I Didn't Do It!

Seventeen year old girl!  Sounds like two cuss words in a row!  Not really, I have faith in the younger generation and having two daughters of my own I realize that girls can do anything a boy can do and sometimes better!  These are her benches, a crowning of her efforts of the summer working with me.  The pleasure has been mine and the learning and skills developed all hers and she is very good!

I have taught people welding before.  It is pretty easy, I can teach you to weld in five minutes but I can't teach enthusiasm or learning to deal with the dirt.  Welding is messy, dirty and noisy.  You have to want to do it or it just doesn't happen.  Like most learning in life.

It is fun to watch her.  She totally gets lost in her creations, all in a good way.  Focused and caring, each bend and weld better than the last.  She has made a lot this summer spending four or five hours every day at my shop, churning out trellises and plant stands, benches and garden art.

Next weekend is "The Art Show" and a 10' x 20' space I was talked into at the last show I did.  I have done so many of these over the years, probably a hundred!  This one will be hers and I will have nothing there, except maybe my apprentice herself!  That could be my best art ever!

Oh, I am sure she always had it in her, I just pushed and nudged and she fell right into it.

This whole experience reminds me of when I was a teacher and that question good teachers ponder.  Do you teach the student or do you teach the subject?  I never felt the subject was that important and my job was encouragement, providing a flashlight in the dark.  

What a great experience!

Retirement

I have no lofty goals.  I come and go as I please.  If I want to I do and when I don't, I don't and it all pretty much doesn't make any difference.  I live on a one-third acre "farm" in the city and not in a particular order, I have my greenhouse, my shop, the garden and little plunge pool, two cats and my daughter's dog to keep me company.  For three more years, until her retirement, I see my wife sporadically, without schedule, a ghost sometimes.
     I don't play golf and am happy to have discovered a hobby that people pay me to do.  I am a welder.
I don't work on automobiles or trailers, I have no love for cars nor anything with an engine.  I am not a fabricator, seldom work off blue prints or do any kind of production welding.  I play.  I have a welding table but seldom use it.  I weld off an easel, a vertical frame in my shop about eight feet tall and as wide as I like to make it.  I weld like a painter, stand back and look and weld, adding this and that until I like it.
    Fourteen years ago I had never seen a welder, didn't know the mystery of joining steel together, making one from many, creating strength from small pieces.  It was all a gift from a friend.  Just like that one day I came home from work and at the entrance to my shop there it stood, everything to get started.  A small welder, a mask, a cut-off saw and even some scrap steel!  And a note:  "Happy birthday, you will like this!"
Wow, it was a lot of money, maybe $400 or so, but more than that it was a present from someone who really knew me, maybe more than I knew myself!  No directions came with these and I admit I had a slight fear of being electrocuted.  No one really knows how electricity works!
     I practised every day.  I had seven people working for me at the time, two or three jobs always going on at the same time.  I owned the construction company and I grew to hate it.  It is difficult to get out of something you have been into for over thirty years.  Building things, causing things to happen, running a crew is all I knew how to do.  That summer I was in my shop welding for two hours every day before I went to work.  It is an amazing process, mixing atoms of steel.  It is not like gluing at all and it doesn't have the limitations of wood.  It has, well it has the strength of steel!!!  It changed my dreams and what I thought about.
    You can learn to weld in five minutes but to get good at it takes practice.  And then to learn what goes together and what clashes with the design takes experience.  Trial and error, but nothing goes to waste. You just cut it up and do it again!  I eventually got pretty good at it and developed a "name" at least around here.

   This has all become a part of the equation to my retirement, a little welding, some gardening, pet the dog, squeeze the cats and now I have taken up painting and that is a whole other world that I am having fun with!
You can find a lot more HERE!

A Good Gate...

     is inviting and offers security.  It is a point on a horizon, a statement on the road and says, "yes, you have found me."  It is welcoming and foreboding, enter or not.  It should not be a continuation of a fence line, but a single entity, a point of arrival.
    There is no mystery about building a good gate and no matter the design, it always begins with the gate posts.  These are the stanchions, the boundaries of the gate, not the end of the fence line.  They will be holding a lot of weight and need to be bigger, stronger and well placed in concrete.  I normally use 6" x 6"
steel posts and rent a boring machine to dig a 30" diameter hole about three and a half feet deep.  This will hold about one cubic yard of concrete and offers total stability for the gate post.
   A good gate is not a framed fence panel.  One test of a good gate is to stand on it on the side opposite the hinge, at the end of the gate.  A 200 pound man should not be able to lower the gate in this fashion.  It is the strength in design that prevents this.  The decorative elements in a gate are carefully placed there with purpose.  They are not the whim of an artist, they have a function.  They triangulate the gate frame itself, creating a truss within the gate to add strength and stability.  Some modern gates eliminate this artistic strength and replace their function by simply adding cross bars, crossing the gate with an "X" in steel.  I admit this works but it is always disappointing.

 A country gate with truss system along the top arch
and across the bottom, on 6" x 6" steel posts.

 Sweet Cheeks Winery Entry Gate with gusset added to the hinge side and a top trussed arch fortified with a vine motif. The copper panels offer a touch of drama and color.

     The Romans invented the arch and it is well used in a gate, offering greater strength and, if carefully manipulated, a truss system along the top.
     Operating systems for gates have become sophisticated and complex and are a trade within itself. There are dozens of different manufacturers and abilities to these.  And, a lot of price variation!  My experience, like everything, you get what you pay for!  A really good hassle-free system can cost over $5,000.  It is a different trade entirely and I don't do these (but I know those who do!).
    The gates I make do not come from a catalogue but are thought out and artistically designed with the customer and the site in mind.  Each gate is one of a kind.  I have never built the same one twice.
There are more photos of my work HERE.