hey guys welcome back to well.com so in today's episode we're going to talk about a vertical
beam splice so this is something typical when you do rehab this isn't really a connection
that you're going to make for new construction a lot of times they'll just have plates and it'll
be a bolt up connection so it's already done in the shop before it gets on site but today we're
going to go ahead and kind of show you we've done videos in the past where we use backing
strips and a lot of people are like why do you use backing strips why not just run an open roof
there's a couple of reasons we're going to do that it's going to be for speed
these weld procedures they're not really designed to show off your skill set as a welder typically
on a job site you're going to have one type of rod 7018 so you're not going to be mixing 60 10
rods 70 18s and all that in structural steel connection nowadays so what we're going to
do is we're going to cut in little rat holes in this piece right here same thing here i'm
going to show you exactly what those are we're going to put this backing strips in there show
you where they're actually utilized and we're going to go ahead and make this beam splice
so i went ahead and cut out what we call a rat hole so this is just a little area right here
that's going to allow me to put my backing strip in here so i'm going to go ahead and
take a grinder now and just kind of detail these out clean them up i want to radius this a little
bit more that i didn't get quite the radius that i wanted on this one so i'm just going to clean this
all up with the grinder we've got some really cool discs by ferd that have a radiused edge
on them that are meant to be used on end so that's what i'm going to use to clean this up i just want
to make this a nice flat surface and i want a radiused transition that way i don't create a
stress point right here because anytime we have a 90 degree angle or an acute angle it could cause
tearing later on down the line when the load is applied so i'm just going to go ahead radius that
out that's going to help distribute that load so we don't get any cracking or ripping as i'm
cutting this out i don't want to take too much material out of the web that's why i'm trying to
keep these holes small i just need enough material taken out to be able to insert the backing strips
i also don't want to gouge into the flange at all i want to keep that as structurally intact as i
can
the next step once i got everything cleaned up for my backing strips that
are going to go in there i'm going to go ahead and clean out the web of the beam
to be able to accept the stiffener plates that we have
while this beam is laying in the flat position i'm going to go ahead put the
backing strip on there and get them tacked in right here on both ends that way when i
go ahead and set the column in place this works already done for me i don't have to try and line
anything up i'm going to go ahead and probably space this out with about an eighth inch 3 16 gap
and then we'll go ahead and weld it out i'm gonna do the same backing strip to put to both sides
first let's address the size of this beam obviously this is really small
we're doing it on a shrunk and down scale because this is the type of material we have in the shop
we don't really have a need for huge sections of i-beams nor did it make sense for us to buy one
because you typically have to buy 20 foot we only needed a couple feet to do
this demonstration for you guys but this is pretty much how it would go obviously the
thicker the material the more welds you're going to have to do you're still going to run your
your different bevels or your 45 degree bevel for uh your connection here this is still going
to remain 90 degrees what i'm going to do now is clamp a piece of angle iron up here that way when
i bring the other beam in i can kind of use this to clamp the other beam in place to uh to mate
these two pieces up obviously on the field you're going to have a crane or something carrying that
this is light enough to where i should be able to just pick it up and manhandle it this is a w10 by
15 meaning the depth or the width of the i-beam is 10 inches and it's 15 pounds per linear foot
if you guys have more questions on structural steel you can go back and check out the structural
shapes video so i'm going to use this um eighth inch piece of plate to set my gap i can just set
that right here put the column on top clamp it in place get everything clamped up and then just
kind of yank this guy out but that'll help me maintain that eighth inch instead of trying to
get it in here and then level it back and forth and kind of jock you around with it
all right so we put a couple clamps on it now we're just going to make sure
everything's level which we're good calms is in line with the bottom half
everything's leveled we're good to go so i'm just going to tack right here on the opposite
side of the backing strip you know that way everything's nice and the same and it kind
of leaves that little opening up so as you can see here's where our backing strips come into
play so it's just like any time we do a horizontal test plate vertical test plate there's my backing
strip right there run on and run off tab and once i get done with this i can cut that off
flush with the beam and then i'm just going to radius and dress up the corners a little bit
all right so i'm going to be welding it up with these bowler fox ev50 7018s 332
diameter running about 85 amps in the horizontal position on the power arc 161 sth from everlast
all right so i went ahead and got the root in i'm going to go ahead and probably do a
two bead cap i got a little bit more space here um so instead of trying to
run a weave on there which i'm not partial to i'm gonna go ahead and run two stringers
so we got the two bead cap in i'm above flush no more than an eighth of an inch i
mean i'm i'm just past flush so everything's good there one thing i do want to point out
i have a little bit of porosity right here where i started and that's another advantage
of my run on and runoff tabs because i'd rather have that porosity in this area
where i'm going to cut it off than trying to start my initial arc right here and running
the chance of getting a little bit of porosity in there because it's on that
run on tab it's going to get cut off it's not going to affect the weld at all and it's
structurally sound now we're gonna go ahead and do the exact same thing to the other side
all right we got both the grooves welded out on our horizontal we're going to go ahead now and put
our splice plate in this is just for structural reinforcement so typically you wouldn't go ahead
and run that open root or run a seam right across there or cover pass or anything you're
actually going to use a plate we'll weld it on all four sides you'll do one on the front
and the back so let's go ahead and get these tacked in and weld it out
so
so as i'm going through these there's really no rhyme or reason uh which which one i did first
i decided to go ahead and knock the overhead out just get that out of the way because i
put one tack down here and instead of putting another tack over here i could just start and
kind of go through i'm probably gonna go ahead feather these top two tacks out here weld the uh
the flat or the horizontal here and then come back and catch the two verticals
all right so this splice plate is on the uh the only other thing we would have to do now is put
the other splice plate on the opposite side but it's just a repeat of what we just did
so just know that you're probably going to get one on either side of that now
i'm going to go ahead and show you guys how we take off the backing strips and
just kind of radius this out and make it you know clean it up a little bit
so that's pretty much the the end of a column's place at least in a vertical connection anyway
like i said i've done this a bunch of times out in the field doing repairs
the the web of the column gets deteriorated or the flange or whatever
we would come in and cut it down to size cut a chunk out and just replace that section of it
that's exactly how we would do it so hopefully that answers some of the questions of why do we
use backing strips why don't you just run it open root there's actually a practical means to it so
this is just one example of that all right so i hope you guys learned a little bit more about the
the purpose of a backing strip other than it being performed on a test plate
i hope you guys enjoyed the video and until next time make everyone better than your last