Garrett's Bridges

Classic ‘K-Truss’ Bridge Design (Balsa Wood)

For this balsa wood bridge, I used a ‘K-Truss’ design with seven vertical members and 6 ‘K-Trusses’ per side. The K’s were the most challenging part of the build, because I had to calculate each ones length, and the approximate measure of the angle I had to cut into each one. All in all, the bridge took around 10 hours of work over a three-day weekend (plus glue-drying time, of course). This website is where I originally found the ‘K-Truss’ […]

High School Bridge Building

We started our bridge program last year in my beginning engineering and manufacturing classes. I wanted to make a bridge that was very complicated with simple rules that required them to have to work on the mathematics of the bridge. I wanted to stress the strength of the truss design, so within the rules, I made it so other types of bridges do not work as well. Since we are a manufacturing program, I wanted to allow for more material options. I created a […]

Verrazano Narrows Bridge

I decided, for the 50th birthday of the Verrazano Bridge, to put together a model. I always loved the bridge; I lived in its shadow in Brooklyn for years and now live on Staten Island, so I use it often. Being a 2 year dad, I get little time to work on it, and when I do, my little girl sometimes “helps.” 🙂 So it’s certainly not perfect, and is more of a diorama than scale model. Most materials I already […]