Conventional wisdom tells us we need string lines, tape measures and levels when we build a perfectly straight and true fence. It's simply not our way when the Imagination Corporation does the work. The fences we build are HAPPY! Today we started the fence around the bumper boat pool. It, like the fence at Giggle Ridge next door (built thirteen years ago) is a happy fence. It winds and undulates, swaying as necessary along the way. It's not the easy or quick way to build a fence but it sure is FUN!
I set the sturdy steel sleeves in the concrete curb around the pool last week, carefully planning where the fence would rise and fall or which direction it would lean. They may have looked haphazard to the casual obsver but they were definitely not. The prefabricated posts were then slid over the sleeves, raised to the appropriate height and welded into place. We then used our hydraulic bender to shape the 'horizontal' rails to follow these pleasing curves. The tricky part is to get the bottom and top rails to match for the square tubing most often needs to be bent in two directions to allow the sections of fence to flow together seamlessly. Big Matt was doing that task today and worked up quite the sweat as he travelled from the bender to the fence and back again many times to get each piece perfect. The end result was pretty cool. Andrew's task was to weld the sections in place. He works for the owner of the project. He'll also be welding all of the upright steel pickets in place. That task is even more work as nothing is vertical but everything still needs to be perfectly spaced to look right.
In the picture you have to look past the VERY BRIGHT base colors of the lighthouse feature and you can see the fence around the bumper boat pool. Chris, the owner is on top of the building forms admiring it from the other end.
While we worked on site, some of our crew were back in the shop building even more fence posts. We'll need many, many more to finish the very long fence around the property. It looks like a forest inside the shop with all of the posts and trees currently in production.
I spent most of the day (when I wasn't required to eyeball the fence rails) under my welding helmet building the sub-structure for the wharf around the lighthouse waterfall which will keep the bumper boats from flooding. I also started building the steel forms for the sculpted concrete rock wall which will undulate under the fence to match the curves above.
Stay tuned for tomorrow's construction report...
-grampa dan