Is a job suppose to be fun?

The last months I have been working my normal 16 hour days and like normal having a blast doing it. Gabe has been building all kinds of stuff as well, prefecting his skills to someday take my job and my fun.... Until then.... I will try to keep in the lead...

One of the major things in the last months has been the big project of working full time at the Science Museum in San Francisco, otherwise known as the Exploratorium. Its one of the most reconized science museums in the world for not only its amazing exhibits but for its vast amounts of knowledge that the valued employees carry.

Its so cool to get to work around these people everyday and learn their strong points, its truly the first job where I can't even predect what people do for hobbies or for a trade. The people are so cool and friendly and its been a pleasure to work with them. Like normal, I am under a contract to be around until about the end of January, mostly to help hammer out the big projects before one of the biggest projects.... THE MOVE.....

The museum is moving to a new location across San Francisco to a more easy to acess location, the place will be double the size which means.... More exhibits needed to be built to fill the space. The other cool part is its on a pier now so we can build all kinds of cool things to go in the water and hang off the railings.

I will keep more updates coming in but I figured these pictures would do the trick and give you a quick glance in to the normal day to day and how much fun it is.

 

Why wouldn't you want a picture like this?

Jesse one of the engineers took this sweet photo

A look from the shop window....

Nice view..

To teach kids and adults about the Golden Gate Bridge, Dave Fleming ( the main ring leader )

built this little 1/400 scale model to teach about earthquakes and wind and how the bridge moves.

 

Easy parts  +  the CNC Bridgeport Mill + sippin coffee + Friday

=

The perfect Friday....

 

Bending up mini bridge decks on the DiAcro press brake.

These little pieces will become the Bay Bridge 1/500 scale model

This is my sweet office complete with a broom

Those are the little Bay Bridge towers

The floors in this early 1900s building are amazing redwood planks.

This is my first time working on wood floors and its really nice.

 

As if its normal...

The lathe has plastic covers to watch the gears in oil and spindle speed controllers with some classly name plates to get a good laugh ...

World Champ downhiller Greg Minnaar had to come visit me at work before heading back to home for the holidays...

So we put him to the test to see if he really knew how to ride a bike, on one of the " How to ride a bicycle " exhibits teaching kids about how your legs work when riding a bike.

Its so rad to see kids everywhere being super stoked out on everything they see.

Jen brought this back from the Midwest, some of Minnesota's finest.

On a normal day...

I love to race these things...

I ride my 1937 Schwinn Superior to work everyday.

Lunch time is perfect to work on the espresso machine...

 

Once home....

Its time to work on other projects.
Getting the new MLS weld shop all dialed in, its looking really nice.

Building an Exile gas tank on the floor there, for Russells new project....

All night ... Espresso Machine Part 2

The last weeks have been crazy from designing parts for Green energy companies to getting ready to do some more concept electric motorcycle stuff in the weeks to come...

The shop is coming along and like normal the work over powers the projects so the fun stuff keeps stacking up waiting for the day when its fun time.

With a lot of new jobs and projects came the need for a bigger and better lathe, my buddy Gary Aragon helps me out getting them there sweet deals on them there fancy sweet machines, its good to know people understand that not everyone has a endless bank account overflowing and that people still believe in people and their passion, think without Gary and Uncle Ed at Pacific Machinery I wouldn't have such a cool shop filled with old beat up machines that I love, they always make sure I have the correct machine to get the job done.

A sweet Padova Lathe from Italy ready to rock.....

So I was so excited about the new lathe, I spun up all the parts so fast I didn't even get a picture of making them...

When welding copper,stainless and dirty metal, I prefer to use a breathing respirator because of the oxides and other base metals burning off, one of the major things is safety when welding.

I am a prototyper and move very fast and can be caught not always wearing my mask, I have set rules for myself, any welding over a few minutes and I will wear protection. 

You don't know what your breathing so why risk it....

Its an old welders secret that Cilantro in your food can help with heavy metal deposits in your blood.... Don't quote me on that but I have heard it a few times...

Party time.... My little Miller Maxstar is the perfect machine to get this job done...

On my new bench set up bought with T-shirt money...

Figured no one wants a Table on their arm sleeve of the MLS shirt they bought

Getting Luckey in Kentucky.....

This is my favorite job...

4:00 AM welding and still stoked...

By 6 AM when the sun came up, I was about half done....

Those are little high pressure sight glasses on top

The water level and fill tube beside that.

The pull lever and all the other stuff will go in the middle...

Theres a lot more to come so stick around...

Jen and I had to escape this weekend to go to LA for Russell Mitchel's wedding

We made a stop by to see Jim at Cranky's Bikes in Santa Barbara, CA to see what he had going,

we decieded to take the dogs out for a walk on the ridgeline near the ocean, so nice out...

The wedding was really cool in Malibu, CA on the beach.

Russell owner of Exile Cycles and Rachell had a rad wedding,

My old boss Roland Sands was even there.

It was funny to see some famous people there from various bands and getting to pretend like we had no clue who they were.

Oh.... July..... Summer time & Projects ......

The last month has been a wide open cluster of projects filling the shop on a daily basis...

I have had to take a few brakes from everything here and there to enjoy the great West Coast summer and work on some personal projects.

The little giant hammer is coming along with a fresh coat of paint and some retro-fit pieces to make it run a little bit better. Theres a strong following to these Little Giant PowerHammers around and luckly they love the share the love and show how to do some of the rebuilds on them and make them run a little better.

So heres a update of the rebuild....

Thats the old connecting rod from 1927 on the right.

So using 2 giant bolts, I cut the heads off of them and used the cut off to make new safe and adjustable connecting rods. The old ones were really beat up and not adjustable like the new ones are.

This is a very important upgrade to the LG hammers that is a "must have" if your are rebuilding it.

The finished product.

Custom Tig welded and bolted " for extra safety " connecting rods

The old hammer adjusters limit the movement but making these connectors will double the amount of adjustment, making it possible to work some very large billets of steel safely.

This is the slide assembly with the 2 adjusters and all the retrofit bearing set up on it.

I am getting excited....

This assembly is about 200 lb of steel as you see it on the table. Solid !

The 1927 Little Giant 100LB power hammer is looking better everyday..

My arms and hands are trembling thinking about this thing running....

I am sure I will have to move as soon as the people on the block hear this thing...

Exile Cycles.... Another day at work.

Somedays I get a kick out of classing the place up by parking my sweet truck in the shop to stoke out Russell, he loves when my $500 dollar truck sits in the middle of the shop leaking oil and smelling like gas...

MLS is always growing

These are production punch presses that can hit 135 hits per minute with 25 tons per hit.

Almost 3,000 lb that punch weighs

Gabe has been learning to Tig weld and do sheet metal at the shop and is having a blast doing it.

This was a project for science museums to use Ipads for exhibits.

Really cool way to have a touch screen on the exhibit and a camera as well.

With a fresh white powercoat the Ipad displays are ready for action!

With all the orders for robots, displays and madness filled...

Jen and I jumped in to the New Belgium Beer van and headed north to Portland...

Time to relax and see the friends.

This is Robert the mad chef behind Chris King's in house kitchen for the employees.

We spent the weekend cruzin Portland with Nick, and Matt from King.

Then on Monday we made them and also Kyle at King give us a full tour of every square inch of Chris King, even got to stop in the frame shop and give Buck and the welders a hard time as they were welding the Celio frames. I had to QC the frames for errors.... But I couldn't find any.....

Jen and I both know Chris but he happened to not be in that day which was a bummer but we will be back soon to talk machines, biking, trains or what ever madness we have to offer.

This is Chris Kings in house " tooling dept " on this end of the building.

Theres about 90 employees making some really rad parts and doing a great job to show USA can still keep them machines spinning.

I don't know how I managed to snap this photo during our coaster brake race thur Portland...

Trust me, there was heavy tire smoke from all the heavy power skids around the corners.

Mr. Poe is still holding the shop down..

Sometimes I find poop behind the machines and I have to be a mean to him...

He wasn't stoked to get told to quit shitting behind the press brake....

Jen and I had some crazy box seats to the Oakland A's game...

( what ever value they hold )

But it came with a chef..... With style..... Plus for some unknown reason...

The A's happened to win... thats a rare statement.

Back to the grind of designing and building...

Theres some really cool stuff showing up at the shop to build so stay tuned

Dirty Dave....

Building motorcycle gas tanks today and figured I should post something on the blog.

Just about everyone in the heart of the motorcycle industry has a story about partying with Dirty Dave.

This is Dave on his Exile Cycles Army bike he built

The Army bike was so rad, this was taken out in Strugis I think 2007 if I remember right.

Dave was the mechanic at Exile cycles for years and is from London, dude can wheelie anything...

Think hes going for like 200 mph at the salt flats this year so watch out Harley Sportster guys...

The old shop runner

When my brother and I were back in Minnesota, we wanted to build up a rad machine with no money and get some press for our company Metal Morphosis.

I found this crazy deal on a parted out 1969 Harley Sportster located in St. Louis...

The problem ended up being the thing had been almost blown to pieces but some dude riding the hell out of it maybe without oil or something and it needed some major work....

We decided it would be a full build from top to bottom and start over with some classic Harley XR flattrack flare but do it all in under one month...

The word had come in that we would be moving to California, and that I had to be there ASAP to film Discovery Channel about 2 weeks after buying the machine so the pressure was very high to get it done and get it done quick.

Once in California 2 or so weeks later, it became one of my daily riders for when I worked at Exile Cycles full time,  but proved to be nearly a death machine more then once with its single rear drum brake and its dirt tires on the slippery and fast moving streets of LA.

Heres the full article about the XR Harley project we did in such a short time.

Enjoy - I have been working on a crazy huge concept project for the U of Minnesota and will have pictures coming up in the week so stay tuned and let me get a break to do some typing.

Discovery Channel

In the good old days, some years back I was on a few Discovery Channel shows.

I happened to run across this one tonight while surfin the web.

Blake and Jake are in there too, Blake and I were both new to California while filming this...

Had to capture the screen shot for the blog, a must have.

Clean cut back in those days

Imagine being a kid taken from your cold Minnesota home and thrown in front of a TV film crew in warm & sunny Southern California a week later and told to not get in to trouble.....

Yeah right, it was only the start of the fun for years to come....

Its a long show but you can fast forward thru that dude Billy... ha ha 

There is the complete bike with those pipes I am still proud of.

Dylan and I did them in like 4 hours because it was a rush

Maybe someday I will dig up some of the other TV shows and post them..

Enjoy 

A busy Thanksgiving.....

Thanksgiving like most years was spent working....

This time I got a call last minute on the day before Thanksgiving telling me that I was needed for building stuff for a movie ( name no given at this current time ) and needed to be in LA in a few hours to start work.

So I took a small jet down to LA, why not?

Leaving Oakland at 8pm Wednesday and showing up in LA shortly after I was brought to the laser cutters at 10pm to start the weekend adventures...

Note : if you walk thru an airport with no luggage and just a welding helmet, people think you are on a tv show for some reason. don't ask why?

My only thing in hand....

Trust me it was a little chartered jet

just me and 30 of my most unknown friends headed to LA

To weld for a day, not bad way to travel.

I welded Thursday on movie stuff that needed to be loaded on a truck for a shoot that night and then Friday made a visit to Exile Cycles to work for the day on some new fun stuff Exile has coming out.

 I had to put down some welds to make the kids happy and collect the check. 

Blake asked what I was doing standing at the table, so here was my answer - 

"Self-timed photo, someone has to take the photo and you were busy so I set the self timer,

And quit making fun of me and I don't like getting hit in the face while I am sleeping on your couch even if you think its funny"

Blake Schossler from Exile and I on lunch break

If anyone is in the Los Angeles Valley (818) area they need to hit up Vicious Dogs!

Best Chicago dogs on the west coast. 

Anyone that knows me, knows I went to school to become a chef only for my 2 true loves

Donuts and Hotdogs. Thats why I have been going to this place for years

Hammering away welding at Exile most of the day Friday,  my ride to the airport showed up at about 4pm.... 

None other then my brother and his lady in the PreRunner race truck.

This truck is very special to my brother and I, because its got some serious history with us.

1993 Ford F150 - Metal Morphosis Engineering Rig #2 

This project is my brothers truck that got started maybe 7 or so years ago between him and I.

Its been a fun learning tool for both of us because we built just about everything, at that time when we started we had more time then money, It was such a fun learning project for me fab-wise.  

As you can see...

The top of the truck is a soft top

The reason...

I rolled it a few times crushing the metal top 

so I had to repay my brother in fab work for wrecking it

Sorry for that....

 Custom mount my brother designed for a cheap Craftsman jack , Aluminum Fuel Cell ( old blog post ) and other stuff.

One of my first big welding projects year and years ago was these I-beams for the suspension

I Mig welded them and my brother machined all the parts. 

Still look at them and remember how nervous I was about them working and looking good. 

Had to post the picture of my brother as some repayment for rolling it and plus the hours he has worked on it to make it such a rad rig to beat up in the desert. 

Maybe this funny photo will make him famous and he will forget about me rolling the truck so many times. 

Racing to the airport, Bandit style! 

Back to Oakland for meetings and more building !