Monday, May 19, 2008

And So it Begins

Gussets made from 4x4 Angle, bolts the rafter to the column and also hangs the W18 purlin. We'll see what Harriet thinks. No welds though!

Today was the first day of the summer phase of the Design Workshop and it was nice to get back to the project after taking a week or so off. Ostensibly, we'll be working from 8am-6pm (since thats all that the building is open) but of course we all know that that isn't going to happen. I mean, really - what the heck else am I supposed to do with myself if I'm done with work at 6 pm? Oh - and lets not forget the mountain of work that we have to get done in the next three months - there's also that. Luckily the Knowledge Union is open till 11 every night, so I can at least come here and work after the studio closes. Annoying though.

I'm redesigning the Steel joints right now, with a more realistic eye towards our actual construction capabilities, balanced against our very limited budget. The steel could happily get built the way it is designed right now, but the quotes we've been getting are at least 50% over our budget for the steel - so I've been trying to figure out ways to bring the cost down while still making it buildable. Most of the cost was getting eaten up by shop's man-hours for fabrication (welding, bracket building, etc), so Johnny and I have messed with the detailing until we've finally gotten it to a place where I think we can do all the fabrication ourselves. I still need to draw up the details and let Harriet look over them over, but I think they should be just fine structurally. Really its more a question of what we can actually fabricate (that is: legally, NO welds - sigh). So lots of bolted connections! But I think we can actually do it. We'll only have to pay for the steel at this point, - we'll do all the drilling, gusset fabrication, painting and assembly ourselves. And I think I've got it down to 3 days of crane work - with enough hold time to let the other loads come up too in the middle somewhere.

Either way - it was good to get back to it and to see everybody today. Marianna and Joel are now running the show. David will be in now and then, but its pretty much all about production now. So we had a nice long scheduling meeting this morning - I still need to play out the steel construction in a little more detail but I think your looking at 60 days total from the day I say "Steel drawings are done" to the day I say "Steel construction is done." We'll see how close I was. Any one wanna place a wager? Closest to the actual time without going over gets a beer.

Anyway - they are gonna kick me out of here too in a few minutes so I gotta run. Don't these people understand that I have work to do? Man . . .

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