Category Archives: Shipping Container House

My Shop ~ Part 10 ~ OCCUPY

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I couldn’t stand it any longer. My new shop was finished and I wanted to start using it. But the workbench and a bunch of other tools were in my old shop at the house we are renting. I couldn’t wait to move from that old space. Although when we moved in I had poured a  concrete floor and patched the roof, it was still an old chicken coop with a very low ceiling and termites everywhere. Every time a mango fell from one of the overhanging trees, the paper-thin rusty roof got a new hole in it. The trees overhang the house, too, and when a mango hits the roof, one of us will exclaim, “Mango down!” Here’s the most flattering shot I could take of the space:

The inside was dismal and termites ruled:

Termite trails on the walls and holes in the roof

Armando, Sammy, and I got right to work. Everything was  a mess; I hadn’t used the shop much in the past two years and it was disorganized from moving necessities to the job site. I organized and they moved wheelbarrow full after wheelbarrow full of tools and supplies to to the truck. It took five trips in the Honda, including one trip just for the workbench and one trip just for the workbench top:

We unloaded everything into the new space. After two days of organizing it looks a lot better, but I still need another day or two to make it the way I want it. My plan now is to work on the carport roof, and one day soon it will rain early enough in the day that I can move back inside for the final touches. Here’s where it stands now:

The old Baldor bench grinder (go back up two photos) was looking a bit tattered so I gave it a couple coats of yellow paint:

The old Delta Homecraft drill press belonged to my grandfather. It is probably 60 years old.

I painted the big drawer in my workbench and waited a couple of days for it to dry. Next I cut some thin wooden strips and placed them in the drawer so that the tools and toolboxes wouldn’t scratch the fresh paint. Finally, I put a lot of my hand tools in the drawer. I’m really happy to have all this organized and in one place!

I have a wood turning lathe that I bought when I was sixteen. I remember it cost $310.87, all of it made at $0.90 per hour washing dishes after school in a restaurant! The lathe had been crated for some years now, and even though it was high in my shop it wasn’t dry. The termites had a field day with the crate, and it will take some work to clean all the rust off of it. Fortunately, the headstock bearings are still okay. The tailstock is rusted to the bed rails, so I sprayed it with some WD-40 and left it alone to think. I don’t know if I will get back to wood turning, but I have made some nice bowls over the years.

That’s it for now. More soon, thanks for stopping by. By the way, I welcome comments.

Slow News Day ~ Being Tourist

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I have some construction in the pipe, but it’s not yet ready to post. In the meantime, I was looking through some photos that our recent guest D and I took when she was visiting. A travel log of the area, this post is photos from her visit.

I’ve already posted about our visit to the pueblo of Chichi Bali.

Another road trip was to the annual celebration of Carnival in the town of Ocu’. Our guest really wanted to go, so I collected information from our Panamanian friends. Most had good memories of going to Ocu’ many years ago, so we headed out on Sunday morning for the two and a half hour drive. We made a pit stop at a gas station where D picked up a container of juice. She couldn’t stop laughing about the list of ingredients intended to be in both Spanish and in English. More prouf reading neded. Oops:

We had heard that Sunday was the day of Carnival that had the most traditional folk displays. But what we found was far from that. There was a mass of people gyrating in the street, with rock and heavy metal music blasting from closely-packed music venues. And between each venue was at least one boom truck (really, really big boom boxes on wheels), vibrating sheet metal bending to the thumping beats. Discerning one “song” from another was impossible, at least with our fingers firmly pushed into our ears.

The music was so loud that it vibrated internal organs, and with no folkloric events planned until later at night, we decided to leave. We just aren’t that young and that interested in sweaty dancing, drinking cheap beer all day, and being hosed down by fire trucks. Even 18-year-old Cedelinda thought it was all “tan mucho” (so much). The trip was worth the drive, though, and we had a good day when we weren’t around the boom business. On our way back to the car, I asked a jolly man if I could take a picture of him shucking yucca. He was delighted to oblige:

We also passed some floats. This one was asleep with eyes open, waiting for more nighttime revelry:

On the way home, we stopped at a beach-side restaurant for lunch. The road to the beach cuts through a wall of weather beaten sand or sandstone:

Two girls were enjoying the cool sand on a hot day:

Another day, I took D to the house of nearby friends. They have several watch dogs peacocks:

NBC peacock in the days of black and white TV?

And we went to the local frog sanctuary. Frogs are a big deal here, and they are in big trouble. Between losing habitat to human encroachment and a deadly fungal infection, the Golden Frog has been extinct in the wild since 2007. Because frogs are so important to the earth’s ecosystem, scientists say no frogs = no humans. Here are some frogs at the sanctuary:

Just hanging out on the front porch.

This is one of the few remaining golden frogs in the world.

If you take the main road into El Valle, then drive through town and out the other end, there is a recently improved back road going back up and out of the volcano and through the mountains to the city of Penonome’ about an hour away. Up on the rim there is a hill with two crosses that overlook the valley. One cross marks the spot where a young couple tragically took a wrong turn and careened off the mountain. I don’t know about the other cross. Here are two videos. The first one takes you through El Valle, and the second is the back road drive from El Valle to the crosses:

From our vantage we can see over the crater rim and down to the Pacific Ocean. Here is a panoramic photo looking down to El Valle in the crater:

Early one morning we went bird watching, or rather bird listening. The mountains were alive with the sound of birds, but their camouflage made them all but invisible. But it was a wonderful four hours in the wilderness, and luckily our guide knew where to take us to see a hummingbird feeding chicks in the nest:

An Oropendola sits on its nest, admiring the neighbor’s much better nest building skills:

And we went to the Canopy Adventure on the outskirts of town. This is an adventure where a guide hikes with you to the top of the mountain, pointing out flora and fauna along the way, then guides you on a zip line back down the mountain. It is a lot of fun. The highlight for me was crossing high over the big waterfall:

Here’s our guide zipping ahead to catch D when she arrived a few moments later:

And a nice walk back out to the road:

That’s all for now. More soon.

 

 

 

My Shop ~ Part 9 ~ The Workbench

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I made a workbench back in Colorado just before we moved to Panama. I’ve really enjoyed using the bench for the past few years, and now it is just about to have a new home in my new shop. So even though this isn’t current work, I thought I’d post it.

Most workbenches, including all the ones I have had in the past, are built up against a wall. Over the years I’ve found that this has a few shortcomings.

  • The size of the project that one can work on is limited to that typical two-foot depth.
  • The bench becomes a cluttered catchall.
  • I don’t like to work facing a wall; I’d rather be working out in the middle of the shop.
  • Benches are usually made of 2″x4″, 2″x6″, and 4″x4″ stock and are heavy as all get out. Most benches can’t easily be moved.

I set out to build a better bench, at least better for me. I had a general idea of what I wanted, so I made a couple sketches and was on my way. I designed a bench that was on wheels and had a 4′x8′ footprint. I needed a place to securely store my hand power tools so that they would be out of sight if someone looked through the windows; I was selling my old work van, so I cannibalized the large drawer that I had installed in it some years earlier. I also wanted some smaller drawers for quick access to hand tools.

I believe that to build strong you don’t need a lot of strong lumber or steel. A massive bench made of heavy stock such as 4″x4″ lumber for the legs can easily be redesigned and built with smaller stock if you use the principles employed in trusses. I had some extra hem-fir 2″x2″s and 2″x6″s, and some 1/2″ plywood hanging around, so that was a start.

First I used the 2″x6″s to make a base. I half-lapped the corners, glued the joints, drilled bolt holes through the lapped corners, and bolted on large castors. The bolts hold the corners together along with the glue.

Then using the 2″x2″s and the plywood, I made a lightweight but strong carcass. I glued the joints and screwed everything together with drywall screws. Here’s the start of the bench:

This end of the bench will have the smaller drawers.

Next I installed the big drawer. I bought the drawer online from Joey Bed Cargo Trays (a note on their website says that they suspended business in 2009). I think they are out of Oregon. The unit arrived knocked down and was easy to assemble using plywood that you supply. These drawers can carry a lot of weight:

Next I cut in some electrical boxes, trimmed out the drawer faces, and made the top. I’d seen the top design in a woodworking magazine. They said it was strong and stable. Strong it is. Very strong. But I built it in dry Colorado and moved it to wet Panama. Big mistake, as the whole top now has bowed up in the middle about five-sixteenths of an inch, making flat assemblies impossible. I’m planning to remediate the situation by building a metal top above the wooden top. Makes more sense because I now do more metalworking than woodworking and it will make welding and grinding easier. Here’s a photo:

Working by myself, I had to craft a way to lower the top piece of heavy MDF onto the grid after I applied wood glue to the grid. Here's what I came up with; the upright struts acted as hinges, placing the MDF perfectly when I pivoted the sheet downward.

I covered the top and the bottom of the bench top with plastic laminate (I did both sides so that it wouldn’t bow… yeah, right…), and trimmed the edges with some nice pine boards. Then I made the small drawers; poplar sides and one-quarter inch plywood bottoms.

Now, what to do with the raw plywood sides of the workbench? Well, I’m a big fan of aluminum diamond plate. You know, the stuff that the toolboxes in the back of contractors’ pickup trucks are made from. So because this bench is a mega-toolbox, I bought some 4′x4′ sheets and some pre-bent corner pieces of diamond plate from Online Metals and UPS delivered the package a few days later. After installing the aluminum (I cut the aluminum with a plywood cutting blade in the table saw and installed it with hundreds of pan head sheet metal screws), I installed the electrical outlets and trim covers, drawer handles, deadbolt locks, and the project was done. Here’s the finished bench from the small drawer end:

And the big drawer end:

With one drawer open:

OMG! Did he actually dovetail those drawers?

And with the big drawer open:

The workbench doesn’t look brand new anymore, but that’s okay, I don’t either:

That’s all for now.

Carport Roof ~ Part 1

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The heavy rains of a week ago turned out to be just a passing storm. We are back in a dry pattern and were able to get a lot done this week even though Armando only worked four days. In my most previous post, I said that we were going to erect part of the carport roof. Here’s what we have done so far:

We started by digging a footing for a column. The footing is one meter by one meter by one meter deep. We filled the hole with rebar, concrete, and large rocks. This mass will keep the roof rooted to the ground during heavy winds:

Then it was time to form the column. A friend had given us some plastic sewer pipe to use as a form for round columns, but this didn’t seem to have the look that I wanted.

We could make a square box column out of M2 panels (2″x4′x8′ Styrofoam sheets with a wire mesh on each side). We could leave a hole in the center of the box for the rebar to go up through, then pour concrete into the center of the form, embedding the rebar and making a good strong column. It would look like this:

To join the M2 panels at the corners, pieces of wire mesh bent at right angles are clipped to both panels. This makes a unit that is not likely to crack at the corners.

But wait. A plain round or square box column would certainly do the job, but these columns are just plain static. They don’t add much of a design element to the entire project because there is no sense of motion or tension or even something being comfortably at rest.

I’ve been playing with shapes and forms in my head for months, and one design kept pushing the others aside. This shape is the wedge, or flying buttress. This isn’t an original idea of course, and it can be seen throughout history and throughout Panama today. Most of the concrete block bus stops have the shape, as well as the gas station in the center of El Valle. So I laid two sheets of M2 on my shop floor and drew a diagonal line on them. I cut the metal mesh with the angle grinder and sliced through the Styrofoam with my pocket knife. When I snapped the panels on the cut line, I was left with four pieces; two for the front and two for the back side of the column. I think that this design gives a nice counterbalance and motion to the static mass of the shipping containers. My design looks like this:

You can see three pieces of rebar extending from the top of the form. We welded these pieces to the beam above the column. Now the roof is connected all the way through the column and into the concrete footing.

Armando and I clip the corner mesh pieces to the column. All totaled, the column took just three sheets of the M2 panel.

Cynthia thought I should include a picture of the clips that connect the corners together. Here they are. I think I look as if I am auditioning for a new character on The Simpsons.

Here Armando trowels on a first coat of repello (stucco):

If I move just a few more inches to the right, you can see the alignment of the flying buttress column with my shop. This is the effect, the optical illusion if you will, I was aiming for:

You can also see that it aligns perfectly when viewed from the front gate and the right side of the driveway curbing:

Did you notice in the photo above that Armando was performing his incredible “white bucket floating in mid air” trick? I would swear on a stack of Popular Mechanics magazines that this photo has not been manipulated and that there were no strings attached. Here is a closeup:

Floating a bucket in mid air. Look ma, no hands, no strings, no wires. Armando seems nonchalant as he reaches for more mortar to spread on the wall. You can see Sammy looking on in amazement. Such is the craft of the magician.

In the next photo, Armando applies the finish coat of repello to the column. You can also see that we have been busy welding beams and joists (2″x4″ carriolas) into place. We’ll put the roof metal on next week after we pour concrete into the center of the column form:

The long shadows give a clue as to the length of the day. Armando is tired.

That’s it for progress this week. Here are some odds and ends:

While welding up in the air, it is always a quandary where to keep extra welding rods. I solved the problem for myself by looking in the junk pile. An empty urethane tube (aluminum) and a piece of string made a perfect welding rod quiver to sling over my shoulder:

When we put the polymer sealer on the interior walls in my shop I got the idea to use the walls as a chalk board. It works perfectly; here I show Armando my plans for the column:

I checked my math twice. It's been many years since I did long division by hand!

The month of April holds one of the negatives of living in Panama. Just before the anticipated start of the rainy season, all the farmers and large landowners burn their fields and all the accumulated dry vegetable matter. Sometimes old tires will find their way into the piles, too. Here’s a view to the mountains. Note the smoke haze has nearly obscured the normally visible antenna towers:

Outtake (Cheap) Shot: Cynthia thought it would be an “art shot” to take this photo of me on the ladder. Reminded her of the book, Under the Bleachers by Seymour Butts:

That’s all for now. More next week.

In No Particular Order ~ The Past Few Weeks

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Panorama: First, reader Missy has been asking for an overall panorama shot of the entire project. I downloaded Serif PanoramaPlus Starter Edition, plugged in a couple photos, and a few seconds later the program delivered a panorama. Here you go Missy:

Here’s what you are looking at in the above photo:

Left: two containers that will be the kitchen, home office, and TV. Cyn will be able to watch Law and Order while she makes dinner. There will be a roof deck above these two containers.

Between the two sets of containers: this will be a parallelogram-shaped area for the front entry, living room, dining room, and staircase to the roof deck. We hope that the walls will have a lot of glass.

The back set of containers: this area is for two bedrooms, two bathrooms, the laundry, a big dry (dehumidifier) closet, a half bath, and storage for outdoor tools.

My shop is the block building on the right of the photo.

Now on to the grist of this post:

Septic: The new septic tank is done and covered with dirt. When Armando cut a hole in the sheet metal under the concrete to make the inspection/pumping lid, he recoiled as fast as he could. Seems that an opossum had crawled into the intake pipe and had fallen into the tank. I was fine with leaving it down there, start the septic-izing if you will, but Armando had Sammy fashion a hook and fish it out for disposal off site. Sammy donned a respirator and there was a lot of laughing and retching going on. It is good to get the septic tank project off the to do list.

By the way, the big plastic septic tank that we dug out has now been re-purposed. We cut the bottom off at the first reinforcing ring. This part is now a swimming pool for Armando’s young son. Then we cut the remaining part of the tank to make a ring two-feet tall. This ring is now a chicken corral for baby chicks at Armando’s house. All that is left is the cone at the top of the tank and maybe we will dream up a use for this, too.

Moving Dirt: This sounds like something Yogi Berra would have said: “There is a lot of dirt in a hole.” All the dirt that the guys dug out for the septic tank had to be moved. The guys put the better top soil on the garden and the junk dirt became fill for areas in the driveway. This gave a better entrance to my shop. I had them put a layer of crushed stone on top of the fill to keep muddy feet out of my shop. Here’s a picture:

My Shop: From the above photo you can see that I built a sliding door for my shop. You can also see that I painted the concrete floor with garage floor epoxy to keep moisture down and to make it easy to clean.

In my makeshift shop at the house we are renting, I had three small benches. They were painted black at the factory and rust was beginning to break through the paint. So I disassembled them, buffed the parts with a wire brush on the angle grinder, and primed and painted them yellow. Here I am reassembling them with all 96 bolts:

Now they have a nice home in my new shop. I still have to make new shelves and tops; termites demolished the old ones. You can also see that the floor is painted and lights and electrical receptacles are completed. You can’t see it in this photo, but I am using the walls as a chalkboard. The surface is perfect for sketching out plans and doing math. Bit by bit, I’ll move my tools and big workbench into the new space:

Concrete: The sheet metal roof overhangs the shop by five feet on the west side. I decided to pour a slab under the overhang. I plan on installing a deep sink in the space, and thought it would be a good place for a clothesline. But the more I thought about it, the space seems ideal for Cynthia’s hot glass studio. I’ll put up some walls later. Here’s the new slab:

We mixed a bit more concrete and made a ramp next to the slab to access the back yard:

In the photo above you may have noticed the concrete drips running down the side of the container. That’s because we poured a concrete roof on container four. Why? Shipping container roofs are metal. It gets hot as an oven inside. Also, the torrential tropical downpours pounding on the metal makes it unbearably noisy inside.

We started the concrete roof project by welding 2″x3″ steel carriolas around the edge of the container. This will hold the concrete and can be painted a house or trim color. Next we went to work cleaning any rusty spots on the roof and then painted on two good coats of polyurethane red oil primer. Next, we put sheets of one-inch Styrofoam on top of the container roof. We held the foam away from the edges to thicken the concrete in these places. Next, we cut rebar for embedding in the slab. We tied the rebar together with baling wire. Here it is at 6:00 a.m. the next morning, ready for concrete.

At 6:30, Armando and Sammy arrived, along with two additional men to help with mixing all that concrete:

This pile of concrete has 18 wheelbarrows full of sand and gravel! What a lot of work, and they still have to carry it up to the roof bucket by bucket.

Here’s Armando walking a five-gallon bucket of concrete to the far end of the container. As we poured concrete, we pulled the walking boards back and lifted the rebar into place in the slab. Some time ago, I found in the road an eight-foot piece of aluminum 2″x4″ rectangular tubing. It made a perfect screed to level the concrete:

Here is the finished roof slab. You can see that there is a pitch to the outside of about an inch. Later I’ll fashion a rain gutter so the rain doesn’t spill down the side of the container:

Of course, after not raining a drop for several months, just as I was about half way through putting a broom finish on the concrete, the rain gods decided to play a funny joke on ole Fred. So now the concrete has a broom finish with rain dots. But it didn’t turn out that bad really, and this is just a utility slab and doesn’t have to be pretty.

A Bit More Concrete: It is as if someone threw a switch. For the past week the rains have been frequent and heavy. This is right on schedule, even a bit early, as our neighbor Tomas told me a couple weeks ago, “We should expect rain some time after Easter.” Today is Easter. We are all hoping that this is a false start and that there will be more sunny days to pour more concrete.

The rains have made it perfectly clear that for the next months it will be difficult to go the few feet from container four to my shop without getting soaked. We have decided to construct some of the carport roof.

When we built the shop roof, we extended a 4″x4″ carriola beam beyond my shop another twelve feet or so over the driveway. This is the area that will get roofed.

First, we need a column to support the outside corner of the roof. In the next photo, Armando is digging a mega-footing, just like we did for the container support columns. It isn’t that this footing will carry much weight. Much to the contrary, the massive winds that  we experience here will put the roof under tremendous uplift forces. So the footing is mass that will keep the roof from blowing off:

This footing is a meter square and a meter deep. We'll fill it with concrete and large rocks. In the foreground is a rebar mat and rebar for the column.

Here’s the rebar in place and the hole filled with concrete and large rocks:

I have a design in mind for the column, stay tuned.

More Doorways And Stair Landings: While Armando and Sammy were moving dirt, I got to work and cut two more doorways from container 3. These doorways will connect the parallelogram area (living room, etc.) to the bedrooms. After I cut the metal shipping container siding, I made and installed door frames.

One important detail is that because of the slope of the land, the front containers were intentionally set 15-inches lower than the back set of containers. Eventually there will be three steps up from the living room to the bedrooms. To accomplish this, I needed to build stair landings. So, taking the angles of the parallelogram walls into account, I welded carriolas to make landings. Soon, when the carport roof area is finished, we can pouir concrete floors in container 3, and these floors will encompass the landings, too. Here are photos of the landings and doorways:

This hallway goes past the half bathroom to the master bedroom.

This doorway leads to the second bedroom.

Bonus Photos:

Walking to the house today I passed two big vultures having snake for breakfast:

After the dry season, the grass is becoming green again.

Walking home from the house yesterday, I picked a handful of tiny wildflower weeds for Cynthia. How romantic can a guy get?

Well, I think that that is just about enough for today. Thanks for stopping by.

 

 

 

I Was Rattled ~ Septic Redo

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About two weeks ago Armando was working on defining the left side of the driveway. He was digging a trench, pouring a foundation, and laying a row of blocks just as he had done on the right side of the driveway. While he was mixing concrete, we had a power outage. No power/no water pump. No water pump/no water.

Armando is nothing if not resourceful. The drainage ditches have run dry so there was no water there. And the little underground stream that in the rainy season fills the concrete cistern in the side of the mountain was dry too. But he remembered that there was water in the yet-unused septic tank; we filled it to keep it from popping out of the ground.

He removed the lid, leaned over, and dipped a five-gallon bucket into the tank. Startled by something, he pulled his hand out quickly. “There is something in there!” he exclaimed in Spanish. Of course, I immediately thought it might be Jimmy Hoffa or some similarly distasteful discovery. Then trying to lighten my first thought my mind went to, “What is it Lassie? Did Timmy fall down the well?”

Turns out, it wasn’t an object in the tank, but only the tank itself. Even though we had back filled with topsoil and not the expansive clay, the tank still gave way to the pressures of the soil and the high water table. The tank was crushed and split.

I was distressed. I didn’t want to dig up the whole mess and start over again. I was really rattled. How rattled? When Cynthia does the laundry, she dissolves some OxyClean powder in warm water then adds it to the washing machine. Yesterday she left the solution on top of the machine and it played quite a tune as it rattled during the spin cycle. I was this rattled:

I don’t know why, but that video made me smile.

After some discussion, we decided to remove the plastic tank and build the local tried and true concrete block septic tank. One benefit of all of this is that we can make a much larger tank and not have to pump the tank for a long time. Tank pumping is expensive, $300 to $500 seems the average here.

Wanting to beat the rainy season, the next day we started the redo. The tank was filled with water that would have to be removed. Also, we knew that we would be working on the project for two weeks or so, and every morning we would have to bail or pump hundreds of gallons of water from the pit. I decided to bite the bullet and buy a pump. I should have done it back when we were fabricating the columns to set the containers on.

I made a quick trip to town and bought a portable, gasoline engine powered water pump. Chinese, $236. I also bought some PVC pipe fittings and a couple lengths of pipe. Back at the job, the pump worked like a charm and emptied the tank in just a couple of minutes.

Whenever a new tool is brought to the job, the guys have a great time. Here, neighbor Ricardo stopped by to check out the excitement. We were all pumped.

After pumping, we started digging. While the guys dug, I made a tripod for a hoist, like for back yard car engine pulling in the old days. Even when we had the tank empty and dug free, the hoist just pulled the tubes into the ground and the tank stayed put. Eventually we dragged the tank out with a tow strap hooked to the Honda.

The other side was crushed, too. We're going to cut the tank at the first rib to make a swimming pool for Armando's young son.

Then the guys set about digging a larger pit for the new concrete block tank. They decided to work barefooted because the clay stuck to the rubber boots and it was just too arduous to work. I told them they should be paying me for the foot beauty treatment, and I offered to let Armando bring his wife to enjoy the spa too. For some reason he thought she would decline my generous offer:

As they dug, the men kept a rock nearby so they could bang the shovel on it. The clay soil stuck to each shovelful like glue. Finally, after four days of digging, we got to the point where we could set rebar and pour the floor:

Next came the walls. I noticed that Armando’s block work was much better than on the shop. I mentioned it to him, “Good block work, Armando,” and he said it had to be stronger because he didn’t want his work to collapse!

Here’s the repello in progress, inside and out. Outside, they worked their way up with the repello a few rows at a time as the blocks were laid.

And finally the roof. We installed a few 2×3 steel carriolas as joists and placed scrap pieces of roofing metal over the joists.

Here’s the finished roof. After the concrete cures a bit, I’ll remove the Styrofoam block, place some plastic over the hole, and pour the access hole cover for future pumping and inspection.

Now the only things left to do is to remove the forms, make a hatch cover, back fill around the tank with sand, move a lot of the dirt to low spots in the driveway near my shop, and spread the rest of the dirt over the tank to make grade.

After finishing the roof on the tank, we quit for the day. I had been wanting to investigate lock options for several of the doors in the new house, so I Googled my search. After watching a YouTube video on electric door strikes, a screen came up with other videos to watch. I was tired and wanted to sit a while longer so I clicked one. It turned out to be the Ukraine version of the TV show X Factor. It was so entertaining that I watched several of the performers and killed an hour. Cynthia pulled up a chair, too. Here is our favorite act:

That’s all for now.

 

 

Shipping Container Door Frames

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After our house guest left, I got busy with a slew of projects that could be lumped under the heading, Finishing My Shop. There are still a couple tasks remaining so I’ll wait a bit longer to post a final update on the shop. But for now, final completion of the shop waits for me to make a run to the city for materials.

I’ve been anxious to get back to installing the windows, but with the dry season rapidly passing, I felt the need to prepare a few areas inside the containers for concrete floors. It is no fun to mix concrete while rain is dripping off your nose. I chose to make some interior door frames.

At the pace of about a door frame a day, here’s how I went about it.

Using the big angle grinder with a metal cut off disk, I had months ago cut two of the three door openings in the side of container three. For the third opening, I decided to fire up my new oxy-acetylene torch for the first time. I’ve never used a torch before, so over the course of a few evenings I studied online the proper and safe way to light and shut down the torch. I made an instructional one-page Word document (actually, I use OpenOffice, free Microsoft-like software) and had the page laminated for future reference. Here’s an OpenOffice screenshot. Pretty much the only difference is the few hundred dollars I didn’t have to spend.

I marked the door opening with a felt-tipped marker. I fired the torch and proceeded to make my first cut. I had to adjust and readjust the flame to get the flame size and gas mixture just right as I really didn’t know what I was doing. I hadn’t foreseen, but of course the flame burned off the paint, taking the marked line with it. So I made a first pass burning off the paint, let the metal cool, wire brushed the metal and the adjoining paint, and remarked the line. Then I cut the metal. There was a learning curve, but by the time I finished the cutout I pretty much had the process sorted out as to how fast to move the torch and how to get a fairly straight line as I progressed. When I was done cutting with the torch, I buzzed a few rough places with the angle grinder, then put a flap-sander on the grinder and feathered the paint edges.

Next, I needed to make the door frames. Because I used 2″x2″x1/16″ square steel tubing to make the window frames, the same 2×2 made sense for the door frames. I measured the openings and cut the tubing on the metal chop saw.

I took the cut tubing into container three and used the floor as an assembly area. I squared the corners of the legs and the header and clamped a cross brace to keep everything square while I welded. Like this adjustment in progress:

After I finished welding the corners, I tack welded a piece of rebar at the bottom of the legs to keep the door opening even top to bottom during installation.

After welding, I placed the frame in the opening:

I plumbed and leveled the frame then tack welded it into place. I ground the tack welds smooth like this:

Next, there were the gaps to fill between the container wall and the door frame. At the Discovery Center (closest thing to DepotLowes that we have here) in Panama City I found some black urethane windshield adhesive. This is the thickest, stickiest, nastiest, gooey-est substance on the face of the earth. The tubes I got have a 2010 date printed on them. Date made? Expiration date? Who knows. But at $4.95 a tube I considered it a bargain. I’m glad that the manufacturer put a space between the PU and the STAR, other wise it could be read, PUS TAR. Although distasteful, it is not a bad description of this goo.

This goo tools nicely with your finger, but getting it out of the caulking tube is an extreme effort. So I bought a pneumatic caulking gun and connected it to my compressor:

The gun works like a charm, spewing out the adhesive at a good speed. It took about 15 seconds to spread the adhesive on one leg of the frame, verses minutes and a sore hand to do it manually. But I wonder if the system that Campbell Hausfeld’s crack design team created was ever field tested by real users. The trigger is tiny and placed way high on the handle. Perfect, say, for a four-year-old’s tiny fingers. Form follows function, please.

After gunning the adhesive, I ran a wet (spit) finger down the length of the frame, smoothing the goo in one swipe. I think it turned out well. In the next photo, container siding is on the left, the adhesive is the black stripe, and the shiny metal is the door frame:

I’m happy with the project. Here are the three frames completed and prime painted:

While I’ve been busy with the frames, Armando and Sammy have been working barefooted in hard pan clay for nearly a week. Here’s a teaser photo, more on this dasterdly project in a future post:

That’s all for now. More soon. Thanks for stopping by.

Lunch, A Cemetery, And To Grandmother’s House I Go

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Nothing special in this post, just the story of our day away from home.

Cynthia and I needed a few things down in Coronado so today was the day. In Coronado, we made our purchases, and being lunch time, I decided to surprise Cynthia with a visit to a new restaurant in San Carlos.

Coming from Panama City, just where the speed limit drops before San Carlos, right on the highway where all the stones are stacked in piles for sale, is an authentic Italian restaurant named Mamma Mia — Toscana in Bocca (Tuscany in your mouth if I remember my smattering of Italian).

The first thing we noticed was the setting. There is a large wall that separates the restaurant from most of the road noise. Inside the wall is a large bohio (open sided, thatched roof hut. It’s always cool under a bohio.).

The setting is very relaxed and peaceful. Our English/Spanish bilingual waiter brought us menus written in Italian. We did some quick math and saw that we could very easily spend more than $20, maybe more than $30 for lunch, so we did our “water and the least expensive dishes” routine. No wine, no dessert. Cynthia ordered a spaghetti dish and I ordered a cheese/tomato pizza.

I was very hungry. I went to the owner who was working at the outside kitchen and said that we would like some garlic bread while we waited. “No!” he said, our lunches would be flour, flour, flour, too much flour! He refused to make bread for us! He said, don’t worry, your food is only a few minutes away and it will be plenty!

Sure enough, our food arrived promptly. And he was right, it was plenty. Not too much, not too little.

I was in Tuscany, Italy, back in the ’70s and I have to say, all my memories of the food came back to me today. Simple food. Well blended flavors. Spaghetti al dente, just as Cynthia likes it.

We finished our meal and told the waiter that we would like the small crumb left on my plate wrapped to go. He laughed; whether at my joke or at my Spanish I cannot tell you. I left a twenty that included a tip.

On the way back up the mountain, I remembered that the formerly nearly impassable road to a cemetery had just been freshly graded, oiled and graveled. So again as a surprise, I turned at the road and drove to the Virgen Del Carmen cemetery. This is the same name as the Catholic church in Los Llanitos near our house.

Here are some photos. Notice that the colors in the plastic flowers are not very faded; they must be changed regularly. And check out the views!

This rock formation is called, "La Puerta" (The Door).

From enjoying the views of the cemetery, we drove home.

But while we were at the cemetery, I showed Cynthia  another “road” that went to Cedelinda’s aunt’s house (Cedelinda is the young woman I am tutoring in English). I was there just last week. Not much more than a steep-hilled, two-track dirt path with lots of rocks, the Honda barely made it. Let me explain why I was there.

Cedelinda’s grandmother is 97-years-old and lives with Cede’s aunt. Grandma, deaf and nearly blind, fell and badly hurt her spine, her hip, and her legs. The family had to care for her there in the house for several weeks until she was well enough to get from the house to the road so she could go to the doctor! With only a rough path, the house is a long way from the road, and the road is so bad that it would have made Grandma much worse.

Cedelinda related the story to Cynthia and me. Pretty much the only way over the road is in one of the local pickup trucks or a farm truck. All had the suspension of a spring-less buckboard and I cringed at the thought of Grandma being jostled so much. So I volunteered to drive Grandma to her appointment with the doctor.

I actually did it again the next week, too, so she could be seen by another doctor. Cedelinda suggested that the second time I take a different road that was in better condition. On the specified day, I drove to the spot that we were to meet. We went to the doctor’s and returned.

Now here is the part that touched me so deeply that it brought tears to my eyes and affected me for days after. As I said, they don’t live near the road. Grandma can’t walk. A wheelchair would be useless on the hilly, rocky, narrow terrain of the path. How to move Grandma? Simple. A young, robust grandson piggy-backed his nearly-100-year-old grandmother to the road. I couldn’t believe my eyes as they came into view, Grandma’s arms wrapped tightly around her grandson’s neck.

I was deeply touched by the profound intimacy that I routinely see in these peoples’ lives. In the States, families tend to be smaller and separated by miles and by generations, and we generally rely on professional services to take care of situations like this. But here, three and four generations live under one roof and they often do what needs to be done themselves. After he carried her, grandson straightened her dress and made her presentable. It took several of us to get her settled into the front seat of the car.

I do not pity these people. Their lives are not complex, hurried and harried as are the lives of so many up north in the States. There is a profound simplicity for them. But there is also the constant need for them to be self-reliant, inventive, and resourceful. I admire their “grit” in so many ways.

Here is a short video of the “road of choice.” After I turn the car around, you can see Cede, her aunt, and the grandson bringing Grandma to the road.

Cynthia and I had a good day today exploring. That’s all for now. 

 

My Shop ~ Part 8 ~ The Floor

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The concrete floor for my shop was the easiest and best slab I have ever poured was not without difficulties. All ultimately ended well, but as always, there is a story.

For some time now, we have had a pile of cascajo (cas-ca-ho [the letter a has a soft sound in this word] — river run sand and gravel) taking up space in the driveway. Cascajo is great for foundations and large columns. The mix as it is dug from the river has a range of sizes from sand granules to six-inch rocks. But it is not so great for floors because of the larger rocks. The rule of thumb for pouring a slab is no gravel/stone larger in size than one-third the thickness of the slab. I know we should have sifted the pile, but Armando and his crew balked. They said that sifting just isn’t necessary. If you come across a rock that is grande and causing a problem, just pull it out of the slab and throw it aside.

Additionally, most of the pile had been sitting for months and it was permeated with grass, weeds, and roots. I could foresee a problem when it came time to trowel a nice finish, but again the guys said “es normal.”

Here is a photo of the root-infested pile of cascajo:

I’ve learned to pick my fights with the guys because I can really make a fool out of myself; they usually know things that I don’t. A case in point is when two men showed up to put an internet antenna on the roof of the house we rented when we moved to Panama. They arrived with:

  • the antenna and connecting cable
  • a six-foot length of half-inch electrical conduit
  • a small coil of bailing wire
  • a nail
  • a hammer
  • a pair of pliers

I scoffed to myself. Where was the electric drill? Where were the numerous brackets, bolts, and accessories that they would surely need to mount the mast to the roof? And where was the mast? In my opinion they were missing about $129.95 in essential pieces and parts. But I watched.

They found an old tree stump in the yard to use as an anvil. Then with the hammer they pounded flat about three-inches of one end of the electrical conduit. Next with the hammer and nail, they punched a hole in the flat section, then using the bumper on their small van they bent the flat section to a right angle. Next, back to the tree stump they switched ends of the conduit and punched a hole in the conduit about two inches from the end.

Then using the pliers up on the roof they slightly unscrewed three screws that were holding the metal roofing in place, plus a fourth screw all the way. They put the removed screw through the nail hole in the bent end of the conduit and put the screw back into the hole in the roof that it came from and tightened it down. Then they wrapped some bailing wire around one of the loosened screws, ran the wire up and through the hole at the top end of the conduit, and back down and around the second screw, back up and through the conduit, and down to the third screw. They tightened the screws. At this point the conduit mast was triangulated firmly in place. Then they mounted the antenna dish on the conduit and ran the cable to the router on my desk inside the house. D.O.N.E.

So I am careful. I learn a lot from these capable and resourceful men.

But Sr. Murphy often shows up on the job. In the case of the floor slab in my shop, it seems that my image of troweled-smooth concrete is very different from their version. I like it smooth. Very smooth. I don’t want a sandy surface. They like it flattened out so you don’t trip on any of the ridges. They don’t take smooth into account because it is a long day’s work and anally troweling the floor to a mirror finish is just not going to happen.

There is more to the story, but let’s see some photos:

I held my ground on preparing for the slab. I like a nice level couple-inch layer of gravel to pour the slab on. If you pour concrete on dirt, moisture in the dirt will capillary-action wick its way up into the slab. But capillary action can’t happen through the stones because the spaces between the stones are too large. The slab will stay dry. So even though they thought I was stupid, I had a few yards of one-inch stone delivered. Sammy and I spread it level. Jabo wasn’t sure he liked it:

On Thursday, Cynthia and I put welded wire mesh on the floor to keep the slab from cracking. Here is the floor ready for concrete. My laser level is set up to level the concrete, and in the corner is a wooden bull float that I made from scrap.

The guys mixed a big pile of concrete:

And Armando and I spread it out. Because of the large rocks in the mix, it was difficult to raise the wire mesh to the center of the slab, but I got it raised about a third of the way up. Close enough. I’m using the laser level to set the grade so Armando could more easily screed the concrete. You can see he has thrown out a few trouble maker rocks:

Here Erin and Pancho take a break after using 24 sacks of cement:

In the next photo Armando trowels the floor. After wooden floating the floor, you shouldn’t steel trowel the concrete until all the water has disappeared from the surface. This way you won’t be pushing water around, washing the cement away from the granules of sand. But it was pushing 5:00 and the guys (including yours truly) were tired. So Armando pushed the envelope slightly and troweled while there was still water on the surface. I knew I wouldn’t be happy with the finished product, but it is, after all, just a shop.

We finished, cleaned up the tools, and called it a day. The next morning, Saturday, Armando had work elsewhere, so it was just me arriving on the job. I took a look at the floor. I didn’t like it and gave the job a C-minus, maybe a D. It was rough and there wasn’t enough cement “cream” on the top. It was going to be difficult to sweep it clean in the future.

What to do? It is generally a bad idea to apply a skim coat of cement paste onto a concrete floor because in time flakes will spall off the floor. But our floor was still very green, still hydraulically pushing out water. I’ve read that you have a good chance of succeeding with a skim coat if you catch the slab while it is still only a few hours old. The most common reason for needing to do this is when a surprise rainstorm pops up and washes the cream away just after steel troweling a driveway or a patio slab.

So that’s what I did. I got a steel trowel, a bucket of dry cement powder, a bucket of water, and a sponge. I spent most of the day sprinkling cement on the slab, then adding a bit of water by wringing the sponge, then troweling the paste onto and into the floor. I had to take numerous breaks to stand up and straighten the old Arthur Itis knees. At the end of the day I gave the floor a B-plus. I can’t give it an A because the mesh didn’t get lifted as high as I wanted and also because there were a few dips just a bit deeper than I would have liked. Troweling the top coat was gruelingly difficult for my old body, but I am glad that I did it.

I’m spraying the floor with water a few times a day now, and will continue for a week. This will slow the rate of cure and will prevent a lot of surface cracks. Here’s my finished floor slab just after I sprayed it:

The next time I am in the city I plan to go to Discovery and buy a few gallons of garage floor epoxy. With the epoxy, a quick sweep of the broom will clean the floor “real nice.”

I need to let the slab sit and cure without foot traffic for at least a week, so depending on the condition of my knees, I should be back working on the house windows maybe tomorrow.

That’s all for now.

 

Against Doctor’s Orders ~ Cynthia Goes Horseback Riding

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Without going into details, suffice it to say that a little more than a year ago Cynthia had a major surgery snafu that left her with more than minor neurological problems. Her neuroligist said, “No driving a car, no working with your torch and hot glass, and no horseback riding.”

The no driving a car Cynthia can understand. But the urge to work with hot glass has gotten the better of her and she has been working in her studio a bit recently. She hasn’t burned off any fingers yet so she figures she is ahead of the game.

And this last Saturday, our neighbor invited her to go horseback riding. “We won’t go far, and we’ll go slow,” he told her as they mounted the horses, he on Acero (Steel) and she on Max. Both are good-sized quarter horses and having them both just walk was going to be a challenge.

“Oh good,” I thought, “I can go take a siesta in the hammock,” which I did. About a half hour later my cell phone woke me up. It was Cynthia. Seems that they did go far and they did more than walk. At one point, Ricardo dismounted to take a photo of Cynthia. When the camera shutter made its clicking sound, Acero was startled and took off running. They tried and tried to no avail to capture El Fugitivo (The Fugitive) as Acero is now called. The closer they got, the more El Fugitivo ran. They were now on a narrow trail beyond the hill with all the cell, radio, and TV towers.

On the phone, Cynthia asked me to go get Ricardo’s yardman, Abdiel, and bring him to the towers to help capture Acero. It’s not far, but it is a tough drive most of the way. The Honda barely made it because of the myriad of protruding rocks in the road, and I wasn’t looking forward to turning around and retracing my tracks.

Here is a video of the drive from the main road to El Valle to the hill with the towers (no audio):

The view is quite stunning from the hill the towers are on. Here’s a very short panorama video of the surrounding area. The sun was so bright that I couldn’t see anything on the camera’s viewing screen and the wind was whipping me every which way, so the video isn’t very good. But it serves to show the view:

Once Abdiel and I arrived, Abdiel took off running and Ricardo mounted Max and took off at a gallop. Funny, but as soon as Acero saw Abdiel, he came right to him and followed him back to where we were waiting. I guess the horse was tired of being on the lamb. Here are some photos of Cynthia’s great adventure (most photos by Ricardo).

After all that excitement, Cynthia was tired. I offered her a ride in the car, but “I left on a horse, I’ll return on a horse,” was her reply.

She was quite sore after not riding for two years, but she is looking forward to riding again. Her neurologist means well and her advice about not riding horses may be sound advice. But Cynthia values and needs a high quality of life. Even given the risks, she’d rather ride the horse than ride the La-Z-Boy lounge chair watching reruns of CSI. “I’d rather fall off the horse and roll down the ravine than spend the rest of my life watching TV.” And you know what? I don’t blame her one tiny bit. You go, girl!

That’s all for now.