Fox & Hounds Pub & Restaurant Construction: Part 2

The Fox & Hounds entrance hallway features several trees. Typically, we weld steel armatures for sculptures like these. Since these trees were built in place we started by screwing some heavy duty lag bolts into the walls to act as anchor points for a pencil rod frame.

Since space was at a premium, we kept the depth of these trees to a minimum.

We also built a branch to hold up the hostess’ station. We had originally designed it to sit on the floor but opted to mount it to the wall instead. The bird's nest remains, but we moved the fox in the knothole to one of the entrance trees. We built this piece in our shop from square tubing and pencil rod. We bolted the frame to the wall onto some backing the carpenters had put in place for us.

The next step was to attach expanded metal lath to these pencil rod frames and we will take a look at that process next week.

G Street - Part 2

G Street Sign Series: Part 1

As with most types of signs, hanging signs need some interior structure to make sure they stay securely in place. Over their lifetime, signs are subjected to high winds and endless gravity. And of course, there is also the occasional “macho dude” who sees something like a hanging sign and suddenly has to prove how tough he is by jumping up and doing a few chin-ups. We always want to be sure that our signs will withstand the vagaries of weather and weirdos and an internal welded steel frame is our insurance policy.

In the G Street sign’s case, the frame was made from 5/8" solid steel bar. This level of structure is probably overkill but better safe than sorry — after all, it is impossible to make something too strong!

The sign will be suspended by the cast steel eye bolts (which are rated for 5000 pounds each - more than enough!). Once the frame was welded we laid it on the (interior) back of the sign to marked out where it would go. Then, using the die grinder we cut in a 1/2" deep slot not the sign.

We repeated this step on the second side as well, test fitting dry to make sure everything lined up tight.

Then we spread on the Coastal Enterprises PB Bond-240 glue which is formulated for Precision Board HDU. We misted the Precision Board with water to activate the glue and clamped it up tight to dry.

Once the steel is firmly glued inside the sign it was time to glue on the rest of the sign’s detail.

Below you can see the results of our efforts — just waiting for paint.

See you next week!

Dirigible Model - Part 2

In preparation for testing out our (at the time) new four axis CNC router, we cut and glued up a variety of 30 lbs. Precision Board HDU blocks. The pipes sticking out of the ends of the blocks are for chucking them up in the machine.

The bottom large block in the picture below was for the ballon section of the dirigible project. It measured fourteen inches square by twenty inches long.

However, before routed the ballon we welded up the steel frame for the airship’s “pilot’s basket”.

Once the welding was complete, we started sculpting the basket, using sculpting epoxy.

And, of course, we did a quick comp/sketch of the balloon to help visualize the finished project.