skreidle | Excitement in construction!

Since the spaces in our rear wall formerly occupied by doorways are now covered in plastic, I went around the outside of the house to visit Yusef & Jesse and observe the ongoing work, and to check out what tool they had that sounded like a gun.

While out there, I was watching Yusef mark the concrete for a sheet metal frame in which you mount a 6"x6"x8' pillar--and noticed that the corresponding beam on the other side of the doorway, not yet fixed in place, was starting to fall towards his head! Without time to warn him, I said something as I jumped over to try to catch the beam. Underestimating its weight, I did manage to deflect it towards the wall so that it just missed his head!

Damn. We're talking serious injury if it had hit him.

Right. Turns out that as Jesse had tightened a bolt further down the laminated beam that was holding the pillar in place by friction, the beam moved slightly upward--freeing the pillar to fall. So they put the pillar back up, nailed in a temporary 2"x4", and moved on.

Then, I got to see the nail gun--more of a "gun" than the pneumatic variety, indeed. The size of a power screwdriver, it used a short plastic belt-feed of what were basically crimped blanks to fire nails directly into masonry, through the sheet metal pillar mount. Extending and retracting the barrel of the gun chambered the next round; the nails were fixed into individual plastic casings and loaded manually into the muzzle. I got to fire three nails into place. How cool is that? :)