A Loft In Denver

The first real Club Workshop project was a Big B.  My Better Half (MBH) just got a new office and one day we were at Decade admiring a “little” (18″) B which was made out of rustic/rusty sheet metal.  Funnily enough I had already thought of making a B as an officewarming gift – mentioned that and was given the green light.

So off to Altitude Steel to buy a four foot square steel plate, 3/16″ thick.  I measured out 10cm marks around the edges and used a chalkline to make a grid.  (Yes, metric – the world would be such a better place if America could just admit metric is better!) I used Photoshop to take an Impact B, enlarge it, and lay a grid over it to match the grid on the steel.  Then I used chalk to transfer the shape from the image I created to the steel.

On to cutting!  I had never used a plasma cutter before so I took a few minutes first to practice.  If you don’t know what a plasma cutter is, it’s a machine that blows air in a vortex out the nozzle and using electrical current creates an arc in that air, turning it to plasma, and it basically just liquefies the metal and blows it away.  You move along bit by bit to make the cut.  Here’s a more detailed explanation of plasma cutting and here’s a video showing plasma cutting in action.

The cutting wasn’t too difficult – just takes a good deal of patience as you can’t go too fast.  Once the B was cut out it needed a base.  I figured an ellipse was more functional than a rectangle and fit with the design, plus cutting a nice ellipse seemed like a good challenge.  I remember an old episode of Mr. Wizard from when I was a kid where he took a couple of nails and a string to draw an ellipse so I was determined to figure out how.

I ended up finding a site which shows how to draw an ellipse, calculating the foci placement and string length for an ellipse given it’s outer bounds.  Tried it on on cardboard first and then used those measurements for the steel.  At some point I figured out that I could use wire rope instead of string and use it to guide the plasma cutter itself, rather than outline it and attempt to get a good curve.  This is also the time I started taking pictures as I went along so you can see what I mean.

When all was cut the edges were still pretty rough which meant lots and lots of grinding (which means lots and lots of noise and sparks).  Took some time but we got there.  The surface of the steel had a little bit of an uneven patina so I took an orbital sander and went to town on it to get a smooth, almost glossy finish.

Then all that was left to do was attach them together…  After getting the B on the stand so both were square I used the MIG welder to tack the ends and the middle (so it won’t warp from the heat) and then went along welding one section at a time.  Used the sander again near the welds a bit to remove a bit of splatter and the B was complete!

Brought it home and MBH liked it so much that she thought it was more suited for the loft than the office.  I’ve since agreed and will use the remnants to make a baby B for her desk.  We’ll see how much easier it is next time!

Creating the B was very satisfying, and the experience has made me look at things differently.  I realize that given the right equipment, I can take raw materials and create whatever I set my mind to.  So began the quest to recreate everything in our loft!