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After all of the planning was complete, we moved on to the building process.
We were given 3 different materials; 150 balsa wood strips (1/8” x 1/8” x 36”), 15 balsa wood planks (1/8” x 3” x 36”), and 15 hot glue sticks.
Our first step was to build on of the most important parts of the bridge, the columns that support it. The requirement was to have a clearance of 1 foot to be under the bridge (so the road won't sit on the table flat). We made each of our legs with two 1 foot planks. They were butt-jointed together by hot glue. Next, to reinforce the stability, we added 2 trusses that were reinforced by notches in the wood and hot glue.
After we made 8 of these bridge legs, we set it aside and went on to build the main road that serves the main purpose of the bridge.
This is the bridge with the legs and road attached.
The bottom layer of the road is a full 4 feet made of sixteen 12x3 inch boards.
The top layer is a mix of 1 foot and 3 foot planks. It's 4 feet long but only 9 inches wide.
The bridge appears to be sagging due to the force from the ground only pushing up on the legs of the bridge.
The truss will come in later to help even out the force and equalize it across the bridge.
The next step was to build the arch truss.
We laid out the strips of balsa wood on out work table to match the design made on the 3d model.
We did this so we could make sure all of the pieces were being placed correctly.
We glued the joints together then reinforced it with gussets.
The part that connects the trusses on both sides were triple jointed to improve stability(not pictured).
We hot-glued strips together to make them doubled and we used for the trusses on the legs and most of the arch.
Pictured on the left is Nick attaching the truss on the right side of the bridge.
Pictured right is Eric and Stella reinforcing the bottom of the bridge with extra balsa wood strips.
After attaching the 2nd truss, we began work on connecting our two trusses together. We did this by essentially creating X's with triple-layered balsa wood strips,
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