Still Having Fun With My PlasmaCam ROUTER Table

kklowell said:

Love the sign. I'll bet your shop is way bigger than most... that's an impressive list of machinery!

Click to expand...

Well ... :nerd: ... the wood shop certainly is. Affectionately known as "FrankenBarn," (my cousin calls it "Barnzilla") it started out as an idea to tear down a 108-year-old tobacco barn and replace it with a 600 sq. ft. wood shop, 20'x30' on a concrete pad. We were about to begin the project when my neighbor came over ...

"Hey Joe. Does your home have a basement?"

"No. Why would I need a basement?"

"Well, since you're building a new work shop, you might think about putting a small tornado shelter into the foundation, so you have a place to go if a tornado comes this way."

Having just moved to Kentucky from CommieFornia, I never gave any thought to tornadoes. So the contractor came over to discuss it.

"What would it cost, to add an 8'x8' concrete tornado shelter under the pad, you know, with a ladder and a metal door?"

He calculated the price. Then I thought, "Gosh, that seems small. What about 8'x10' ... no, 10' x12' ... Wait! What if I have friends over at the time. We would need chairs to sit it out ... let's go 12' x16' Then we can put in a stairway and store some food and water ..."

It ended up 32' x 48' with 10" thick, 9' tall 4,000 psi concrete walls with a 6" floor :surprise: Then we poured an additional 12' x 32' pad with a footing on the ground level to expand the length and give me a separate work bay for ... you know ... auto repair ... or maybe building an Ark. So the ground floor is 32' x 60'

When the 6x6 timbers arrived they were WAY too long.

"Joe, I'm sorry. I couldn't get the shorter ones, but we will cut these down to length. It will waste some money though, because it would be a long wait for the shorter timbers, and the discarded timbers will be too short to re-sell..."

"Wait! As long as they are that long, why don't we just go up one more floor?" And four guest bedrooms (unfinished yet) , each with it's own bathroom were born.

Then the roof. A low pitch? No way! I'm an old guy. I don't want to be stumbling around and tripping over studs to get at the Christmas ornaments and lights. So lets build a walking attic. Thus was designed the 12' x 60' attic with a 6' 6" center height, and no lumber to step over.

And just how would I get things from say ... the basement to the attic? Drag them up THREE flights of stairs on a dolly?! Nope. That is why I decided to add a residential elevator to the design. When completed, it will extend from the basement to the attic.

It was one of those things. "If we are doing this, we should also do THIS. And since we are doing that, it only makes sense to also do THIS. Now we might as well go ahead and do THIS as well ..."

What began as a 600 sq. ft. workshop ended up as a four story creation sporting 6,096 sq. ft. of usable space.

There is much more to this story, but as they say, "A picture is worth a thousand words."

Enjoy!
http://flic.kr/s/aHsjEbnBYk

I tend to jump into projects without fully knowing how they will come out.

Our town had the annual Christmas Parade. Franklin only has 9,000 people, but I decided to go for it, and make something they will talk about all year.

so I entered my truck into the parade. I have a 14-foot flatbed that used to be used as a motorcycle tow truck in southern CommieFornia. We started with the idea of a few kids sitting along the edges waving and tossing out candy. Maybe some Christmas garland and a wreath on the front grill ... you know ... simple. As with FrankenBarn, things just sort of morphed into something bigger as the project moved forward.

All of the drizzled frosting and the roof frosting was done with the Samson 510 CNC table and a router mounted to the carriage in place of a plasma torch. I also used the table to cut out the arched windows.


Joe

http://flic.kr/s/aHsm9YyefD