wild mary posted:No one has considered using metal studs. It's dead straight and will never twist or warp. It's fairly cheap (3 5/8" X 8' @ $4.79 & 10' @ $5.48). It's easy to work with a little practice and already comes with knock-outs for your wiring. When I was a contractor I used tons of it for all sorts of construction. I'm really considering using it for my upcoming bench work. Here's a sample of what you can do with it. Just think your grid work could be your COMMON LEAD.
Think outside the envelope.
Good point. I've worked with metal studs most of my career. For renovations i prefer them for the very reasons you stated. There's no waste ! They're light ! And the common ground idea is fantastic !
For a novice who has never worked with metal studs, they can be intimidating. It's not each piece that holds the strength, but the whole assembly that becomes amazingly strong once assembled. There are a few tricks to building with metal studs, but with a bit of practice and trial and error, anyone with mechanical skills can get the hang of it.
Once, on a job at Irvine Auditorium at the University of Pennsylvania, we had to make long column like structures using 6" metal studs, screwed together forming a box beam. There were two crews, each building their own column. My crew, thanks to my expert experience, if I may toot my own horn, built ours perfectly straight, while the other crew, led by the foreman, made theirs which turned out to be twisted. They hadn't taken into account that metal studs are flexible and need to be coaxed along as the structure was being assembled.
