Jay polished off the painting of the second tower for the rear gate of the Hazelnut Inn over the last couple of days. To keep things as efficient as possible, we fabricated the feature in the shop, and we will use our forklift to transport it next door to the Inn. As soon as the piece is bolted to the footing, the crew will measure everything and then fabricate the metal gates to replace the temporary farm gate that has been hanging there since we began construction almost a decade ago.
Mall of America challenge
It was twenty years ago I got an unexpected call to fly to Mall of America in Minnesota to look at a space for a planned adventure golf. The space was on the third floor of the giant mall. Our meetings were short, as decisions were swift. I flew home the next day. Two weeks later I flew down once more with the complete building plans in hand and as before, in meetings just as brief, and the plans were approved. The contract required that the golf needed to be finished in only 100 days. It was extremely ambitious! We partnered with a Minnesota faux rock company to do all of the onsite work including the building a mountain - no small task! Our team would fabricate all of the features and signs in our studio at home and then ship them down for the install. My job on site was only to supervise and I would do this in six quick visits.
The theme of the golf was logging and one of the features was this water bomber which towed a giant banner that bore the name of the golf. The plane was weight restricted to allow it to be hoisted up to the existing rafters and was built with lightweight materials. The wings and tail were removable for shipping.
We built enough features and signs to fill two large semi trailers. Each time we loaded and sent the trailer down the road I would pack my suitcase and fly to meet the load at the other end. I would then supervise the unload, lift to the third floor and the installation the next day... then fly home to build more. It was an exciting project to say the least! Moose Mountain Adventure Golf opened on schedule and still looks great and operates to this day.
Maximum detail
We like to cross-train each of our people to become masters of as many different jobs as possible. Jay is deep into this process, which requires both time and patience. He’s been our head painter for some time, and he is awesome at this craft. With lots of coaching from Matt, his sculpting is gaining speed rapidly. Jay is also learning to weld and operate our CNC plasma. Today I gave him a quick lesson on carving the wood grain into the edges of our routed/laminated signs with an air-powered die grinder. It is a tool that can remove a lot of material quickly but with a light touch is great to create fine detail. As always, Jay was a quick study and did very well. Tomorrow, Matt & Jay will weld up the armature for the tree and hopefully get a handle on attaching the lath. By week’s end, we’ll be sculpting the concrete.
