well. The danger, of course was that the sheet could pop out of that one hand and whack you pretty hard--we're talking about a lot of tension on a bent sheet of tin. Well luckily, that only happened once and it hit me in the bicep.
Nice one, eh?
Unfortunately, the "client" was standing right there watching as this happened. I really don't mind people watching while I work--there was somewhat of an audience for the deck, actually--but this guy was a biker wearing a leather bandana complete with skulls (can it still be called a bandana if it's leather?), heavy boots, black jeans, and a black T-shirt that said "I shit taller than you" which I thought was ironic seeing as he was probably four inches shorter than me. (Having said that, it might very well be true--he was one tough looking hombre.) Later in the day, I had to throw a twenty pound bag of screws onto the roof. I only missed by a few inches but Gord, our client, howled out, "Ha ha ha... he throws like a girl!!" I swear the guy was going to piss himself with laughter. For the rest of the day, I was known as the "California girlie man" (with very poor Schwartzenegger accents). It probably didn't help that I was wearing a Polo shirt (old and ratty, mind you) and the T-shirt I was wearing underneath it said "Filmlook".
So the day wore on, and the rain only got heavier. It wasn't long before Orest had a roof to walk on, but this didn't make me feel much better because it was made out of tin, absolutely drenched, and at an angle. I had spent the entire day expecting to hear that sound of sudden and total panic from Orest, a shout of "holy shit!" from Jake, the sickening half crack, half thud as Orest's screams were silenced by the concrete below, the ensuing dead calm, and then "Oh my god, call 911!" It was so vivid, it was like I was living it, and I was positive I would have nightmares about it.
... but no. In the end, there were no accidents (except for Jake's nick from the jagged tin and the whack to my bicep). By the end of the day, I'd even worked up the courage to climb the ladder and see what it looked like up there. Yeah, well unfortunately, I hadn't worked up enough courage to climb high enough to see anything and hurried back down. Jake and Orest finally came down, and the three of us hung out with Gord for a bit. It turns out he's an extremely nice and talented guy. He works with metal--welding and sculpting--and a lot of his stuff was around the place. (He lives in a 3,800 sq. ft. house on about 20 acres, so there's plenty of room for metal sculptures. His line of work certainly explains the need for such a large workshop--an extension of his existing space, actually) We had a few beers, and he invited us all to a massive party he's throwing on the 26th. Apparently, they have a live band, all you can drink, and hundreds of people come and stay for the weekend. I'm seriously considering it going... and it'll all be blogged here if I do!
This last Friday, I was building a fairly large workshop. The framing had been done by another contractor who, apparently, had botched the job; he'd left things too long and a lot of the frame had become warped and twisted. Jake was hired to come in and fix the other contractor's work and then to finish the job. The whole thing was to be walled and roofed with tin sheets. (I assume some sort of insulation and dry wall will be going in at some later date or the winter will be a bit on the chilly side in there.)
The day started out with a somewhat embarrassing admission: I'm afraid of heights. It's severe enough that about three or four rungs up the ladder, I'd kinda start to freeze--you know, where you almost can't even force yourself to move? Never felt that? Lucky you! It's no fun. I did give it the old college try even though I knew it was going to be an issue, but it was pretty clear from the start that I would not be making any trips onto the roof. (Part of my problem, of course, was that there wasn't a roof yet. Straddling a beam about 12 feet above solid concrete just didn't make me happy.) Jake's an animal--I think I've already established that--no thought of personal injury at all. The other guy we had with us was called Orest, a Ukranian/Canadian who, I believe, is 67 years old. He never told me his age, but I know he retired a couple of years ago. I have yet to meet more of a curmudgeon--but an endearing one, I have to say. You can't help but laugh when you're on one side of a wall and you hear Orest climbing a ladder on the other side grumbling about how "they make these fuckin' things too narrow" or "why can't they make the fuckin' floors more straight. God damn those sons of bitches makin' these ladders outta fuckin' tin foil. Bunch of idiots. I'll bet those stupid cock suckers have never had to get their sorry asses..." Trust me, it really is quite hilarious (and that string of profanities was no exaggeration, either!). The other thing about Orest is he's about 5'4" and would give you the shirt off his back even if it wouldn't fit you anyway.
The job started out with the side wall... and rain. None of us had brought any rain gear although Orest and Jake had sweaters and hoodies. Me? I was wearing a button up shirt with a T-shirt under it and jeans. Also, it was about 55ºF (13C). The wall started smoothly enough with all of us on terra firma and two at-a-time on the sheets of tin which measured 12 feet by probably about three feet. Again, fear of heights was an issue, so I got stuck with a pair of metal shears, cutting nine and three-quarter inches off each sheet while the other two clambered around on ladders and scaffolding. No big deal--there were only a dozen sheets to be cut. Still, I'm the guy who failed arts and crafts as a kid--absolutely hopeless with scissors and paper. Cutting tin, I found, was infinitely more difficult. I had a few complaints from Orest that my cuts were a bit jagged (Jake cut himself on one of the sheets, in fact), but they were as straight and smooth as I could make them. Then came the roof...
... and even more rain. Perfect timing, really. Watching Orest climb an extendable ladder was enough to give me the willies to the point where I couldn't even watch; I just stood at the bottom holding the ladder in place. Jake was already up there climbing around like a monkey, but somehow, that didn't seem to bother me as much. Orest, I could see shaking as he climbed up--not from nerves (I have the feeling Orest is cut from somewhat the same cloth as Jake) but just 'cause he's kinda shaky. When he reached the top, I swear it took him ten minutes to get off the ladder and position himself on a beam, shaking all the while. I was convinced Orest was going to plummet to his death and that it would be on my hands because I was too much of a coward to get up there. As it turned out, though, this was probably the best arrangement.
The tin sheets were stacked on top of each other a fair distance from the workshop, so it was my job to carry them over and get them up on the roof. It's not so much that they were heavy (the total weight for each stack was 593 lbs, and a stack was, I believe, 15 sheets meaning each sheet weighed just slightly under 40 lbs. We used two stacks, incidentally, meaning that I shifted over half a ton of sheet tin--1,184 lbs!) The problem is that they're kind of ungainly; forty pounds spread over a twelve-by-three foot area is definitely hard to hold and I really doubt that Orest could've managed more than a few before petering out. The other complication is the wind: with the sheets being relatively light for their size, the wind can catch them and take them out of your hands pretty easily. You have to bear in mind that the edges of the sheets are really quite sharp! I rested a stack on my forearm early in the day as I tried to grab something that had fallen underneath, and one of the sheets nearly sliced my arm open just from the weight--had I moved my arm one way or another, it surely would've gashed me pretty badly. As Jake put it, "you'd better watch those, eh. If the wind catches one, it'll take your head off. I'm tellin' you, it'll take it clean off." Great.
So... anyway... yeah... there's a trick. You fold the sheet, not exactly in half, but enough so that it's nearly a cylinder. It was pretty rough on my hands and forearms, and by the end of the day, I could hardly hold a coffee cup. (Don't worry, I did wear gloves for the entire day.) The last stage was even harder--getting the sheets up to the roof. The roof was slanted and, at its lowest part, was fortunately only about 11 feet high. With the sheets being 12 feet, that meant I didn't actually have to get the sheet onto the roof myself. Still, I dare you to try taking a 12 foot sheet of tin, getting it up on its end (still folded in half), and resting it against the roof of a workshop with mild wind and rain! I kind of figured out a trick to this, too. Really the only way to get the sheet upright is to get an arm under it, so you have to grab the two opposing sides of the sheet with one hand. You jam the sheet back into the dirt, get as much of yourself under the sheet as you can, and work it slowly upwards. Very tricky but after a bit of practice, I could wrestle the sheets pretty well. The danger, of course was that the sheet could pop out of that one hand and whack you pretty hard--we're talking about a lot of tension on a bent sheet of tin. Well luckily, that only happened once and it hit me in the bicep.
Nice one, eh?
Unfortunately, the "client" was standing right there watching as this happened. I really don't mind people watching while I work--there was somewhat of an audience for the deck, actually--but this guy was a biker wearing a leather bandana complete with skulls (can it still be called a bandana if it's leather?), heavy boots, black jeans, and a black T-shirt that said "I shit taller than you" which I thought was ironic seeing as he was probably four inches shorter than me. (Having said that, it might very well be true--he was one tough looking hombre.) Later in the day, I had to throw a twenty pound bag of screws onto the roof. I only missed by a few inches but Gord, our client, howled out, "Ha ha ha... he throws like a girl!!" I swear the guy was going to piss himself with laughter. For the rest of the day, I was known as the "California girlie man" (with very poor Schwartzenegger accents). It probably didn't help that I was wearing a Polo shirt (old and ratty, mind you) and the T-shirt I was wearing underneath it said "Filmlook".
So the day wore on, and the rain only got heavier. It wasn't long before Orest had a roof to walk on, but this didn't make me feel much better because it was made out of tin, absolutely drenched, and at an angle. I had spent the entire day expecting to hear that sound of sudden and total panic from Orest, a shout of "holy shit!" from Jake, the sickening half crack, half thud as Orest's screams were silenced by the concrete below, the ensuing dead calm, and then "Oh my god, call 911!" It was so vivid, it was like I was living it, and I was positive I would have nightmares about it.
... but no. In the end, there were no accidents (except for Jake's nick from the jagged tin and the whack to my bicep). By the end of the day, I'd even worked up the courage to climb the ladder and see what it looked like up there. Yeah, well unfortunately, I hadn't worked up enough courage to climb high enough to see anything and hurried back down. Jake and Orest finally came down, and the three of us hung out with Gord for a bit. It turns out he's an extremely nice and talented guy. He works with metal--welding and sculpting--and a lot of his stuff was around the place. (He lives in a 3,800 sq. ft. house on about 20 acres, so there's plenty of room for metal sculptures. His line of work certainly explains the need for such a large workshop--an extension of his existing space, actually) We had a few beers, and he invited us all to a massive party he's throwing on the 26th. Apparently, they have a live band, all you can drink, and hundreds of people come and stay for the weekend. I'm seriously considering it going... and it'll all be blogged here if I do!
Posted: Sun - August 13, 2006 at 12:13 PM
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Published On: Oct 04, 2007 02:05 PM
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Published On: Oct 04, 2007 02:05 PM