Stress Failure

Inadequate bracing. There's a great deal of outward pressure placed on walls. The entire weight of the roof plus whatever load (three feet of snow) there might be. I was looking at one of the collapsed houses on my new route. It's a classic case: the walls blew outward and the entire roof fell straight down. In this instance the problem, I repeat myself, was one of attachment. Hurricane clips have largely solved this, a simple twisted piece of metal mandated after Andrew, that ties opposing strengths together. I like bolting things. A through-bolt, through a ten-inch oak beam, is a pretty solid connection. Under tension, bolts are good, if they don't exaggerate a fault of grain. There's a hardness scale, called the Rockwell Scale, that applies to bolts and rivets. One is soft, and five is very hard. A three, I find, I often shear off the head and have to back the bolt out, which is a pain in the ass; fours, and fives in particular, you can use a monkey wrench with a cheater pipe and there is no way you'll shear the head. Building this place, there was a day, after the beam set, when I needed to set twenty-two 8 inch lag bolts, a counter-sink bore and pilot hole for each, then setting the bolts. Full-shouldered tendons and I wanted a good bit of compression on them, so I borrowed a pneumatic impact wrench, which worked great but was one of the loudest days of my life. I used more bolts than that on the stairs, but only one or two at a time, so I went back to a socket wrench. You can read about these, and other stories, in my never published but widely circulated pamphlet, Bridwell On Bolts, which is worth reading just for the self-deprecating tale What Is A Carriage Bolt? Kim got directions when he called, and he'll be fine, then I talked to Joel and he thought I needed to meet Diane some place out in the world, the post office parking lot outside of Friendship, and lead her in from there. The difference is that Kim will drive in, Diane will require transport, to leave her Prius at the bottom of the driveway. Kim is a regular guest, once a year for his trip to Canada, and a real treat. Diane I haven't seen in twenty years, and I'm not sure she understands that I don't live her way anymore. I don't care about that world. My sister calls to say that Mom is dying, she's ninety, it's not unexpected, and she has become humorously disconnected. Imagining trash cans as distant relatives. About midnight it starts raining again and I have to get up and shut some windows. A lovely sound. I have to let the pollen wash off the roof before I can harvest rainwater, so I get a drink and roll a smoke, read an interesting piece about the mating practices of black bears. A nice cooling breeze, off the rain, and it's very dark, except for my reading light. The weather was coming from the NW so I could leave the SE window, in front of my desk, open, and the aromas rolling in; thunder and lightning, but it's off to the south, and shouldn't threaten my power. The thunder is great, rolling those impossible bass notes, against a background of drips. Berlioz does a storm very well, in the Royal Hunt And Storm, I forget which opera, and I always thought Sibelius did weather rather well. And that other Scandinavian, Delius (?) who actually lived in Florida for a while. His writing cabin had been reconstructed (from the original logs) where I went to college and it was spare. Like Henry on food-stamps. Another turtle shell, did you ever notice the way the layers overlap?