Sailing into 2014

As the new year rolls in each year it makes me both retrospective and forward looking. The past year has been a big one in our lives. For the better part of the last two years it was all about the new house, a long held dream come true. There's still some work to do but the house is largely complete and comfortable. It was well worth the huge effort. Our household changed in the past year becoming larger and busier, quite the opposite of what we were expecting.

Business returned with a vengance in 2013 and our forces increased dramatically, with the crew now numbering fifteen. Our current project will take us well into 2014 and pending projects will take us into 2015 and well beyond. The customer's seeking our work are allowing us to be more creative than ever before which is very cool. All this bodes well for the future without a doubt.

The only sure thing about 2014 is that it will undoubtably be exciting, challenging and fun every step of the way! It will be a wonderful adventure I'm sure.

Happy New Year!

-grampa dan

Rollin !!

Our work area in the shop is only a little over fifteen hundred square feet. With the large crew busy in the shop each day they go through an amazing amount of work. Typically the pieces start in the welding area, then go to the middle section of the shop for the application of the diamond lath. The fiberglass reinforced concrete and sculpting is the next stage and then after a few days curing it is time to apply the many coats of paint. All these steps means the pieces are continually shuffled through the different areas of the shop ending up by the big magic doors just before they head out of the shop. With smaller sign work we often set the signs on a flat four wheel dolly we had built for this purpose but the pieces we are working on now weigh in at thousands of pounds and are far too large for our pre-made dollies. We had to come up with a way of moving things around easily rather than dragging them on the concrete using the entire crew plus a tractor at times. And as always the answer proved simple - once we thought things through.

The solution Peter and I figured out was to weld short lengths of square tubing vertically into the bottoms of the structural frames of our pieces. We then lifted our pieces into the air and set them down again onto swivelling dolly wheels which had a slightly smaller diameter pipe welded to the top of them. These wheels are swivel castors and do not have brakes, not necessary on the flat floors. When we wheel the pieces out of the shop to be loaded the wheels will drop off the bottom when the crane or forklift raises the pieces. We can then reuse the sturdy wheels on the next piece. It will take a little more time and effort the build our pieces but we are confident the work will pay off many times over.

This afternoon I fired up the welder while the crew began jacking the current pieces off the floor. In a short time we could easily wheel pieces that weighted in at up to 4000 lbs around the shop with little effort. It was very cool!

The super large hollow log currently in the welding area required a little more creative treatment. It took nine dolly wheels to safely hold it off the ground.

I love it when a plan comes together!

-grampa dan

Back up to full speed

The crew is back up to full speed in the shop and the projects are in full production once more. The water tower got it's final glazes and is now ready to go out the door. It looks pretty cool and will look even better when it is finally sitting on top of the trestle and the water tank plopped on top.

Two of our crew were busy welding on the giant log and also got a start on the wiring. The log form is really starting to show through.

The massive log that is to be placed above the east entrance also got it's coat of fiberglass reinforced concrete and the woodgrain was sculpted in. It sure looks big in the shop! But as always things seem to shrink in a big way when they get out of the door and on site.

I'll be showing more tomorrow. Stay tuned...

-grampa dan