Shopsmith Forums

JPG wrote:I think the nails he used were round and shiny and too hard and the heads too big.

That poor little barn didn't have a chance... Our son had sided it with some 4' x 10' sheets of aluminum I have a ton of. While stuff went in all directions two walls and a corner of the steel roof went maybe 200' in the direction of storm travel and it rolled it into a tight ball. It was quite bizarre looking. We dug a hole with the backhoe and burned it in the hole and covered what was left, metal, nails etc...
I have done 2 clean-ups from serious tornadoes and it is a strange situation. Almost all trees ended up as firewood in both cases. Even pretty big stuff gets splintered inside. Even if it looks good it opens up with a lot of splitting later as it dries. The wood is tough to saw up too. At the first site I sawed a lot of hickory and the split apart hickory was horrible at grabbing the saw chain as it cut through each split area. If I had sawed the hickory in the first week or so it would have been better but my aunt and uncle needed a place to live so I had to concentrate on the house for the first month or so and the trees dried out a lot. The big maple trees were not a particular problem but the wood was mostly only fit for firewood.
Their place took the full direct hit of the twister and the house only survived at all because it was a very old house and very well built. It was badly damaged but many newer houses in that track were totally destroyed. They couldn't take the instant severe pressure change.
I contracted that house rebuild and spent much of my time arguing with subs that wanted to cut corners "after" the quotes...


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