the dome part 2

phew ! .. the dome left today at around 5:00 ... a challenging project if ever there was one, and we plan to help set it up for the new oven on site tomorrow or friday.  watta project !!  heres a link to the previous post on the early stages of construction ... ignorance breeds confidence ...we had no idea what we were getting into.

in this photo, you can see pete, the mason brother in law, of vermont brick ovens, on the left, and trevor, admiring the collapsing mechanism.  if you enlarge the photo, (click it),  theres a handwheel on the vertical stem, and when you turn it, the hub drops and the ribs can be removed one at a time through the oven door, or more likely from the collapsed pile of parts.

when hes ready, well be helping pete set it up for his current project.  hes currently working on the soldier course that stands vertically around the 72" diameter .. heres a photo of that in the works.

in case you missed the first post, itll look like this when its done.

well, it was quite a trip getting this project together .. lots of head scratching, lots of glue, (over a gallon) and some sanding and bondoing ... here are some more photos of the process ...

 early on, with the glue up form still in use .. see this link for other early photos

 here were getting the shim blocks (later knocked out to collapse the form) figured out ... 

in the end, we made two different versions ..

 sanding and fitting the rough glued pieces .. it aint perfect, but there arent any 

cracks that a half a brick can fall through ...

tah dah .. on to bondo and paint

the holes were from the ten thousand screws we used to make the five layers of bending plywood do what they had absolutely no interest in doing, which is form part of a sphere.

 a previous vermont brick oven project  in manchester, for which we made a different form 

that was a lot more complex and time consuming to set up than this one ..

we realized as we were packing it up .. damn! we missed our chance.  we shoulda painted 

the north pole, hudson bay, and sweden to alaska on it ...

 i will NOT be going into the wood globe business ..... all for now.   

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Selasa, 20 September 2016

one way to shorten an antique model t door

 so, im getting a lot of whered you get those doors? questions as people check out the new metal shop.  like slate on the roofs, wide recycled doors are kind of my thing.  the one above started out as half of a pair of 8 x 8 garage doors that i bought about 5 years ago from a guy up the road in pawlet, as he was tearing down an old garage on his property.  as i recall, i paid a hundred bucks for the pair. click the photos to enlarge them ...

 

on the inside view, you can see how we cut and mitered the stiles and panels to shorten them.

 the first one of that pair i used was on my garage at the house just after i bought them and i shortened that one to 7 feet too before i made the frame and hung it.  in the photo below, i used the mason miter technique on the stile and rail intersections, but on the new metal shop, i decided to keep the cope and stick joints by shortening the stiles themselves and gluing them back together.  in reality, either choice is fine.

 mason miter joinery  at the red arrow

 

the first pair i  bought at a tag sale in the 80s for $20. for the pair.  they were already only 7 high and 4 wide.  i used one on the front of the shop above, and one on the side door on the shop porch, below.

 

   i think they came from the same manufacturer as the new pair, as all the joinery techniques and moldings appear to be the same ...

the joinery on the doors originally was 4, 1/2" dowels, about 6 inches long at each horizontal
and vertical intersection.   invariably, the joints loosen and the dowels can be cut with a hand saw or fein tool and the rails removed.

i rejoined the stiles and the bottom rail with 8" timberlock screws as i couldnt spread the stiles enough to insert loose tenons or dowels ... worked fine, and im sure its at least as strong or stronger than the original dowel joinery.

i added a couple of dominos for alignment ...

and made a jig for gluing them up straight

mitering and regluing the panels and stiles was a cinch

and then we glued up the whole door and made some jambs .. love the antique wavy glass.  and, ive also made new doors like this for new construction.  i have some photos somewhere ... nothing like a generous entrance to add elegance to a building ... 

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Jumat, 29 April 2016

the S A T for adults

i thought this was pretty good ... 

click the photo to enlarge it ... i still flunked it though, just like 48 years ago ...

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Selasa, 26 April 2016

home stretch on the new metal shop

 when last we visited this project back in september, the carpenters had just finished getting the slate on the roof ... after that it was on to the siding and window trim outside, and the insulation, second floor radiant heat,and sheetrock inside.  click the photos to enlarge them ..

it was kind of a thrill when the lights went on and siding was mostly finished ...

we still had to have the concrete professionals back to pour the slab for the 

steel/blower/compressor shed .. 

 and we had to build the rather elaborate 20 long rack to store all the small in size, but 20 to 24 long raw materials ... fortunately, the carpenters were called achoice on another job for a day, which gave us time to figure out the rack before the roof went on .. mucho easier that choice ..

the shed is fitted here with a bronze color standing seam roof by donnie dorrs metal shop ..

 and inside, we did some coloring, and reconfigured the chop saw tables into a mockup work table so we could figure out where to hang up the welding fume extractor.  we ran the pipes to the blower thursday ..

 boilers these days are amazing ... this little guy puts out 80,000 btus, enough to heat both floors, (+/- 1500 square feet in a vemont winter), and provide domestic hot water for the sink and bathroom.  exhaust out in pvc pipe.  no chimney ...

 ahhh, the doors .. nobody made a cheap standard unit three doors wide, so we had to cobble these together with parts from a company whose name escapes me now .. we made up some quicky transoms from 8/4 pine and ordered up some custom thermopane to fill them.

 there were a couple reasons for that configuration .. #1, you can open the doors totally in the summer like below, and should we move on at some point, the openings are framed to accept regular 9 x 7 commercial overhead doors .. presto, a heated, two car garage with a mother in law apartment above  ... the plumbing and radiant for the second floor was roughed in before the sheetrock went up ..

 

 a few notes below on the quicky transoms ...

 9 3" x 16" plus the frames

 essentially, the frames are butt jointed, timberlock construction, with applied moldings to accept the glass .. framed in the shop and screwed in over the door units .. cheap, easy, and fast ... you dont get that combo often enough ...

all for now ... sam is moving in this week

the steels there waiting for him

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