Now that the slab is done, the rest is pretty straightforward.
The walls and roof are (mostly) on; there’s some metal missing for the sliding door and one end of the building. Did I mention that these “design your own metal building” guys don’t know how to make anything but a simple rectangle?
The spinny venty thing is going to be the suck for the hood I intend to weld together and suspend over the forge bench. I believe that if I open the sliding door on the other side of the building (facing windward) it should transfer a lot of air fairly fast. With some luck I won’t have a lot of heat on me unless I want it.
That end of the building is intended to be closed. But that’s OK – you can get this steel roofing pretty much anywhere. The steel building people didn’t design an overhang on that end, damn it, so I will have to build some kind of little rooflet to go over the propane tank. The nice thing about these steel buildings is that you can mount anything anywhere with a metal-tapping screw.
This is the end where the forge is going to go. The pushed out region at the back is to allow storage space behind the forge table – my plan is to put 3 or 4 big standing steel cabinets so I have plenty of room for all the things, out of the way. I may have to re-think that if it means walking around the hot forge. I don’t think I’ll need to worry about that too much but it’s something to keep an eye on. The alternative is to have a cabinet for each part of the process, near where that part of the process happens (i.e.: a hammer cabinet, a press cabinet, and a casting cabinet)
The concrete dips down slightly at this end, where I intent to build a raised floor area that can be for chilling, sitting and listening to music, watching the rain, bleeding, and polishing/sharpening. That’s where the sharpening bench will go. When I build one.
But first things first! I need to run the power. The crew includes an electrician, who is going to handle the hookup and the panel, I’ll do the interior runs. With those big horizontal beams, it’s going to be easy – I’ll just loop tie-wraps around the beam, run the wires through them, then pull them all tight when it’s all working.
This is a huge amount of work. I don’t know why I spend so much time on “infrastructure” instead of actually doing stuff, but I get almost as much enjoyment out of setting up work-spaces as I do actually working in them. As far as I recall, I’ve always been like this.
It’s looking good despite the gaps, I hope the fitting out goes smoothly and continues to be fun.
Plumbing?
Looks like fun.
Common trope in software, too, where it’s always a temptation to spend hours working out a shell script to save yourself whole minutes of repetitive keystrokes.
“I’d rather write programs to help me write programs, than write programs,” said some well-known software hacker. Can’t in a quick search find who that was, though.
It looks great.
That makes sense. Personally, I enjoy learning how to do something more than actually doing it. For example, learning how to paint with watercolors was fun. There were new things to discover, new challenges, it’s really exciting. But once I learn some skill, it just turns into a routine. Producing dozens of similar artworks stops being so enjoyable, because then it’s just doing the same thing over and over again.
I think setting up a new workspace is grand fun, too. I was giddy with excitement for months when I finally turned the spare room into a scrapbooking space. I still have fun refining it, too.
Also, I’m with chigau on this one. What about plumbing? Do men just not worry about these things? I mean, aside from the obvious toilet issue, I would think having running water in a place with a forge might be useful – for burns, cuts, hosing down the floor.
Oh, wait…it just occurred to me that plumbing lines could freeze up in winter unless you keep the place heated.
Never-mind.
Just an Organic Regular Expression@#4:
Common trope in software, too, where it’s always a temptation to spend hours working out a shell script to save yourself whole minutes of repetitive keystrokes.
Oh, that’s so true! Back when I programmed for a living, I used to spend days and weeks subconsciously figuring out my data structures, to make them match the purpose of the software as well as possible. After that, the code was just stuff that operated on the data. Come to think of it, that’s pretty much how I feel about a well-configured workshop.
Andreas Avester@#5:
Personally, I enjoy learning how to do something more than actually doing it. For example, learning how to paint with watercolors was fun. There were new things to discover, new challenges, it’s really exciting. But once I learn some skill, it just turns into a routine. Producing dozens of similar artworks stops being so enjoyable, because then it’s just doing the same thing over and over again.
Yes, that’s it.
Knife-making has such a wide range of expression available to it, that I don’t need to worry about running out of ideas or places to explore, before I run out of being alive.
Someone once said “the great thing about having potential is if you never live up to it, you’ve still got it.”
There’s probably something in there, too.
chigau@#2:
Plumbing?
My house is about 140 feet away, so while it was tempting to run water that would have been a big project with lots of places for potential failure.
Marcus
You’re going to need quite alot of water in there, right? What’s the plan?
Marcus @#8
This is the case for pretty much everything art related. No matter how good some artist’s skills are, there’s always room for improvement. And then there’s always the option to try some different art techniques and materials. Thus art remains one of the few things that didn’t become boring for me after a while.
Speaking of art or, well, photography, I HAVE PUPPIES!!!! https://andreasavester.com/photos-of-one-month-old-pomeranian-puppies/ I know this is sort of unrelated, but I know that there are a few dog lovers among the readers of this blog.
OMG puppies! They are adorbs!
@chigau:
I don’t need water, really. I quench in oil and all I need is a bucket now and then.
Did you do any calculations on how much heat will be passing through the turbine vent? Will the bearings and lubricants be able to handle it?
Reginald Selkirk@#14:
Did you do any calculations on how much heat will be passing through the turbine vent? Will the bearings and lubricants be able to handle it?
I wouldn’t even begin to have an idea how to calculate anything like that. I figure that since the spinny thing was about $50, if it breaks I can replace it with an angled slanty thing.
As Martin Fowler said in Refactoring (1999), “Now I’m a pretty lazy person and am prepared to work quite hard in order to avoid work.” Though he was not being facicious about this, since the work he was avoiding, checking a long list of test results for errors, is pretty error-prone in and of itself.
On this page (you may have to search the source HTML) it’s attributed to Sam Ewing, whoever that is.
@Marcus:
I wouldn’t even begin to have an idea how to calculate anything like that. I figure that since the spinny thing was about $50, if it breaks I can replace it with an angled slanty thing.
Alternatively, if a slightly bigger spinner is available, mount it on standoffs a little lower down (or with a chimney extension). The Venturi effect will almost entirely shield the bearings.
as to the programming thing, there i this xkcd:
https://xkcd.com/1319/
Any idea on what the life expectancy/maintenance on this type of structure looks like? I know we Americans tend to overlook that aspect of construction, but it’s something I’m curious about.
What about a rainwater catchment system? or would that be too much trouble for it’s limited use?
lochaber@#18:
Any idea on what the life expectancy/maintenance on this type of structure looks like? I know we Americans tend to overlook that aspect of construction, but it’s something I’m curious about.
20-30 years for the sides and roof, more or less for the interior. I won’t be forging steel when I’m 80 so I expect I’ll break the machinery down and sell it off when I’m 70 or thereabouts. Getting rid of my infrastructure will give me something to do while I’m waiting to die.
What about a rainwater catchment system? or would that be too much trouble for it’s limited use?
Funny you should mention that. I am considering a project next year that would be a smallish glass greenhouse. In which case I’d build a water catch system and some pumps and filters and a bit of plumbing and
a computerized feed systema switch attached to a timer. Maybe even make it solar. I just keep asking myself whether I like fresh tomatoes that much. Silly question, I know. But I can buy a lot of tomatoes for what that setup would entail. Being able to put up a sign reading “fuck you, deer” would maybe be worth it.Marcus Ranum @19
ah, thanks. That seems pretty reasonable for your (or most individual’s) situation.
If I had the land/money/time, I’d love to try and work on something like an aquaponics system, with attempting to automate as much of it as possible. Fresh tomatoes are pretty great, especially if you don’t have to work too much for them, and don’t have to share them with the local wildlife unless you choose to…
@2 chigau
Plumbing?
Hey, Marus is male like me. We snear at plumbing.
More seriously Marcus lives in Pennsylvania. Running a water line from the house to the building would mean heavy ditching or a heated cable and even then, I think the cable would have to be a metre or so down for safety sake.
@ 6 voyager
Oh, wait…it just occurred to me that plumbing lines could freeze up in winter
You are not Canadian by any chance?
@ 11 Andreas Avester
As a dedicated cat person, those puppies are gorgeous.
Good lord. I’d expect to get that out of my garden shed (with reasonable maintenance).
There’s nothing quite like a really fresh homegrown tomato, straight off the vine.
Marcus @#19
I’m surprised the life expectancy of sides and roof is so low, you can get longer than that out of a corrugated iron Dutch barn as long as you paint it every few years. A friend of mine has a Dutch barn and she was a bit shocked by the technique the local specialist had for the roof, he just climbed a (long) ladder at one end of the barn and walked along the top spraying as he went, no safety equipment at all.
If you do decide to do the glasshouse project just bear in mind that glasshouses seem to be like freezers in that people always seem to end up wanting more space than they originally thought they would. You can lways not use some of the space if it’s there, but if you haven’t built the space in the first place you’re screwed if you want more. My neighbour has two glasshouses for this exact reason, once he had the one he found there was so much he wanted to put in it tht he ended up getting another, larger, glasshouse.