Hardware

There's a lot of in's and a lot of out's to building a wall.

Switching Gears

With the final rocker glue-up done, I made a railing for a neighbor. Here's some of the tubing getting a scrub down. It turned out pretty sweet, in-situ picture to come.

Little More Metal.

Metalwork Begins

 

 

 

Stiching it up, and probing the industrial edge.

 

Racked

Building a decent lumber/expedition rack for my XJ has been on the list for a few years. I decided it was time and tackled another aluminum MIG welding adventure. TIG welder remains on the wish list.

Kitchen #1 Before & After

Before:

After:

Table #3

It pained me to delve back into rustic. but I guess sometimes it's nice to keep the planks close to the tree without too much interference. I made this for a buddy who wanted something really rustic. although I gave it a little refinement & dressed it up with hand planed surfaces. also nice to work with slabs Dan & I harvested. 'Death Elm' for the table top & 'Shaughnessy Elm' for the legs.

Picnic Table WIP

Somebody said aluminum was difficult to weld. but they were lying. it's EXTREMELY difficult. My welds range from very ugly to reasonably poor. but definitely improving. This is an aluminum & cedar table & benches that i'd designed ages ago with my skills being the stumbling block. The aluminum has been cut & sitting in the shop for over a year (throughout the shop reno) & and whenever I'd see it or have to move it (yet again) I would hang my head in shame & promise myself to do better. nice to finally have it on the bench.

Door #2

Estas Muy Fuerte? - Door#2 - in progress

The incas must have been smiling down on me. I was sure this was going to be the part of the movie where it ends in defeat & I drag a whole bunch of twisted expensive metal to the recyling yard. Stunned that it went together without a fight, & that it actually doesn't seem to want a spring loaded castor on the bottom (a canadian company Darcor make the sweetest machined gate spring loaded castors should it need one). Without any cursing, except for the forehead slapping colossal screwup of welding the top rail in back to front. It's been a long time since my last stupid screwup, so I guess I was just due.

1 week design time, 1 week fabrication time. Got myself psyched up last saturday morning & sat down at my welding table. I rose from my table on sunday night, in some kind of red-eyed inca trance, with most of the sub-assemblies scattered around the new fabrication facility. most ridiculous thing I've ever cobbled up. 7'X7'X4" (thick because I wanted as much insulation as a wall). folds 180. The idea was to keep the structural internal (with the exception of that one flatbar sticking out due to the aforementioned colossal screwup), & the lines as clean as possible. Combination of cold & hot rolled steel. lucked out on the hot rolled, clean & blue.

Not out of the woods yet, lots more weight to add, needs spray foam insulation, cladding on inside & also buffing up, finishing etc, but looking like it may fly (not seeing any sag yet). not the greatest pics, but snapped a few off during the inaugural test drive. A door this size called for the mother of all piano hinges. I mean the mother of all piano hinges.

Table 2 - Metalwork

Can I go back to my bench now? I have missed my woodwork bench. Metalwork is a lot of fun, but I'm looking forward to working with clean hands and getting hold of that Black Walnut. Here's the metal frame for table 2. The aprons will be painted black. I'm experimenting with automotive acrylic lacquer & sandable primers. Seem to be getting nice results, just wish I could find something a little less toxic, is there any chemical they don't need in these paints? Hot-rod flat black or gloss black? Tough call. Managed to get her reasonably accurate. Weld heat distortion makes furniture building a challenge, when in doubt add another clamp.

Also, the welding table I knocked up for the job. had to go with a puny 1/4" plate for the table top, just to make unloading from the trailer more manageable. 3/8" would have been nice & solid. Amazing how heavy these plates are, even the 1/4" weighed 245 pounds.

Marriage of metal & wood

A perfect example of design using the strength & beauty of both wood and steel. I'd like to continue exploring this relationship where traditional crafts of fine woodworking and blacksmithing are blended. These pieces are backrests/headboards that I designed and built for a bed that I had made with my dad a couple years earlier. The wood comes from a locally harvested slab of Elm that I milled in the shop into two pieces with bookmatched grain. My son had just been born, and I wanted a comfortable backrest on the bed for those early morning feeds. So my design was vertical not horizontal in the traditional headboard thinking. I modeled the steel supports on car leaf springs, they flex when you lean against the backrest, like a supportive suspension system. I'd like to explore using reclaimed car springs in future pieces & need to make a pilgramage to the scrap yard.