The classic teardrop trailer is making a strong comeback in the camping scene. It is a smaller trailer that can be pulled by most any vehicle. It is lightweight and aerodynamic. Most teardrop trailers consist of a small sleeping unit with a little storage and an outdoor kitchen that opens up from the back.
Tom was asked to fabricate this small trailer frame for a guy who is going to build a custom teardrop on the top. Tom started with some 2″ square tube for the main metal frame. He added 2″ X 2″ X 1/8″ angle for the cross bars. He also used a 2 1/2″ X 1/8″ piece of steel for the tongue. The customer wanted a heavier axle, so Tom went with a 3500 lb. axle. This leads to a little bit heavier spindles and wheel bearings. The customer also didn’t want a rough ride, so Tom added 2000 lb. leaf springs. The leaf springs are light for the axle, but will work great with the weight of the trailer.
Tom attached some bent diamond plate to serve as fenders. He fastened the fenders by fabricating basic flat strap metal and welded them to the frame of the teardrop trailer.

It is that time of year again when our attention turns to the outdoors and the curb appeal of our homes. One easy way to give your front porch a quick face lift is to add or replace an outdoor stair rail.
A few things to keep in mind, along with design, have to do with observing city and county codes.
Residential properties generally have to have at least one handrail along a flight of stairs. The height of the handrail should be mounted somewhere between 34″ and 38″ above all of the stair nosing.
The grip-able area of the handrail should measure between 1 1/4″ and 2 1/4″.
If the handrail is to be hung along an existing wall, like the example in the photos, a 1 1/2″ clearance between any projection in the wall and the handrail should be observed. Sometimes this gets a bit tricky if the wall has an uneven surface like stone.

Tom built this handrail to fit a new home. The handrail needed to bolt to a stone faced wall at the top and also bolt to a stone faced concrete planter at the bottom of the stairs. Tom used a lag screw that fit into the metal railing bracket and sunk it through the stone and wall behind. The bottom bracket was fastened using a concrete anchor through the stone into the concrete planter underneath. Tom used 1 1/2″ .109 wall E.W. round tubing bent using a Shop Outfitters Universal Fabricator.

Tom likes to keep a close eye on all of the surplus auctions and sales that occur near the shop. The University of Wyoming usually has several items either up for bid or on sale several times a year. Tom looks for items that he can either use right away or transform into something usefull. Last winter a simple electric conveyor was offered through the surplus website. The electric conveyor was located in the basement of one of the buildings and served as a transport for books and other items from the storage area in the basement up to the main level of the building.
Tom picked up the electric conveyor for less than fifteen dollars, with the stipulation that he would remove it from the basement. The conveyor had to be removed shortly after the sale. Needless to say, Tom removed the long elevator with a little help from family.
With a little ingenuity, Tom transformed the electric conveyor into a wood elevator for use outside his metal and welding shop.
The first thing Tom did was to weld angle iron up the sides of the conveyor so that the wood could travel up the rubber belt with out falling over the edge. Tom used one inch by two inch steel angle iron.

The conveyor came equipped with a 208 three phase motor that needed to be converted to 110 single phase. The first step was to remove the 208 motor from the gear box. The gear box had a spline shaft so Tom had to take the 208 motor with a dual shaft and fit a shaft coupling on the output end to add the 110 motor onto the electrical conveyor belt. The 110 motor now runs through the dead 208 motor into the gear box to run the electric log elevator.
One other unique feature to the log elevator is its ability to raise either end for easy access to difficult locations.
The new log elevator now comes in handy when Tom is splitting and piling fire wood.

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The Today Show has been covering the Winter Olympics from Vancouver Canada for the past couple of weeks. They have hosted great athletes, chefs and other guests at the Grouse Mountain location NBC remodeled for the games. I, for one, couldn’t help but notice the dramatic fireplace screen that has flanked Meridith, Matt, Ann and Al.
I have been searching for a photo to post along with this article, but can not seem to find on on the internet. I did, however, find this three minute discussion between Ann Curry and Kristi Yamaguchi. Interestingly enough, Kristi seems to want to cut to some “B roll” as they chit chat about various figure skaters. It seems someone in production checked out early. The entire three minutes is spent watching the two women talk. Good for my purpose. Get a great look at the custom metal fireplace screen that someone must have handcrafted for the television set.
The frame of the fireplace screed looks like it is made out of 3/4″ square tube. The curves in the metal frame could have been shaped on a metal bender and the sharp corners were possibly mitred together. Small pieces of 1/4″ cold rolled round stock have been welded onto the frame to hold various cut metal designs. The metal designs were most likely cut by hand out of pickled and oiled flat stock by a plasma cutter. There are also several sizes of flat stock that have been cut and ground off to form the icicle figures in the metal fireplace screen.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see this type of fireplace design pop up in custom homes around the world.

Sometimes the only way to fabricate a custom metal handrail is on the job site. This handmade handrail was welded partially in the shop and finished off at the custom home.
There are several things to remember when considering on site welding. It is best to be well prepared before leaving your shop. A few things to bring along might include a couple of grinders, one with a cut off wheel, chop saw, welding helmet, welding gloves, tape measure, square, and leathers if you doing some overhead welding.
Tom built a small dolly for his wire feed welder to take along when doing on site welding jobs. The dolly holds his bottle and welder. It is a little cumbersome to get out of the truck due to weight, but once Tom gets it out it can be wheeled around to wherever he needs to take it.
Tom used a regular dolly that can be purchased at any do it yourself store. He welded on a metal loop for the cylinder tank and also welded on hooks for the welder so he can easily bungee it on.
Don’t forget a few silver sharpies for marking up your steel as well.

It is also convenient to have a simple five gallon bucket for tools as well.

We received an email from Tim in Southwest Oklahoma. He had seen the video we made of our adventures while constructing our metal building shop/house. His main questions centered around our experience with insulation. He wanted to know what type of insulation we used for the home and if we had experienced any problems with home sweating during the winter months. He also asked if Tom had any advice on how to prevent sweating. Thanks for the questions Tim and we will do our best to try and answer them. By the way, best of luck with your building project, Tim, and send us some updates and pictures for our website!

Tim is looking at building an all metal red I-Beam truss system with sheet metal exterior walls. The metal shop/house that Tom built is along those same lines as well. Tom used a basic rip stop vinyl faced fiberglass insulation. Insulation can be purchased without the rip stop feature, but if the temperature gets extremely cold and the insulation gets bumped the insulation could crack. Rip stop insulation is more durable. Tom’s entire building is outfitted with 3 1/4″ bat, R11 insulation and was purchased along with the entire building kit. The bats were 5 foot wide. The inside of the home was framed in the existing building once the building was erected and dried in. The wood stud walls of the house were insulated as well with R13 fiberglass bats, giving the home portion of the building an extra layer of insulation. This created dead air space between the bat insulation that was used to insulate the entire building and the insulation that was packed into the stud walls of the house. This helps elevate any type of large temperature variation between the outside and inside of the house. The air temperature in the dead air space tends to equalize in that zone.
To help answer Tim’s question as to how to prevent sweating in the walls, the shop/house is a great case study.
Tom notices that in the shop, where there isn’t a secondary wall system and the wall and roof structure consists of the tin, bat insulation, purlins and gurts, moisture can form on the building frame when the outside and inside temperatures vary greatly. The cold temperature from outside will interact with the point on the building where the insulation is compressed at the purlins because the tin is screwed in there. The insulation quality is low and the cold air transfers from the tin through the thin area of insulation onto the purlins. If there is any moisture in the shop, say from shop equipment or vehicles that have been pulled in to work on, the purlin temperature interacts with the moisture in the air and does cause a little sweating.
There isn’t much problem with the house part of the building sweating. Really only in typical areas like bathrooms and the kitchen while showering or boiling spaghetti noodles. This may be due to the double insulation factor.
The other thing to note is that Tom’s house/shop is located in an very dry location. Wyoming experiences low humidity year round. The important factor for any building project with regards to preventing sweating is still going to be a well ventilated building.

The cage needed an easy to open latch and handle.
The handles were formed out of two pieces of twelve inch, 5/8 round bar stock. The round stock was bent ninety degrees on either end. The two metal handles were directly welded onto the square tube. Mounting plates can also be fabricated to the metal handles by drilling 5/8″ holes into a piece of flat bar stock. Insert the bent metal handle part way into the hole and weld on the back. Additional holes can be drilled into the steel plate to provide anchor points for mounting.

We spent the weekend with family near Boulder Colorado. Any trip to the Boulder area really requires a visit to Pearl Street Mall.
Pearl Street Mall is a four block pedestrian mall with many locally owned shops and restaurants. The mall was dedicated in August of 1977 and has seen many transformations since then.
The one thing we noticed was the many and various types of outdoor railing used at outdoor cafe spots. Most of the railing was metal, which makes sense given the sometimes wet and snowy Colorado climate. Metal is simple to install and looks nice against wood, brick or stone. Metal is also a good investment as it requires little upkeep and lasts a long time.
Incorporating a railing around an outdoor eating area belonging to a restaurant is often part of city code. There are usually requirements concerning furnishings, awnings, foliage as well as railing. A restaurant can be sure that their outdoor eating area must be directly adjacent to the building as well as allow for several feet for pedestrian access.
After considering these necessary building codes, an establishment should be concerned with how the railing blends in with it’s existing architecture and what kind of first impression it will make to potential customers passing by.
We found several good examples of metal guardrail at the Pearl Street Mall. One we found utilized stone pillars that connected radius aluminum tubing that was most likely curved using a large roller. The metal pickets were either cast, liquid metal poured into a mold, or forged, heated to the point of malleability and then pounded into shape for texture and detail. This design had a pleasing curve that allowed for a spacious feel on the cafe side of the metal railing.

Another of our favorite metal guardrails was this green rail. The designer started by anchoring the metal rail with large square tube posts. The bottom rail is two pieces of angle iron fitted with the baluster straps. The top rail is channel iron with a metal top cap painted black. Flat strap formed in diamond shapes is welded into an interesting design. The one and a quarter by three sixteenths strap has been punched for rivets at each intersection as well as having a notched out pattern.

One example of a corporate look is the highly functional and polished handrail at Old Chicago Restaurant. Old Chicago had by far the most outdoor seating area on the Pearl Street Mall. Their outdoor venue stretched around the corner and onto a back porch. The straight steel one by two inch top and mid-rail combined with one inch and a quarter square tube pickets combined for a clean contemporary guardrail. The contractors also incorporated a nice finishing touch by welding the “OC” boarder out of metal cast ring.

Western EcoSystems Technology, a company out of Wyoming, decided to do a little remodeling on the outside of their building located in downtown Laramie Wyoming. The building is at least one hundred years old, if not a bit more. The decorative columns on the outside of the two story building needed to be repaired and repainted. Sheet metal cone shaped finials sat on top of each column and had fallen in disrepair over the years.
The metal finials had been soldered and over time it had oxidized and broken down the solder joint.
The first step in building duplicate roof finials was to remove a piece out of the old metal finial to use as a pattern for the new finials. Tom then took eighteen gauge cold rolled steel and had a sheet metal shop blank out eight square pieces per new finial. Then Tom took a hand sheer to form two radius on each metal piece to form the petal like shape.
Tom ordered hollow steel balls through Orleans Ornamental for the top of each finial. After welding the finials using a wire feed welder, Tom ground off each face of the octagon with a belt grinder to get the corners square and lined up. Then he took a flap wheel and rounded each corner just a little bit and blended in the welds on the balls.
The new finials fit on top of the new columns to give the old building a fresh look.
Here are photos of the final project on the Midwest Building in downtown Laramie.