Steel and Copper

More on the same Railing Project

2012-01-08T00:30:00.002-05:00

I am posting a few images to show the spiral part of the same railing project I posted back in July. These photos are not great because the were taken with an ipod. But I think you can still get the idea. Shawn has done a nice job of taking our pieces and welding up the railing. Wraping the bottom post was a nice touch.

One hard part about this spiral was Shawn had to build the frame in place in the house, then cut it out in two pieces and bring it back to the shop where I could get true measurements of each space. As you go down the spiral it gets steeper and also tighter. It was a real challenge getting it all to work.

Now the trick is once it is powder coated Shawn must snake it back in to the house and get it back in place. And believe me when I tell you this is one heavy piece of railing.

Railing Project

2011-07-12T10:51:00.000-04:00

Working with Gross Brothers Welding and Fabrication on a large railing project. The customer had a picture of a style of railing they thought they liked. I then worked with Shawn Gross and we came up with a rough layout. Then I spent a few days figuring out the pattern and how to get it to flow to the pickets on both the top and bottom of the railing. Here are a few photos of the results. This section is 18 feet long and it is the smaller section. After we cut the next large section then we will start on a spiral staircase to match this design.

2011-04-02T12:25:00.002-04:00

Small angel on a stand we made as a donation piece for our granddaughter's preschool. She is 10 inches tall (the angel, not our granddaughter :) ) and 6 to 7 inches wide at the wings. Made of 16 gauge steel with copper halo and then clear coated. The base has a foam rubber bottom to keep from scratching wood surfaces. This is just one example of the angels we sell at shows, on etsy.com and on wholesalecrafts.com.

Table Maintenance

2011-03-19T14:33:00.003-04:00

It appears to be time for some table repairs. Seems some of the small gantry roller bearings are wearing from the plasma dust. I guess considering how much we cut on the table, 2 years is not bad. They are pricey little suckers at $20 each. I needed 6 of them to start with. Might need more once I start checking the other ones out. Oh well.

Here is a Barn Star we did just a few weeks ago, the photo is before powder coating. The Star measures 6' at it's widest point.

Tucson Angel

2011-03-14T12:31:00.003-04:00

The first project cut with the new setup is a 9'11" angel that will be installed in Tucson, AZ as a memorial to 9 year old Christina Green. She was the youngest of the six killed January 8th, 2011 by a gunman targeting State Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

This angel is designed by Lei Hennessy-Owens, cut by Waking Bear Studio, and welded/assembled by Gross Brothers Welding of Somerset, Pa. You can visit Lei's site here, Delivering Angels.

I apologize for the quality of the photos, did not have my good camera with me.

This Grate is Great!

2011-03-13T22:45:00.003-04:00

Well today Martha and I took off the old Samson grate system and put on the new grate system. And when we got finished we both stood back and said "wow!" This grate system is GREAT! Super easy to install! The two of us put the grate on the table in 30 minutes. The best part of the system are the slats. When they are all cut up you simply pull the bad ones out and shear more and drop them in! Simple and not expensive!

I received the plans for the grate system from Mick at Possum Plasma Cutting in Australia when I purchased his Snap'N Cut magnetic torch mount. We have just purchased a new Hypertherm Powermax 85 for our table with the machine torch head. And Mick's mount is the way to go with this setup. Truely awesome!

Tomorrow I will get some photo's of the Snap'N Cut and the torch to post here on the blog.

Contact Mick at Possum Plasma Cutting about the grate system and the Snap'N Cut torch mount...

New Torch

2011-03-08T10:44:00.005-05:00

We just recently needed to get a new torch for our Samson table. We were using a Hypertherm Powermax 1250. We purchased a new Hypertherm Powermax 85. This torch is actually bigger than the 1250. With this setup we decided on the machine torch.

Sine we were getting the machine torch, figured we needed a nice mount for it. We chose the mount produced by Mick at Possum Plasma Cutting in Australia. It is a magnetic breakaway mount. Very nice. In addition when you purchase the mount, Mick sends you the cut files for a whole new grate system for your plasmacam/samson table! Thanks Mick!

I have all the pieces now for the new torch install. I need to complete the controller cable that connects the torch to the table controller. That will be done with some direction from Jim Colt from Hypertherm. Jim just recently hooked this same model torch to his plasmacam table. Thanks in advance Jim for all your help and guidance!

The grate is cut and needs cleaned and assembled. That will also be done this week. So hopefully next week sometime I will post some photos of the new setup!

Take care...

A Few Examples

2010-11-01T06:39:00.007-04:00

Here are some images to show more of our work. Most of these images are of pieces we did for Gross Brothers Welding of Somerset, PA. All of our railing work and fireplace work is exclusively done with Gross Brothers. Enjoy!

Kayak Rack

2010-08-02T18:14:00.002-04:00

Just got back from a vacation at Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia. We decided to take my sea kayak with us so we loaded the kayak rack I had made in to my truck. After getting it in there I decided it needed a bit of sprucing up. So we cut panels for it and made the kayak rack a display for our work. Here are a few shots!

Last two images are taken from inside the bed looking out and then mirrored in paintshop so you can see the cutouts better. We got LOADS of comments and looks while on vacation!

Pudelpointer Sign

2010-08-02T17:41:00.003-04:00

We were asked to create a sign for a local breeder of Pudelpointers. The sign measures 28' 3" across. The center logo is actually 4 piece per side (it is double sided) each was powercoated a different color and then the whole thing was bolted together with spacers to give the logo depth. You will notice in the fox head the eyes glow. My flash was on and they had put reflective red vinyl behind the eyes!

The owners of the kennel were thrilled!

George Beal's sign is up!

2010-08-02T17:34:00.002-04:00

Well after a hard winter and a busy spring George finally got the sign hung up. Here are a few photos! It looks awesome!

Railing and Fire Screen

2010-04-16T09:51:00.004-04:00

Here are two photos of a railing and fire screen that we did for a model home. They turned out quite nice. The design work and cutting was done by us here at Waking Bear Studio. The railing and screen frame design and fab was done by Gross Brothers Welding.

"George Beal Auto" Project

2009-12-22T23:09:00.011-05:00

A good friend of ours owns a garage where he does auto repair. His old plywood sign was so bad after years and years of hanging in the weather that George took it down. He asked us if we would be interested in making him a new sign. So we did and it sorta exceeded even our expectations!

I laid out the design and cut it with our Samson table. It took one full 5 x 10 sheet of 14 gauge. Once it was cut and test fit together, we took it to our local vo-tech school, Somerset County Technology Center, to see if the auto-body shop would be interested in doing the painting. We wanted the sign to have a nice automotive finish and figured it would be a great project for the kids at the school.

My son took this class and we had become good friends with Jim Shesko the instructor. He really liked the sign and was happy to take on the project. A local company that builds fire trucks donated the red paint. Get this, the red paint takes 24 hours to dry at 100 degrees! Boy does it look nice.

Ok, now the special project…. George has been a good family friend for many many years. We decided to do something special for George and when I found the 57 chevy file here on plasmaspider ( http://www.plasmaspider.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=665&p=1544&hilit=57+chevy#p1544 ) I knew what we would make him!

Once cut, I asked Jim Shesko was more than willing to take a stab at custom painting the 57. And I have to tell you folks, everyone that has seen this piece has been stunned. Here they are....

Memorial Angel

2009-01-29T07:38:00.015-05:00

This Angel was made to commemorate the memory of a family's young son who passed away after a battle with cancer.

The angel is made of 3/16th steel and is 6’+ tall and approx 4’ wide. It was hand ground to add a slight texture and then powder coated with a satin clear finish. The lantern with the turtle and flowers were torch colored.

The memorial resides in a garden courtyard at a Somerset PA church.

Southwind Community

2009-01-23T23:01:00.011-05:00

This sign was created in the fall of 2006 for a townhouse community being built at Seven Spring Resort in Seven Springs, PA. As you can see the community was named Southwind, a ski in ski out community.

The sign is made from three pieces and is cut from ¼ inch hardened aluminum. It is anchored to the rock with approximately ten ½ inch aluminum rods that were imbedded into the rock.

The finish is actually sign vinyl and a shadow has been added which gives the sign a 3d effect.

Cabin Railing - A big challenge!

2009-01-21T14:02:00.010-05:00

In the late summer of 2006 we were commissioned to create our first full railing. As you can see the railing is panel inserts in a log railing. This was by far the trickiest job we had done at the time.

The logs were slotted in all four logs top, bottom and sides. There were a total of eight panels. The slots were just over 1/8th inch wide and around a ½ inch deep. As you can imagine that sounds pretty straight forward, but consider that no two logs are the same and they are not uniform from end to end.

We took measurements and then went home and cut the panels. Then we went back to the site and removed all the top logs so we could test fit the panels. Once they were all in place the top logs were screwed back in place. We marked all the visible corners, front and back of each panel. The client wanted to have around a 1 inch border around the scene in each panel.

We then disassembled the whole railing and took our fitted blank panels home to have the scenes cut into them. The photos in this blog entry are the end result, an eight panel continuous scene from the bottom of the steps to the end of the loft. Design, fitting, cutting and refitting was about 2 weeks.

It was all done in our studio!

Church Windows part 2

2009-01-20T21:28:00.002-05:00

Here are a few more photos of the church window project. It is hard to understand the scale of these pieces. They were made so that each panel opens like a door so the windows can be cleaned. The top arch panel hinges at the bottom edge of that panel so that it will fold down so that section can also be washed.

Three months went into these steel grates. Many people worked on this project and everyone was thrilled when it was done!

Church Windows

2009-01-20T17:40:00.000-05:00

Here is our first large project posting on the blog. You will notice in the picture the iron work over the windows. The bulk of what you see in the photo was done by a local welding company, Gross Brothers Welding. We were brought into the project to help complete the artwork that was being attached to the steel frames. The photo shows one side of the room. The exact same iron work was also on the other end of the room. So you are seeing half the project! Wowzers it was a big project!

Wow!

2009-01-20T17:20:00.001-05:00

Wow, here we are with another blog. This time the blog is for me to show some larger specialty work we do. In addition I will show some of the software that we use and how. Should prove to be interesting! Hope you will follow along!