fur handling shop ceiling reinforcement

[cflann]

I have my brand, spankin' new fur shed almost completed. Working on the interior now. Gonna have steel liner panel for the walls and ceiling. I ended up with roughly an 11-foot ceiling from floor to truss in anticipation of hanging a cable hoist for a skinning machine and likely a bunch of hooks for hanging drying furs. At this point, I still have bare trusses. The ceiling material will hopefully be going in over Thanksgiving.

My question is in the area of the hoist and wherever I plan on hanging drying pelts, I should reinforce the trusses somehow, right? At the very least maybe put a heavier duty "rat run" above the rafters (maybe with 2 X 8 or bigger) so an individual truss doesn't have to take all the weight.

I seem to remember Beav posting pics of a garage with hanging fur failing. I'd rather not have that happen after all the bleepin' work I've put into this thing!

Any ideas out there?

Chris

[cflann]

ttt

[thebeav2]

Any manufactured truss should be just fine. My problem was that one of the ceiling joists had a split In It. In fact It was that way when It was built. It just finally gave up with the huge load.
I just jacked up the joist till It came back together and then scabbed on another 2x6 along side of the original one and now It's just fine. When that joist let go I had over 300 coon hanging In the shop. That's a lot of weight when you factor In the weight of the coon and the boards. but only the split joist let go. I don't think you have anything to worry about.

If It were me I'd fasten your winch to the floor or to the wall Instead of hanging It up In the joist space. Just hang a snatch block at the ceiling and run the cable from the winch up through the snatch block.
It depends on what the spacing Is between your joist space but If they are 2 foot on center Just scab 2 2x4s together drill a hole through them then run a 3/8ths eye bolt through them. Place a washer on top then double nut the eye bolt then lay It across two joists. Fasten In place. Now you can hang your snatch block from the eye bolt. If the joist spacing Is more then two feet then I would go with something more substantial then 2 2x4s A 4x4 or some type of channel iron would work. Or build your Skinner so It's independent of the buildings structure.

Good luck