His shop was EPIC! 4K

All right, I figured out what we was doing. We got these railroad ties walls. I guess they got puted in 87. Um, so we're going to pull it all out, put a new one in, yank out all the plantings, redo some plantings. It's going to be a pretty pretty fun job. I think this homeowner, he's cool as hell. That always makes a pretty big difference. They got that deadman tied into that little wall back there. It looks like Boy, that dead man's going way back in there. Oh, look. U US USIC is here after we demoed everything. Oh man, that is monster. That's a lot of rock. Yeah. up here a little bit. Uh yeah, we doing the we're doing the equipment shuffle which is similar to the pallet shuffle. [laughter] I look. No. Yeah. Just don't look at it too close. The more stuff you'll find. [laughter] That's like one of those uh one of those uh magazines that I used to read. Uh where you find the objects. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like the Yeah. What were those books called? I spy. I spy. That's what it was. Help me. No, he says. they're deceiving. Those those railroad ties, man. They got all that creasso in them. Yeah. Like 300 lb. All right. So, we're at depth. And that skid steer is loud. And this is all the really fine sand. So, normally what we'll do, so we'll get to our depth, run the packer over it a couple of times, get that packed, put the rock, put a lift of rock in, pack that. But what we're going to do, cuz this is just super soft, squishy sand. Going to sprinkle a little of that class 5 on top there. Pack it, and then just do a couple of smaller lifts to get to the depth that we want. [music] Hey hey [music] Hey. [music] I'll take you out and show you all the city lights. [music] I'll take you out and show you all the city lights. [music] I'll take [music] you out and show you all the city. [music] down. [music] I'll take you out and show you all the city lights. [music] I'll take you out and show you all the city lights. I see the mag. [music] I'll take you out. [music] I'll show you all the city lights. [music] drive. [music] Heat. [music] Oh, we got some rain up here, too, it looks like. Good morning, sunshine. I really would like to try to get this dug out and based in. Oh, yeah. No, if you want to dig, I'll base or something. Whatever. But then John John is on his way up and we'll get all of that crap. Yeah, we have to get him back in and then we'll Yeah, I I talked to Blaine like 45 minutes ago and John was on his way to the shop and then they were heading up together or something. That's cool. No rush. No. Oh yeah, that's that is smooth. It looks smooth. It does look nice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Trying to unberry it a little better. Trying to unberry it a little better. He says, "All right. Well, I get in a hole. Look at the size of the drive shaft on that I'm not centered. Big old whoop. I'm ready to run. Just back straight up and we'll get the car to leave. Be careful. Yep. I'm ready to run. So Sam, what's going to happen here is when I pick it up, the car's going to want to run into your wall. So before I take the weight off, I'll probably put a block under the wheels. I don't want to damage that wall. Yeah. Gosh, that was barely 15 minutes. Yeah. Well, that's why I say you work with good people. I mean, it makes life easy. Makes a huge difference. Especially if it's the same people and you get your system down and jam it out. You all work together and life is good. Life is good. Yeah. Yeah. There he goes, guys. Yeah. No one else. What else could you ask about? I'm curious. How long does it take to make for you to make one like one section of those railings? Um I set up I average about 8 to nine hours per section. They send the stock lengths. Yep. You got to cut, you got to bevel, you got to grind a bevel, prepare the joint for a weld. Um, every section gets fixture. So, when it seems here, a big problem with companies fabricators is they don't fixture everything. When it gets to the field, if it's got a match bolt holes in the beam, it doesn't line up. Then you get huge back charges on the field. It'll be a crane operator or sometimes a couple of foremen. You get charged all their time. So um you lost money on it if you screwed up. So I fixture everything. I put stops on tack them on the table. Then when I get done welding, if you stand a 20ft section up, it'll be about a 4 inch bowl and kind of look like this wall. Okay. So I put it back in the fixture. take the torch, heat on specific points on the railing, give it two or three minutes to cool, stand it up, and it's perfectly straight. And um in 27 years, I had a $56 match charge. [laughter] And that's [snorts] pretty good. Yeah. Because I welded some braces on backwards. I called the customer. I said, "Is it okay like this?" He goes, "Eight 8 8 in by 4 in plate stiffener." And he goes, "Well, it would probably work, but just to be safe, cut it on. I'll send you new pieces." I said, "I got the material here. I'll just make new ones." So, I'll send them down. So, he sends me down new plates, like four of them. And I'm like, I had them in stock. So, I thought he was just doing it as a favor. And he back charges me. [laughter] But I guess, you know, in hindsight, over 27 years, it's not That's not too bad. That whole bag in there for me. My wife won't eat anything wild. Yeah. Oh, what? Really? Whoa. Yeah. Okay. So, these these will be in the fridge. Oh, okay. In there. So, just go ahead and cut them open. Looks like we got two bags of them here. Snacking on them. Oh, that's cool. They're going to be in there along with your nuty bars. You guys keeping up with that? Oh, I murdered those things. Yeah. Oh, I mur I murdered those. You'll spank me if you haven't eaten them. Oh, no. I I'm pretty I ate like Yep. I ate a lot of those. If you want to take some of these home, take them cuz like I said, the wife, she doesn't hang wild. Oh, that's in the fridge. Actually, you know what? If I could get that uh if I could get the recipe for those nuty bars your wife made. Oh, that would be amazing. I should. In fact, I'm going to bring She makes another bar with M&M's. Bring some of those out. Oh, god. Going to get me fat. So yeah, so this is the railings just like and then now come back over here. Now if you look at this, this is schedule 80. So that's double wall thickness. And um typically the only time you use schedule 80 is on posts. So if you have post say every 4T, there's a code that says you can't have I believe it's more a 300lb force can't deflect that post more than quarter inch. I believe coat is so you can u either keep your post centers closer together or you go with heavier material thicker metal schedule 40 which is like an eighth inch thick. This is getting close to quarter 316 a quarter. But anyway on this job all my years never seen it. The entire railing is schedule 80. So all your horizontals everything is schedule 80. And um I don't know if it's an engineering mistake or what. It's just a transformer. Really? It's pretty cool seeing it come come in like this and then what you made it into. Oh, that's so cool. Here's the fun part. Isn't this all the fun part? Oh, man. Oh, yeah. If you have the right tools, so I'll show you how we do some of this stuff. I should have showed Stan when he was here. Oh, giving away the trade secrets. Oh, he's going to he'll he'll see it. Yeah. Yeah, I've had people come here actually and pretend they wanted me to do work for them, but they really wanted to write down the what your process was numbers on my machines. Oh, got to put a piece of tape over them. So when you're uh doing a reeling joint, you have a lot of joints like that. When you see the big gap in there, not easy to fill. So this machine is a notcher and you see the the moving dice. So there's a tangent point on each side. So there's your first cut. Go in there, line up that the corners with the tangent point. There's your second cut. Then when you go to weld, you went from this to that. Oh yeah. Ohight. This stuff's so cool. So now the next issue is when you're doing a railing up a slope. Okay. So even if you were to cut a bevel like that, you know, going up a stairway. Yep. Again, you got the big gap. So, we go to this machine, which is a roughing endmill. Well, I guess I got inch and a quarter in there. Look at that. Is a hell of a Yeah. Dang. So, we'll put this one there. So, what you do is whatever pipe diameter you have, you put that roughing endmill in to match it. We'll just take a piece here that's been pre-coped. So anyway, this is an adjustable vice and most of your steerways are common commonly at like 30° between 30 and 35° slope for like the for the handiliz. Yeah. Yep. So this one I've got set at like 33°. So, um, I'll show you how we typically do it. So, you start with a square end. I could go directly in there. Now, this is, of course, with a different die, but I take a bite out of it just so the endmill doesn't have to work quite as hard. So there's your finished mill joint for this is the wrong diameter pipe, but you'll get the idea here. So it will be a nice tight joint. Again, welding process here is I prefer a cutting list. I go through the drawings, give each every piece on there, and sometimes there'll be 600 to a,000 pieces on an order. I give a a cutting the part number. He took all of us on a tour of his shop and showed us around. And it's really hard to believe that Tom is actually 67 years old. He doesn't look like it, but he does kind of look a little bit like Wrangler Star. Do you guys see that? So, I'll generate a cutting list and then this what the quantity is. I give it a part number. Then I have a to-do column that means cope, that means bevel, whatever. So, as I cut the pieces, I can sort them. Then when I go to do the a common bevel, I can do all the same bevels at the same time. Do all the notching at the same time and just put it together at the end. So get all the pieces cut and prepped. Then this is the fab table. Like I said, I fixture everything. So these stops, each group of stops here would represent a a post. The long horizontal piece would be up here and there would be your posts. And um we can open up the drawings there and show you what a what the ring would look like. Oh, this is this is so cool. On this project, that's your typical um handrail. So the material you saw over here on the trailer, that's stock lengths. I give them part numbers, do all the prep work. Then in this case, it's nice cuz there's quantity six of them. Yeah. Many times you have one and you got a refixure every time. Um here you have six. Oh, so so it's it's six of this kind and then you got two of this kind. Oh, that's I got you. And I just the job I just shipped was identical to this. And usually I break those stops off between jobs and I thought, no, I'm going to leave them on. So as it turns out, these stops are ready for these six. There you go. Look at that. So then when I get all finished welding and sanding, I then, like I said, it has a big bowl in it. Then you put it back in the table, clamp every post, clamp the horizontal on top, take the oxy acetylene torch, and I heat it on the opposite side that um that it had pulled and wait about 3 or 4 minutes. You know, you relax the joint, the joint cools and shrinks. piece is perfectly straight. Oh, that's so Oh, that's so cool. That's fun, isn't it? Oh, this is so cool. My customers happy. Yeah. Yeah. Number one, cuz I'm never late. I don't ever miss those a due date. And um the big thing is it always fits. Oh, yeah. But what really helped me too is besides being a certified welder, I went back to school for engineering. So, I can design that. I just there's not enough of me, enough of Yeah. Yeah. So I identified my skill set and I said, "Which do you love to do the most?" And I said, "I like to create to build stuff." Oh, building sitting on your butt all day. Building for sure. Oh, that's cool. Now, have I showed you Have I showed you the tank machine? Uh, no. Looks really good. So, we're going to do Sam. So, we're going to start out the start position. Here we go. two strokes and then it's just hit the numbers of the alphabet. Hit the numbers of the alphabet. So, we're going to do Sam S M. Then we rotate to cut and it punches a hole in the end. Oh, that's cool. There you have Look at that. Oh, that's personalized name tag now. Heck yeah. Don't put that in my truck. Made out of zinc, so this will never rust. Oh, that's neat. Um, I've got another machine. I always like to have two of them in case one breaks. Yep. Absolutely. So, this one I've got set up with mild steel. And that's the stuff I use on my when those railings went out. You probably saw the tags hanging on them. Yeah. So, they will will survive the galvanizing process, you know, all the forklift handling and stuff. So, it gets to the job site. The guys look at that part number. They've got an erection print. It tells them where it goes. They just ma match the numbers. Yep. Oh gosh. But um that's kind of cool. That is s That is super cool. If you want to make name tags for anything or dirt monkey tags or let's do a dirt monkey. Yeah, I'll take you up on the Let's do a dirt monkey. So the first Yeah, I'll give it a stand. He'll hang it up in his office. You guys can come and use this too if you want to. So it's pretty simple. Just actually a standard monkey. So the I is going to be the number one. You don't need to press very hard. This is like a spring steel. So now we need to do a space. space. Oh, there you go. Dirt monkey. There you go. I'll make Yeah, I'll make sure that gets to stand. So then I went I I made this little guy here. Just a hinged plate. Smack it. I like to get the rippled edges flat. Oh. To flatten them out. Yeah. Yeah. Then this is zinc. So you can rub on it with a cloth. It will polish up nice. But um yeah, if you guys want to use want to come in and make name tags or whatever you want. [laughter] So what you got to do, Sam, is just when you start Oh, that's cool. When you start here, it says two. Yep. So, hit that first one two times. It'll punch a hole and give you that first space. Then, this is shear on the end. This one here, that one, that's the shear. And then that's a spacer. And then the I is a number one. But I I bought the zinc thinking that would work for tagging my product. It's actually too soft. So, I've got 1,200 ft of this. [laughter] So, you can make all the tags you want. I'll make some I'll make a couple tags. Oh, that's I had homeschoolers stop by to look at the sculptures. Yeah. What? And then they toured the shop because it was like a field trip for them. What they loved most was me making name tags for them. Well, yeah. I suppose too, like with the carvings and stuff like that, they make one of these. Stake it on the end and there you go. I like I like toys. Yeah. This is You got some cool stuff in here, man. Well, I've got some sad news to announce. Uh Lane is actually retiring. He's gotten old enough that uh he's just his wife has been asking him to uh hang it up for a while now and he didn't want to do it. But uh I think this is officially going to be one of his last jobs. So we will be saying goodbye to Blaine and he will be moving on into retirement. It's going to be tough to fill those shoes. That's a big hole to fill. But uh he was an excellent [music] excellent person and just an allaround awesome dude. He will be sorely sorely missed. And once you I mean once you hit your same mark every time, I mean it's you don't even have to look at the ball and just the the bowling I mean the bowling is cool cuz that's like you know it's like golf. You can do it till you die. Yeah. Yeah. My wife and I have been doing it for about 15 years. I told you I built this guy. So everything you see I pretty much built. So when the kids were little I built a playground for them. Uh, I made that wheel just to set around. I had it sitting over by the wall, but my wife didn't think it looked good by the wall, so we moved it. [laughter] Um, these guys, of course, the crane in there, the booming for the welder I built. Um, down by the sculptures, that arch down there, all that junk I built. Um, all your those lantern hangers and stuff like that. I mean, when you work with metal, I mean, just let your imagination. Yeah. You can do whatever. Yeah. Oh, that's so that's so cool. So cool. I like metal versus wood because wood wood you screw up and it's either scrap or you got to get some glue out. Yeah. Get the glue out. Metal you just weld it back. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Oh, that's so cool.