Prefab Shop! Bolt-together System and Long Spans

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]All right, on to video two of this series where I'm showing you the 9 and 1 half day process of me and my team building a 60x40 metal shop. I want to say a huge thank you to Act Building Design Software for sponsoring this series. This is not only an outstanding company, but it's an outstanding service. If you have any building that you're trying to design, then go check out their free design software. You can either play around with it to design your own or you can pick from a variety of standard options or you can even submit your own plans and have their help bringing it to life. Video one, I cover design prep and the start of framing the walls. This video will pick up where I left off, which is us framing out the roof. The last thing we did was throw up a beam to connect the back wall to the front. Next, we need to repeat this by throwing up the next beam.

[00:00:48]Again, connecting the front to the back wall. Now, we could have absolutely figured out a way to use the equipment if we needed to. However, it is far faster to just manhandle it over. And a tip is to set it on some stickers, which plenty come with the delivery of the material. This way, you can throw some straps under it and use the equipment to lift it up. On the beams, we have a scissor lift at either wall. So, whoever's on the low side, me in this case, sets theirs first. Not only do I communicate with Jacob, he uses the equipment to get it as close as he can, but then I use my spud wrench to align the holes and fingertighten mine down.

[00:01:25]Now the high end, Nathan in this case, can communicate what he needs for it to fall close to his holes.

[00:01:33]>> So what's cool there is the the piece of equipment has so many operations on it, but one of the really cool features is that the whole body can tilt. So, instead of us having to wrestle this thing into place, even though we have spud wrenches, Jacob can do so much of the heavy lifting with the piece of equipment.

[00:01:50]>> You'll see a few different times where we use the equipment to do heavy lifting for us. I'll try to highlight them. So, if you're on your own job, maybe it'll give you some ideas. After a beam goes in right now, they're all fingertight on both ends. We next put in what's called a knee brace on our respected ends. And these have pre- punched holes on the knee brace as well as the column and rafters. So, it's typically as simple as aligning the holes and throwing in the bolts. However, these knee braces are one of the few parts that need doctoring before going in. In order to fit as they do, two flanges need to be removed from either end. We prepped all of these back on day one. The process is to use a Sharpie to mark the material that needs to be cut away, then use an angle grinder to actually cut it out. It's at this point that whoever is doing ground work can fully level on the front and back columns to check for plum. If they're good, then every bolt that was just put in can be rattled down to fully tighten.

[00:02:50]Now that we have a center rafter and an outside rafter, we can start spanning across and adding what's called plland.

[00:02:56]This part goes really quick, so it's nice to have two people dedicated to staying in the lifts and just creeping forward until the entire bay is filled with plland. then to have a dedicated grounds person to not only lay out the entire base plland ahead of time, but to also pass up the next one that needs to be set. The process for setting the plland was Jacob would set his first.

[00:03:19]With it being on the perimeter, it drops in without issue. However, mine, the rafter would either need to slightly move in or out for the bolt to align with its pre- punched hole. So Cameron would use the basket of the lift itself to give him something to push or pull against in order to move it where I needed it to go so that I could drop in a bolt. Now Jacob could fully tighten down his end as no other plland would be added to it. However, I'm only finger tightening mine as the next base plland will eventually get added to the same bolt. The pre- punched holes make this step go incredibly easy. We can move our list to the next bay looking for the holes to align ourselves. Then repeat all the way to the front.

[00:04:05]>> We're getting really quick. It always feels good to get efficient at something. When we got one bay completed, we repeated all the steps again on the next bay. First walking over a rafter and setting it, then connecting this newly added rafter to the existing rafter with plland. The only new thing added to this process was Jacobson now got slightly more complicated by him needing to first remove the fingertight bolt, then nest the two plland together before reinserting the bolt.

[00:04:38]>> Okay, >> my end would stay the same. He would set his first, then I would set mine second.

[00:04:43]Again, using help if the raptor needed to be shifted. Of course, we needed to repeat this process with every single bay. However, it was the next bay that we ran into the complication where we couldn't back up the sky track far enough for it to lift the rafter into place. And the only reason I take time to include this in the video is because I want to emphasize that every single step there is something to work out.

[00:05:05]Something is really heavy. Something is outrageously long. You've built a floating deck in the way. Regardless of the situation, there is a solution. And I'm a firm believer that if you're prepared for obstacles, then you're going to be more inclined to work through them. In this case, what we did was turn around the sky track and tie up the rafter in a different way to shorten the hang as much as we could because the obstacle with this route is the boom of the machine was going to hit the previous rafter before the rafter would get high enough to be set into place. I slowly creeped Jacob up as high as he could get, which was high enough for Nathan to set his end into place. Then to get mine the rest of the way up, we had to release the straps on the sky track. Then I used my lift railing to bring it up to height. Before we could use the sky track to shift the building over to work the rafter in. Well, with the sky track being out of play on this one, I decided to footwork it instead.

[00:05:59]>> Yes. Yes.

[00:06:03]That is so funny. Okay. Poke it in.

[00:06:07]There we go.

[00:06:16]And that third one or that fourth one.

[00:06:18]What I'm going to do is since I can't align it, I'm going to tighten all these down and then I'll put it nice.

[00:06:28]>> Yeah. So, now we're going to move down and put in the the knee brace.

[00:06:52]Another instance of Tetris is we need to set the last column in this corner of the slab in order to finish the last ceiling bay. However, if we stood up the column, we would need to set the girts to stabilize it, which would then cut off our access to getting the sky track on the slab. All that to say, we thought about this on day one and made the decision to not stand up this column until this moment. So, this is going to be a temporary brace for this last bay because the the girths that will actually go over there are all interrupted for a door or window. And so, right now, this is just going to temporarily brace it so that then we can tie in the end the other end wall.

[00:07:33]>> Then we moved in the last rafter manually.

[00:07:36]>> Final raptor.

[00:07:38]then did the same process where we very slowly and carefully used the sky track to lift the last rafter into place.

[00:07:47]We could set the two in wall columns.

[00:07:49]Now us handling the tops while Cameron and Gary anchored the bottoms. While they worked on those, Jacob and I repeated by setting the last bay of plland, simply filling in around the sky track where it was poking through. Once we had all the plland set that we could, Jacob could then lower down the sky track and then we could fill in that last pllin. Well, the last easy pllin.

[00:08:11]Here's a shot of what the building looked like at the end of day one. Then day two was nothing but the simple things such as the rafters, knee braces, and the plland. And we ended the day with the building looking like this, which I know I'm normal here, and I love days that have a huge visual progress, like day one and two. Day three was a slowdown in visual progress because when I was designing my building, I was insistent on having an overhang on all four sides of the building. I not only think it aesthetically looks better, but it also serves a good function of getting water away. And the great thing about the ACT building design software is whatever you design, they can engineer it. However, everything on day three, what I'm about to show you is to accomplish that overhang. We now step outside of the realm of pre- punched holes and bolts and now enter to the world of brackets and selftapping screws. Metal guys know what this mean.

[00:09:01]Us carpenters had no idea what we were in for. To put it lightly, selftapping screws suck. I equated it to sanding for us carpenters. It's a part of the trade that we all dread, but you get used to it, so you just suck it up and do it. An overview of the process is we need to add a canal lever to all four sides. In carpentry, we call it a fly rafter. In metal, they call it an outrigger. This is the outrigger for the front. We'll go through and add one of these to every rafter in order to extend it. Then we'll add brackets to the inside, which gives us a way to attach the plland that span in between them. Because now at this point, the plland will get added in between rather than on top.

[00:09:43]A few tips to make this step easier because we will have to repeat this on all four sides. really only changing up how big the outrigger is and where on the rafter it's attached. Cameron would attach any bracket he could to the parts before they were passed up to us. It is so much easier to attach things on the ground. Of course, another thing is having the right style of clamps. Self adjusting tension clamps with a big circle foot was my preferred style.

[00:10:11]Also, I adopted the method of pre-drilling with a bit through the bracket before running in the selftapping screw. So, I would have a drill for the pre-drill and then an impact for the screw. And like everything, you get into a groove in a system and and it feels rather coordinated after doing it three or four times. The sides required the smaller outrigger that would slip right into the C channel of the rafter, then be attached with a few selftapping screws.

[00:10:37]We added this to every plland along the right and the left rake of the building.

[00:10:42]On every side of the building, we connected the tails of the outriggers to each other by creating a nice flat surface which will later be what we connect trim to. So this is us putting on the last plland on the back outriggers. And you can see they just slip right inside the C channel of the rafters, then get pinned with some screws.

[00:11:04]Next, we move the equipment to the front in order to repeat. We found it easier if one person sets their end first. In this case, Jacob.

[00:11:13]>> High or low?

[00:11:19]>> Oh, yeah.

[00:11:20]>> Then I could work on my end. Working a few feet away from the building is always a little tricky in that the lifts had to stay on the slab. So, we would park them with the wheels as close to the edge as possible and then extend the basket out as much as we could. We utilize the extending basket a ton throughout this build, such as here on the sidewalls where we had to have the lifts inside, but of course needed our bodies on the outside of the wall. There were also times where I found climbing on the building just much quicker than trying to set the equipment perfectly.

[00:11:52]This always brings out the comment, but remember that I love climbing on framing and there is no stopping me. Well, that is until I had to put a few self dappers in with my arms fully extended away from my body. After that struggle, I consented to standing on a forklift platform so that I can use my body to press into my drill, which of course makes all the difference.

[00:12:17]It's always going to be easier to work like this than like this. Again, using equipment to do the hard work.

[00:12:24]>> What's wrong is the building needs to be pushed slightly that way. So, Jacob's gonna use the sky track and just kind of like lean into it.

[00:12:49]worked like a charm. The last thing to do before this step was complete was attach each of the small outriggers on the sides. And this was a complicated step because this member is 43 ft long.

[00:13:02]And we not only had to get it up in the air, then fit into 11 individual outriggers, but we also had to do it with my floating deck in the way and without bending the piece. Our process was to put the sky track on the front corner, which is my highest point. Then put me in a lift in the back. I held on to my end while Jacob used the sky track to pivot it up to the peak.

[00:13:28]At that point, Cameron could catch it and him and I could work out sliding it forward and backward to align it as best we could with the building.

[00:13:39]>> Okay, ready guys?

[00:13:40]>> Then we used the help of a few extension ladders in the center for four of us to start putting it into place.

[00:13:49]>> They're on over here.

[00:13:54]>> Once set, every joint could be attached with screws.

[00:13:58]Just like with everything, the first time you do something, you can learn from it and then refine it. So, I'm going to go ahead and show you the second side we set because it went so much smoother. We kept the lift at the back and the sky track at the front in the same place. However, this time we added a forklift with the pallet at the center and then also the lifts with the baskets extended instead of extension ladders.

[00:14:20]>> One, two, three.

[00:14:26]Mine's on.

[00:14:27]>> Good.

[00:14:28]>> Yeah, we got to come my way 5 in.

[00:14:31]>> Let's uh heho your way. Call it.

[00:14:33]>> All right. One, two, three. Push. Wa.

[00:14:36]That's nice. That is perfect.

[00:14:39]>> All right. And that was day two and day three of this 9 and 1/2 day shop build.

[00:14:43]Both days 100% dedicated to roof framing. So that next we could lay the panels. The panels themselves are 43 ft long. And if you notice, we only have equipment access on the front high side of the building, which means we had to get creative in order to lay this roof.

[00:15:01]I will pick that up on the next video.

[00:15:02]So stay tuned if you're interested.

[00:15:04]Also, if you're interested in designing your own building, whether it be a garage, a house, or a shop, I will leave you links to the ACT building design software, but I'll also leave you links to Quick and Steel, who's the manufacturer of my building kit. All righty, I will see you on part three.