Building Plywood Trusses
To start with, planning is the most important aspect of building any project. Either draw it out full scale or work with a draftsman on an AutoCad drawing, like I did for this particular project. (John Ricardo of Northford, CT) As you can see, each truss is made up of 6 pieces, glued, stapled, and screwed together. The trusses are supported by 2 triple laminated beams directly above the fiberglass columns.
This picture here shows the end product
of what took about a weeks worth of time to fabricate.
Each truss is a double thick 3/4″ CDX plywood construction. They are stapled & glued together with a 2-part water proof type adhesive.
Each truss consists of 6 pieces of rough cut to size plywood. Once stapled & glue together, a full size template is layed on top, and the trusses are then cut to size using a Festool TS 55 saw.
With the trusses being 16′ in length & 6′ in height & app 150 lbs each, it is just not possible to move the parts through any equipment. This is where the Festool TS55 saw shines in both ease of use and accuracy.
The arches are cut out using a template that was fabricated earlier by using a router on a giant trammel jig for accuracy. Using a rub collar against the template in stead of a bearing, you can ensure to get the same accurate cut each time you run the router against the template. The router being used in this photo is the Festool OF 1400 EQ. As you can see below, they are starting to take shape.
There was a total of 15 trusses fabricated using 44 sheets of 3/4″ CDX plywood, 15 gallons of glue and about 3000 staples. Not to mention a few Amana router bits
Posted in Projects by B.P. |

























