A nicely constructed 34 inch-span Warren truss with verticals built by Ocean County College student Andy McConnell. An interesting adaptation of the Warren truss is the bridge built by high-school student Tim Kaucher . Another use of the Warren truss can be seen here in one of the spaghetti bridges built by students at Johns Hopkins University . Look at the picture at the top of the page. This kind of detail is extremely important.
Stresses flow like water.
Where members come together there are stress concentrations that can destroy your structure. It would be very useful if you could visit a truss bridge and take a look at the connections there. If you are building the bridge out of balsa wood cut out and glue gusset plates similar to what Andy McConnell did in his well built bridge shown above. Here is a connection detail of one of the spaghetti bridges. The lightest of the commercially available hardwoods, it grows naturally in the humid rain forests of Central and South America.