Custom fence brace from repurposed materials
I have a elderly neighbor that is always out in her yard and taking immaculate care of her space.
After talking to her one day, I discovered both of her fence gates were broken. Each gate had a 4 x 4 fence post that was loose in the ground. One was because of regular use and the other was a failed break in attempt.
My neighbor already knew I was a steel sculptor and could come up with something. All she wanted was a “bridge” between the fence post that was failing and another post that was still strong in the ground. I accepted the commission to make the fence post braces and install them.
I have two options, use all new materials (boring) or cruise over to Manifestation PDX and see what goodies they had available.
I already knew the measurements and started digging around the “scrap” steel pile for something that would work.
I ended up finding an old piece of pipe and some really heavy duty steel wire mesh in a big sheet. Many parts of the wire mesh were frayed from years of wear and abuse. I really liked how it looked though, so instead of cleaning everything up and getting rid or the rust and imperfections, i cut everything to spec and embraced all the imperfections. I talked to Gustav (the proprietor of Manifestation PDX) about a fair price for the selected materials and use for the space, we shook on it and I got to work.
Here’s a shot of all the repurposed parts before they were assembled. 
I don’t have any pictures of the finished intended the way I envisioned it done since my neighbor decided to spray paint it all black in my absence. But I like the spray paint treatment well enough. I did explain to her that I wanted to keep the rugged/rusted look to match her aesthetic, after the fact, she saw and agreed with the idea of leaving it as the raw material it was, the spraypainting already happened though. Moving on.
WIth good measurements, the braces were able to be installed easily and looked great. I didn’t get many great shots of the installed gate since I took some video.
Here’s some video of the first brace:
Here’s some video of the second brace:
Pretty pleased with this easy gig and satisfied that I didn’t waste any new materials to make these.
I checked in a week after the install and everything is still working perfectly.
Shielding gas bottle labels made out of a giant bandsaw blade
Here’s another project I made for Manifestation PDX, one of the shops I volunteer in.
I learned this trick when I was in college for welding. So I decided to make some fun signs for the bottles at the shop to help avoid confusion as to which bottles still had gas in them.
*These bottles are ridiculously heavy and tough to tell by picking it up alone. Even if you are strong enough to pick them up…
I took a piece of gigantic bandsaw blade and cut it down to size, smoothed down all the metal so they can be handled with bare hands. Drew out the stencils, cut them out, spraypainted the, “FULL” side with thick, bright green letters and the, “EMPTY” side with scrawny red letters. Then I welded the chains onto the saw blade. After the steel cooled, I used the stencils to tag the blades then multiple coats of clear coat paint since these will get banged around for a looonnnggg time.
Here’s a video of the signs in full action, LOL.
Cheers~
Drill press upgrade and repair
I installed a track lift on my mentors drill press at Manifestation PDX. While I was working on it, I discovered another repair that was needed. Here’s a video of the upgrade/repair:
Black Rock )tent( Stakes is open for business!!
Well actually Black Rock Stakes is open year round. Fewer stakes get grilled during the winter months though.
Tent stakes that will take the abuse you dish out & have the attachment points to make securing your structure easy.
Each stake is finished so there are no rough edges, then a base coat of paint on the top half of the stake, followed by a stencil design to make each set of stakes unique.
Here’s some examples:
And here’s a quick video of some stakes coming hot off the grill ; )
Black Rock Stakes has three items on the menu this year:
****2014 post, new pricing for upgraded stakes available on request****
Rare ~ 12″ ~ Three dollars per stake
Medium ~ 18″ ~ Five dollars per stake
Well Done ~ 24″ ~ Seven dollars per stake
Give me a call and I’ll grill up as many as you need. Custom options available i.e. UV reactive paint, Glow inthe dark paint, color scheme that matches your camps theme.
Palm Frond Fan blade fabrication
Commissioned project by my belle, Jasmine Rain to make a matching set of fan staves that would be used as a stage prop needed to be made.
Here’s a closeup of one of the finished staves:
Here’s what the fans look like before they are assembled or palm fronds are added:
Here’s a snapshot of assembling the palm fronds to the staves:
Take a look at the staves after they’ve been assembled and stage ready. The fan on top is the front view and the fan on bottom is the back view to give an idea how they work.
With some very slight adjustment, these will be reliable stage props to make a fan out of anything any performer sees in their minds eye for years. I’m definitely going to be making more of these at some point. I can already tell.
Here’s the beautiful & talented Jasmine Rain assembling the fans before her performance along with some other pictures of the project.
Practice makes perfect
Learning how to keep multiple irons in the fire (pun intended) by dedicating time to ongoing projects that help sustain me while I continue to work on larger projects that require more time.
Goal was to turn one long length of rebar into a pile of legs for burn barrels I’m designing now. Start to finish it took me 20 minutes to make a set of legs for two barrels. It will take me another 5 minutes to fix two of the legs that need a final tweak to make them all completely level.
Here’s the link to the original article that talks about the jig prototype.
Contact me if you’d like to have a commision me to make a custom burn barrel for you! It’s much easier to make designs for burn barrels when there’s a point of inspiration.
Hand cut stainless steel
My client picked this stainless steel bin up for the bar in his new restaurant. He wanted to turn it into three beer coolers so it was time to get to cutting.
Heres the first shot as it showed up.
Here’s the second of four cuts required to complete this job. This is where fabricators start to get nervous because you might just might cut something without having to do any finishing work besides a quick buff to take off the razor sharp edges. 
Here’s a shot after the top piece was cut off. All sides kiss the ground and it’s as level as it gets. Even my client which is reserved with his compliments noted on the accuracy of the cuts.
All these cuts were done by hand with a disc cutting wheel. All cuts ended up less than 1/32″ deviation from the cut line.
Cutting long lines like this with a cutting disc is really difficult and takes allot of time and patience to learn good technique and form.
Really excited for the next few weeks. Lots of new stuff will be going up. Thanks for reading.
Black Rock Stakes
Made by a burner, for burners. One of my side projects. I try to dedicate at least 10 hours to this a month. These are cutom made tent takes for the type that goes to the burn and other places where rugged gear is the standard. These tent stakes come in three sizes:
Rare – 12 inches
Medium – 18 inches
Large – 24 inches
Details on the Facebook page. Pre-order yours now if you want them in time for next years burn.
Quickie boat hitch repair
A friend came in with a mangled boat hitch in need of repair. It was completely unusable.
As you can see in the pictures below, the mounting plate was completely separated and at some point someone that didn’t know how to weld, tried to weld this.
The gap between the metal and the tube it was being welded to was pretty huge (almost 1/4″). So I turned the heat and wire speed up on the Mig welder and poured in some filler metal and made sure i got good penetration with this weld.
Not the prettiest welding. But this weld will last longer than that hitch post will ever last.
The shop gets bike hangers
These were fun to make. Richard Cawley picked up some funky base plates at the steel yard because he’s clever like that and I had some square stock looking for a purpose. I took the square stock and hand shaped the rods to allow a graceful loading area for the bike tire. After a few cuts and adjustments on the prototype and many nods of approval. I went into full production and knocked out a dozen of these in an hour.
Steel & aluminum Birdhouse
This one was fun. I had a friend that wanted me to make them a birdhouse. So I dug around in the piles of metal we have for miscellaneous projects and came up with this little gem. Fully functional! Although I did weld the bottom feeder holes to be a bit smaller after this shot to allow the bird feed to fall out out a good flow rate.
Pull up bar
One of the first things we needed to install at the new show was a pull up bar. OF COURSE!!
So I grabbed some 2″ steel pipe and fabricated some brackets for the bar to hang on. Before I bolted it into the wall, i took a couple cans of spray paint and laid out some stencils over the whole thing to jazz it up. 1 hour from the point of starting. Pull up bar.
House rule is if you walk under the pull up bar, you gotta do a pull up!
Window treatment
Here’s a picture of a window treatment I did instead of using typical Aluminum siding. We had an abundance of old license plates at the shop. They had finally found their purpose! So I chopped them all up to size on one of our roller cutters and climbed up an extension ladder to mount these to the outside of this second story window. Looks sweet and just as good as the new stuff you’d waste money on in a store.
If you have any abundance of any metals, chandeliers or other wild things I can’t imagine. I’d love to talk to you if you’d like to see it turned into art.
Hand created and forged chain curtain rod brackets
Here’s a project for some curtain rod brackets I made. I was looking for something to repurpose that would have a good fit to the curtain rods I made. So I found some extra chain scraps and welded them together to they would be ridged. I then took the welded chain and fired it in the forge to get the metal red hot. After the metal was to temperature, I took the chain over to the anvil and stretched out the last link in the chain to accommodate the curtain rod. Fits like a glove!! Now I’ll reheats these brackets so I can wire brush the mill coating caused by the forge and they are ready!
I’ll post the finished product in a future post.
Quickie jackstand
We ran out of jackstands at the warehouse and another trailer came in that needed one. So I dashed into the shop and took two pieces of 3′ pipe, bent them to about 80 degrees then welded them together.
VOILA!! Jackstand.
Repurposed shipping container
Here’s a project I assisted on. A local metal artist was commissioned to make a dumpster bin for a shop in North Portland. We took a wrecked cargo shipping container and cut down all the pieces to make the size container we wanted with an Oxy Acetylene torch and fabricated this on site.
DuckRoll Designs 