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Watcher at a job site in Abilene showed me I was crowning my joists backward
Two weeks ago I was framing a porch in Abilene and an older guy from the crew next door wandered over just to watch. He didn't say much for a while, then pointed at how I had the crown facing up on a few joists and asked who taught me that. Turns out I had it backwards for years, you want the crown up so gravity pulls it flat instead of sagging. I rechecked the whole run with a string line and 6 of my joists were low by almost a quarter inch. Anyone else get re-taught a basic thing by a total stranger on a job site?
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rose_hart5d ago
Crown up is the standard way, sure, but it's not some magic fix that levels your floor. Lumber dries and twists however it wants, and a quarter inch over a porch run is nothing you'd ever notice once the decking is down. Plenty of old framers crown them down on purpose so the ends sit tighter at the rim, and those porches are still standing 40 years later. A string line will show you low spots on any run of joists, that doesn't mean the crown direction caused it.
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ben_nguyen5d ago
Ha, my buddy Rick had this exact argument with his dad on a porch rebuild a few years back. His dad wanted every joist crowned down because that's how they did it in the 70s, said the rim board ends sat tighter that way. They ran a string line after and found a dip in the middle anyway, turned out to be one bad joist that had a knot and bowed like a banana no matter which way they flipped it. Swapped that one board out and the whole thing lined up fine. So yeah, I'm with you, the crown thing gets way more blame than it deserves when it's usually just one sorry piece of lumber messing up the run.
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