After some additional engineering… and some more welding.. and a little more painting.. And a little muttering under my breath. The trellis is up and complete. Its freestanding, and actually pretty stable, and ready for the rose to be trimmed back and trained up the front panels. It took significantly longer than I had hoped, but it turned out really nice considering it was my first real welding project. (I kinda went into this with the theory that if you Aim low, you can avoid disappointment.) You can see in the photos that the roses have sort of exploded. Which is why we needed the trellis to begin with. 
The roses are too big to just let grow wild. They need some structure or we risk losing a good chunk of the end of the porch. Hopefully this will provide a decent base for them to grow on. And it turned out pretty cool looking as well.
On to the photos:
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Front view of the finished trellis
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rear view of the finished trellis
My musical tastes tend to run to the eclectic. Anything from Devo and PSB to Glenn Miller and Yello. Of late though, I’ve been wandering about the musical shores of other continents. I’ve been through French Pop, some harder Euro Trance, and ended up most recently with Electronic Tango. Which I will admit tends to sound a little odd at first read. Think of some of the Tango inspired Yello tracks with a slightly more traditional flair and you are close. All in all, quite a nice musical diversion. From what I can gather, these folks are on the cutting edge of the movement. Quite catchy, it sticks in your head and you find yourself humming along with it.
Gotan Project – Santa Maria (Del Buen Ayre)
Finally. After hours and hours and hours of cutting, grinding, welding, cleaning, priming and painting, the trellis is finally finished…  Almost.  All of the parts are completed and painted. All that is needed now is to set all the parts in place, drill my last few holes and bolt it all together. With any luck, assembly will be today and finished photos will follow.
For now, I have a couple of photos of one of the finished front panels, and a shot of the painted front panels. Painting of the last panel was finished after dark last night, so photos of the roof panel and the rear bracket in final paint will have to be taken later today.
All in all I’m very pleased with how the panels turned out, and I’m very excited to see it all assembled and in place. Overall I was very impressed with the capabilities and the ease of use of the Millermatic 140 Welder. I’m planning on writing up a full review in the next few weeks. But I’ll tell you right now that for a little 110V welder that you can plug in almost anywhere, its a very capable machine.
Onward to the photos.
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Single trellis panel. Finished
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Finished front Trellis panels
I’ve moved on to the front panels of the trellis/arbor/large steel Rose structure. (I’ve gotten comments from poeple that insist its not a trellis due to the roof, which makes it an arbor. Contrasting opinions seem to think its not an arbor as it doesnt span a path like a traditional arbor does.) Regardless of terminology, I’ve moved on to the front panels. Which are coming along nicely. They are an intersting puzzle as they should work up faster as they are smaller, but I have to slow a little as I’m making both of them identical. So far they seem to be taking the same amount of time as the roof section. The speed increase that comes with practice and a better saw to rough cut the pieces, is being offset by the need to slow down to double check measurments from piece to piece to make sure they match.  I’m still aiming for a big finish for Christmas, but it may be tight.
These arent the most current photos, but they do show some of the progress on the front panels. I’ll be adding some more updated photos when I’m out there working on them next.
front panel sections
This is a little late, but it figures into some things that I’m going to be doing here on the site, so I’m going to go ahead and pop back in time a little and delve into my welder and how it came to be.
I had been wanting to add a welder to the tool collection in the garage for a while. I had projects piling up that I was not working on because they needed welding here and there and I couldn’t do it myself. It was easier to just put them off and not work on them.  It ended up being much easier to do something else than coordinate with someone else to come weld the various projects up for me. Last year I figured I might want to go ahead and seriously look into getting a welder so I could tackle some of those projects on my own. I figured I was expanding the capabilities of the garage, as well as expanding my skills. Maybe welding was a logical next step.
So I started looking around for info. When I started doing research around the web in early 2007 to try to figure out which welding machine I wanted to add to the tools in the garage, I was confronted with a massive amount of information. Some relevant, some not. And as I expected, everyone had their own opinions on brands and models and most of those folks are pretty strong in their opinions. Those pages got tossed right away, I can form my own opinions. And brand isn’t really critical to me as long as the tool will do the job I wanted it to do. I tried to then sort through all of the rest of the info out there to distill it down to facts that were useful to me, rather than deal with all the marketing hype and opinions. Now during all of that looking I noticed ONE constant thing. It seems that all of the guys on the welding boards and the car boards all had the same basic bias. Small 110V welders stink. Period. End of discussion. Don’t even bother. To hear these people tell it, anything that plugs into a normal house plug is totally worthless and a waste of space and money. This I just couldn’t understand as that market segment reaches from a $79.00 unit at Harbor Freight, to big name machines that are almost $1000. If they sucked so bad, and they didn’t really work, why did everyone (Including the major players) waste their time making them? I’ve worked with professional companies that had high end gear that just did not make anything for the entry level. I wondered why that the big boys would waste their time with a product that wasn’t apparently worth the effort. With that in the back of my mind, I figured I needed to define what I was going to use the machine for. Figuring that may help me narrow down the options a little.
Continue reading →
Its ALIVE!
Actually its not, but that’s much more impressive sounding than the other options. At any rate, the roof section of the trellis is now complete. The design is done and all of the welds have been finished and dressed. All that is left on the roof panel is welding the brackets on to connect it to the other pieces, and that cannot be done quite yet as the other pieces arent finished yet. Brackets are the last thing on the list before its all painted and installed. Now I’m on to working on the front upright panels. When I get some progress on those, I’ll post photos of those as well.
For now, I present the finished roof panel.
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trellis3
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trellis4
In and amongst all of the other little projects, I’m still plugging away at the trellis. Having been occupied with other things since we last posted, I decided it was time to get back out there and make some sparks. The last time I was out working I managed to mangle the saw I was using to trim the steel to length, so late last week I stopped while I was out and picked up an inexpensive chop saw. And while its not a highly precise saw, its alot more accurate than freehand with a jig saw.
So I made my way out to the barn and started on the large 2/3 of the roof section. As I mentioned before, the design is inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. This particular piece is roughly divided into thirds. The panel I worked on last time is a self contained panel. The remaining two thirds are grouped together into a larger panel, which is divide into offset quarters. Which in plain english means ALOT of measuring and re-measuring. After several hours out there today, this is where we stand. I Have the lower 2 quadrants of the design done. Which are visible on the left of this photo. You can see the two upper sections are still empty. The design in those is more dense as the sections are smaller. All told they both have 3 more large sections of tube and 3 thin strips of flat stock to go. That will be either later in the week or sometime next week, depending on schedules. Once the design is finished then I get to move on to the front panels, which will hopefully work up a little faster. They are smaller, so I’m hopeful.
Trellis progress, 11/8/08
About a year ago I picked up a welder for the shop. I figured it would be handy to have for the various automotive things that I seem to be doing more of.  Since I got it, it has been pretty handy for automotive related things.  I recently decided to see what I could do that was a little more artistic. We are in need of a trellis in the back yard to support a rose bush that is getting out of hand, so I figured I could whip something up that would work and look decent in the process. As these things tend to do, the project ended up balooning into a much larger undertaking than I had planned. The trellis is going to have 3 main panels and plain posts in the back to support the roof. I have 2 7′ x 3′ panels for the front for the rose to climb, and then the roof panel which is 6′ x 10′. We elected to continue the front panel design over to the roof so it would be visible from the ground. So the roof panel is decorative as well. The design is loosely based on the Frank Lloyd Wright style. Angular and squared panels, without obvious symmetry.
This is the first third of the roof panel. I’ll add more photos here as I progress. For my first major project like this, its coming along nicely.
Roof section - Trellis
So I’ve been absent from the blog for a while now.� And its not for lack of trying.� Its mainly a lack of time.� A few months back, I came to a point where I had to decide where I wanted to go for the immediate future.� I could choose the responsible, and cautious route and find a 9-5 working for someone else that would be safe and reliable and a weekly paycheck.� OR, I could strike out on my own, and have no one to depend on for my success but myself.� I pondered, I researched, and I went as far as actually putting together a resume for a position that a friend of mine shared with me.� When it came right down to it I couldnt do it.� I could not click on the “Send” button.� It just didnt feel right.� And It wasnt making me happy.� So I went with Plan B.� I threw myself into researching the equipment and markets available for design and sign work.� (Which I’ve tinkered with on and off for almost 10 years now.)� And then I pulled the trigger.� I pulled some money out and purchased a brand new piece of equipment and all the software required to run it properly.� I put together new business cards, started making lists of potential clients.� And immersed myself into learning the new system.� (Which of course is totally different from what I’ve used for almsot 10 years.)� Which is where I sit today.� I’ve had the new machine for slightly over a month. I’ve gotten 2 jobs under my belt, and I’m ramping up to go out and actively solicit some business in the coming weeks. � Its a little scary not having a steady income right now, and its a little intimidating having this huge commercial machine staring at me every day when I come into the office.� But deep down I know this was the right choice.� I know that I can not only do this, but I can be successful at it.� And more importantly, it just feels right.� So I may not be around here too terribly much for the immediate future, as I have to make a living for myself now.� Which is not a 9-5 sort of proposition.� I will try to pop on and update here when time allows.� And if anyone out there needs graphic design or sign work done, feel free to shoot me some mail.� � I’m looking for a few good clients.
