The trade show booth is now complete. I carry a small pocket point and shoot camera for the pictures I take several times each day. With the small point and shoot camera handy in my holster on my hip it is easy to whip it out to grab the shots I need to illustrate the blogs and magazine articles I write. Although I used to use an expensive digital SLR camera in the past it just wasn’t practical in the dirty shop environment.
Our trade show booth for IAAPA is now fully mocked up with all of the artwork we will display. Second copies of all the artwork are being laminated for durability and these will replace the temporary mockup artwork as we permanently fasten it in place. The upper portions of the display have concept art and plans for many past projects as well as some in progress photographs. Models, sample signs and sculptures abound
This afternoon Jack and Peter finished welding and grinding the major pieces of the gate. With the help of the whole crew in the shop we tipped them up vertically for the first time and took a look. They looked pretty cool! The boys still have to do a little tweaking and also install the latching mechanism and then next week we can install them. They will be allowed to acquire some surface rust and then we’ll apply various coloured patinas to allow the five layers to really stand out.
The cutlass took about three hours to run on the MultiCam. Late yesterday I pulled it off the machine and glued up the two halves. This morning I removed the clamps and used the air-powered die grinder to add some serious character to make it look battle worn. While I could have built the file that way it was far faster to do it by hand. Then we used sculpting epoxy to create the leather wrapping on the handle.
Ever since we first started talking seriously about getting the MultiCam Plasma cutter Peter has been wanting to build a gate. As per usual at our shop this would be no ordinary gate. We’ve long used a hand held plasma to cut shapes from steel. We built our first curved gate a long time ago. This gate would push the boundaries for sure by layering five layers of cut sheet steel and welding it over a curved frame to create a double sided forest scene, complete with wild life
We’ve been asked to create a sign for the game area of Scallywag Bay. We settled on the name Hornswaggler’s which offered lots of fun possibilities. I decided an oversized cutlass would be perfect. The sword will be sit in a wood sign mount and we’ll hang a sign just below asking all patrons to ‘stow yer weapons before entry’
We used EnRoute to create more than 200 routing files to design components for our house when we built it. Those files were used to create thousands of components, both in the construction of the structure and the finishing inside and out. For the trim we used about a hundred sheets of 30 lb Precision Board (mostly 1″ material) and many more than that of MDF. The MultiCam router was used to create all of the round window trims, wainscotting crown mouldings, the bridge sides and the corner blocks on the windows and doors throughout the house.
I had made it my goal to finish my Sign Challenge piece before the New Year. But like all goals the world conspires to keep you from them. I had made a good start early on, bringing the piece very close to finish. Then I got sidetracked with all manners of other projects.
I’ve loved working with metal since I learned to weld more than two decades ago. Almost anything we can imagine can be fashioned with welded steel, or at least the structural framework to go inside. Using EnRoute to design files and the new MultiCam plasma cutter to cut the pieces has raised the art to a whole new level. It takes minutes to design the cutting files and only minutes more to cut the pieces