HERE BE DRAGONS!!
A place of flame and plasma where metal bends to my will
A dark, dirty and noisy place full of glowing metal and blinding lights
Its where i keep my welders
The fab shop short for fabrication workshop. It is the normal home of Barras Cages and occasionally visited by Steel and Jewels. This allows me to offer small metal fabrication and repirs to those that need it.
Need an alteration to your grooming table, ask me as i might be able to make a new one or alter it to your needs. Want some light gates for your grooming parlour then ask away. Want some full cages for your dog van we can do that also.
A light gate for keeping the dogs out of the kitchen when it is dinner time
A set of cages for a transit connect
See more HERE
Below is the current machinery but things will change and move as it is never just right
Bridgeport milling machine
The more observant of you may note its actually an Ajax which is a bridgeport clone, the less observant will note it needs a damn good clean.
Ever put a stupidly low bid on an auction thinking you’ll never win it? Yeah that’s what I did with this. Suddenly having to find a way to get a ton of milling machine up to Aberdeen wasn’t as hard as I thought. And the storeman at work agreed to accept the delivery. Might not of told him how big it was. He had a forklift don’t know why he was so annoyed.
The down side of it was a 3phase machine but I only have a single phase electricity supply. So I had to remove the entire 3 phase control system and replace it with a variable frequency drive. Which means it is an even better machine than when it was first built.
And what does it do? Ask Adam Savage
The Steel rack
Its a rack made of steel where i keep my steel. So i usually have what i need to hand.
Also below it is the roller table which lets me feed entire lengths into the hacksaw
The bandsaw
Apparently there was an earthquake when i took the picture, i’ll fix it in post
It’s a metal cutting bandsaw nothing more exiting than that. it lets me cut pieces of metal squarely and easily as you put the stock in it and press go and off it goes. Its slightly limited in how long i can cut length wise as the end of the workshop is about 8 foot away but normally this isn’t an issue
The ring roller
A tool i built myself that allows me to roll rings of metal down to about 8”. It is the 3rd one i have made and they keep getting bigger every time
I’ll probably build another bigger one some day
It is my goto tool for making fences and gates with the wavy pattern.
The Fire
In winter the most important piece of equipment built slightly oversized as it can eat two shovels of coal with ease. Fabricated from sheet steel with a fan at the bottom pushing air through tubes in the fire box giving a lot of heat into the workshop.
The MIG welder
My go to welder for welding general steel work. It uses low voltage high current electricity to melt the two pieces of metal and then a piece of wire is fed into this puddle of molten metal to make them join.
For a far more technical explanation head over to wikipedia
The TIG welder
If the MIG welder is the hammer then this is the scalpel.
It is used for more delicate work, stainless steel and aluminium
Again want to learn more then head to wikipedia
The 30 Ton press
Many moons ago It was being thrown out of my work as it didn’t have the correct paperwork. I was given the job of taking it to the scrapyard. I haven’t kept it for myself it is just a very slow journey.
Used for pressing bearings and stuff, can also be used for press forming jewellery.
I have also made tooling to turn it into a rather crude press brake for bending sheet steel.
The box and pan folder
It allows me to accurately fold thing sheet steel. Normally used for making brackets etc but can be used for making, boxes and pans. Not very much imagination was used in naming this
The slip rolls
A 4 foot set of rollers in a triangle. You can adjust the gap between them which similar to the ring roller lets you bend metal into curves. This is more suited to thin sheet steel. To let you make cylinders the top roll can be pivoted around so you can slide the completed part off.