Down to the details

The Sunshine Home sign is now almost complete. We'll be happy to claim back the shop floor space when it leaves, but it will be a few days yet - just to be sure the paint is good and cured before it gets  taken outside and then loaded to the truck. Rebecca painted the rock work a blend of light and dark gray and then we added two colors of speckles to make the rock look like granite. Today Hailey and Sarah painted the grout lines and touched things up.

To get at the top portions of the sign Sarah had to climb aboard.

I'll be adding the LED lighting tomorrow to finish things off. Stay tuned...

-grampa dan

Come fly with me!

In the last few days as I built the new website I have gone back through thousands of images recorded as we fabricated our projects through the years. I've come across many projects long forgotten. It has been fun! The new website features many more images than ever before.

One of our claims is that we can build anything we can imagine in our shop. It really is true for I've seen the proof. As I browsed the images I was reminded of the challenges we faced with each one. Often the most challenging part was how to get these giant pieces out of the door when we were done.

The most demanding pieces to move and transport as I recall have most likely been the airplanes. There have been three to date. I found images for two, both quite large. One was on a base, perched precariously on a tree stump. It was a heavy piece, actually fabricated from sculpted concrete over a welded steel frame. We fabricated the plane while it was securely tied to a low bed trailer to make things easy and stable. The plane was very top heavy as I recall. It now lives on Vancouver Island.

The second plane was a totally different challenge. It had to be lightweight for it was to be hung from the ceiling inside a shopping mall. It also had to fit inside a tractor trailer for transport as the mall was 2000 miles distant in Minnesota. This plane had a lighweight welded steel frame but the outside was built of spruce plywood and hard coated styrofoam. The wings were removable for transport.

No matter how much we learn with each project, the new one just around the corner will make us scratch our heads once more. This is what makes my job so much fun!

-grampa dan

Website redo

I switched from a fully designed website to one I could update and tweak myself quite some time ago. Since I am anything but a technical type of guy this meant I had to go to a managed/template style of webpage. I struggled with it for a long while but ultimately decided that the content was more important than the design at this stage. Current and up to date information was what my clients and readers cared about and desired. Over a half million hits later I am sure of my decision.

Now it is time to begin thinking about reformatting the site once more to a more current platform and look. The new format is supposed to perform better on all the new devices as well, an important consideration these days. It will take a while before I finish reworking things and the site is far from finished but I decided to give everyone a sneak peek at the new look. 

The new format is a whole lot easier and faster to post to, meaning I can do my blogs in less tme. THat will leave more time for creating new things! :)

To look at the new site click on the new web page

-grampa dan