London Underground - booth completion

"Yes...good day."

Here's the completion of the London Underground built-in booth. A few tables, some new flooring and a small bookshelf is still to come. But, most importantly, the back room is once again functional and looking for some patrons tomorrow. If you're so inclined, stop by tomorrow for a pint or two and give the booth a spin.

London Underground
212 Main St.
Ames, Iowa

ISU - Institute for Physical Research and Technology

Here's an article on the Rosenberg residence job that was completed last fall. Many thanks to Iowa State University's Institute for Physical Research and Technology.

"Yes...good day" - London Underground

This past week has all been job site work, as you can see. For this job, I was playing the part of Stewie Griffin. Playing the part of Brian Griffin was my buddy and former Sticks co-worker, Terry Reeves. It cannot be overstated how important Terry was to this job. I can't wait to work another installation with ya...




Here we are at the London Underground pub in Ames, Iowa. Our job was to remodel a space that was formerly a kitchen area in one of the former incarnations of the building. This entailed stripping the walls of their greasy stainless steel sheets, facing the walls in wood and fabricating a built-in booth.




Walls are bare, and here's our canvas. The one thing that was a challenge on this job is that absolutely nothing was square, plumb or level in the area. But, that's to be expected with old buildings and renovation work.




The exhaust hood has been sheeted and the booth has been framed.




Car siding has been installed; this really warmed up the area.




Here's the "inside" of the exhaust hood after it had been sheeted with 1/4" birch ply. All of these seams require custom-made trim pieces I'll have to do in the shop this coming week. Yep, none of those angles are the same...not even close.




"Yes, good day," says Terry. He's framing up the corner of the L-shaped booth. The backrests of the booth are reclined approximately 5 degrees. This angle is carried through the curved transition. Getting this to work took some trial and error and a whole lot of patience. Unfortunately, the bartenders will be cleaning up dust from our kerfing session for many months to come. I'm thrilled with how this portion of the job came out. It's a nice detail you really don't see too often. Good job, T-bone!

Terry could also be smiling due to the fact that we ate at Great Plains Sauce & Dough everyday this week for lunch.






The other really nice detail of this job is the scribing of the booth cap to the car siding Terry did. Talk about meticulous...

Next week, everything will get stained and receive a coat of polyurethane. Tables and a "hinged" bookshelf remain to be fabricated. Right now, the focus is to get the space back to a functional state.

Many, many thanks go to Jess Clyde and Brian Dingeman at the London Underground. We totally appreciate your trust and vision on this project.

The Factor II Fabrication website

After a bit of delay (my self-imposed waiting period), I'm thrilled to announce the "debut" of the Factor II Fabrication website. If you've been visiting this blog for a while, great, keep visiting! It's more than likely this blog will end up being updated far more than the site...'cause it's a blog...duh.

Please direct any interested parties to the new site for estimates or general inqueries. AND, after a piece or job is commissioned, they can jump over to the blog and follow its progress just like we normally do. Besides, the URL is a whole lot easier to jot down compared to this blog URL.

An infinite amount of thanks go to my college chum, Randy Webb for the implementation and "nerd-work" of said site. I'm not very good at the alt.nerd.geek.com stuff, Randy, so I envy that you can do "nerd-work"...it's a compliment, dude. Randy's witty nature, and surname, came up with the clever name Webb Development...hopefully he has some time to get his own site up and running.

Inaugural BlueCat Motors Illegal Pinewood Derby Race = FUN!!!!

It cannot be overstated how awesome this event was. Okay, I guess it can. But for a bunch of gearheads left to freeze in our shops during a long, cold winter, this was a great way to spend WAY too much time on a car shaped in pine. Again, big thanks go to Blue Cat Motors in St. Paul for the facilities...AND...the Minnesota chapter of The Lucky Bastards C.C. for the coolers of beer! Couldn't have made the cars go without fuel! Pictured above is Blue Cat co-owner Ryan Scott weighing in cars.




Here's a post-race shot of my cars. Yes, I was fortunate enough to take home two trophies. First place in the Vintage class and second in the Stock class. "Shotgun" Shelley Barnes, Jordan Dickinson and Jesse Dickinson are pictured in this photo.




Race action in progress...I don't remember the tracks being aluminum when I was younger. The right-hand lanes were definitely faster.




...And here's your author. Give a grown man an overwhelming sense of pride and a few beers and he WILL start acting like he's 10-years-old again.

Thanks to everyone who took these photos. Send me your name if you want credited for snapping them...

Delivering tomorrow...

I'm quite happy with how these turned out...my wife has already polled me of the possibility of a set winding up in our living room.

Check out the last few entries from the last couple of weeks for the low-down on this build. Big thanks to Daniel Hyland on these...