Time for Lumber
Money, time and physical ability have been getting in the way of the shop lately. With Penny and Kate’s visit last weekend and some things that needed to be taken care of, money has been tight. Work has also been taking up a lot of time, and my shoulder has been giving me a ton of trouble. With all that going on, it’s been hard to make much progress at the shop.
I was in Oakland on Friday night, not to work on the shop, but to recharge my soul a little bit. The plan was to round up some friends, have a BBQ at the shop, drink some beer and just hang out. In talking to Zachary about it, I found out that the Oakland Art Murmur's First Friday art walk was happening that night. I had always wanted to check it out, so that took the place of the BBQ. The crowds were really hard on my shoulder, but it was nice to get out, be around some people I’ve worked with in the past, see what they’ve been doing, and generally recharge my artistic batteries. Bree, Zachary and I went out together, and met everyone else out. We were going to walk around and check everything else out, but there were huge lines to get into everything, so we pretty much stuck at Warehouse 416 where 5 Ton Crane was doing their exhibit. It was fun to hang out with some of the KSW crew out of the shop, meet some new people, and reconnect with others I haven’t seen since my last involvement with KSW on the Steampunk Tree House at Burning Man 2007 (holy shit, has it really been that long???). But after a while, the crowds just became too much, and I got too sore, so we went and got some Chinese food at a really good hole in the wall place in Oakland’s China Town and then called it a night.
Saturday I did my best to sleep in, lounge around, and have a mellow morning. After that got old, I threw all my woodworking tools into the truck, headed to 2525, measured up what I needed, and then spent the last of my money on lumber to frame the floor supports for the second floor. A couple of KSW crew members were in and out that day, and started in on their normal habit of teasing me about overbuilding everything I make. While yes, this might be a bit of overkill for floor framing for what most people would be doing with the space, but I plan on having a lot of weight of tools up there. I’m also not dainty by any stretch of the imagination, so I want to make sure that the floor structure can take the weight and that the floor structure also does a good job of tying the two pallet racks together. I made “T” sections out of 2X4 to land in between the cross bars, with the joint on the T both glued and screwed together. I needed 20 to have them 16 inches on center, so making them up took most of the afternoon. I then had time to cut the top plates for the Ts; these will span both racks and tie it all together. I’m going to put a 2X6 plate on the front edge to hold the spacing and have an attachment point for the front wall, and will just use a 2X4 on the back side to hold them all together. One more evening of screwing and I should be ready for decking.
Now that I know how I’m going to build the space, what is filling my brain most of the time is what am I going to do with it? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and this weekend really brought the question into focus. I know I want to go back to work on the original idea of making custom restraints, fixtures and bondage furniture to sell through Lust Designs, but I think I want to do something more artistic as well. I’ve got some time to think about this, as the shop is going to take a few more weeks to set up at the very least, and after that I still need to build a new forge, but it’s a question I can’t push to the back of my head. I think I want to do some heavy industrial kinetic art, and might as well steam power it since I’m sharing space and working with KSW. I’ve just got to figure out what I want that to be. I guess it’s time to start getting out into the art community more, see what’s going on, and try to knock all the cobwebs and rust out of the creative side of my brain. To all my artistic, creative and crazy friends out there… if you know of anything going on… events, shows, gallery openings anything that will get my creative juices flowing… let me know. I needs me some inspiration!
I was in Oakland on Friday night, not to work on the shop, but to recharge my soul a little bit. The plan was to round up some friends, have a BBQ at the shop, drink some beer and just hang out. In talking to Zachary about it, I found out that the Oakland Art Murmur's First Friday art walk was happening that night. I had always wanted to check it out, so that took the place of the BBQ. The crowds were really hard on my shoulder, but it was nice to get out, be around some people I’ve worked with in the past, see what they’ve been doing, and generally recharge my artistic batteries. Bree, Zachary and I went out together, and met everyone else out. We were going to walk around and check everything else out, but there were huge lines to get into everything, so we pretty much stuck at Warehouse 416 where 5 Ton Crane was doing their exhibit. It was fun to hang out with some of the KSW crew out of the shop, meet some new people, and reconnect with others I haven’t seen since my last involvement with KSW on the Steampunk Tree House at Burning Man 2007 (holy shit, has it really been that long???). But after a while, the crowds just became too much, and I got too sore, so we went and got some Chinese food at a really good hole in the wall place in Oakland’s China Town and then called it a night.
Saturday I did my best to sleep in, lounge around, and have a mellow morning. After that got old, I threw all my woodworking tools into the truck, headed to 2525, measured up what I needed, and then spent the last of my money on lumber to frame the floor supports for the second floor. A couple of KSW crew members were in and out that day, and started in on their normal habit of teasing me about overbuilding everything I make. While yes, this might be a bit of overkill for floor framing for what most people would be doing with the space, but I plan on having a lot of weight of tools up there. I’m also not dainty by any stretch of the imagination, so I want to make sure that the floor structure can take the weight and that the floor structure also does a good job of tying the two pallet racks together. I made “T” sections out of 2X4 to land in between the cross bars, with the joint on the T both glued and screwed together. I needed 20 to have them 16 inches on center, so making them up took most of the afternoon. I then had time to cut the top plates for the Ts; these will span both racks and tie it all together. I’m going to put a 2X6 plate on the front edge to hold the spacing and have an attachment point for the front wall, and will just use a 2X4 on the back side to hold them all together. One more evening of screwing and I should be ready for decking.
Now that I know how I’m going to build the space, what is filling my brain most of the time is what am I going to do with it? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and this weekend really brought the question into focus. I know I want to go back to work on the original idea of making custom restraints, fixtures and bondage furniture to sell through Lust Designs, but I think I want to do something more artistic as well. I’ve got some time to think about this, as the shop is going to take a few more weeks to set up at the very least, and after that I still need to build a new forge, but it’s a question I can’t push to the back of my head. I think I want to do some heavy industrial kinetic art, and might as well steam power it since I’m sharing space and working with KSW. I’ve just got to figure out what I want that to be. I guess it’s time to start getting out into the art community more, see what’s going on, and try to knock all the cobwebs and rust out of the creative side of my brain. To all my artistic, creative and crazy friends out there… if you know of anything going on… events, shows, gallery openings anything that will get my creative juices flowing… let me know. I needs me some inspiration!