My mistake...three stories high!

When I got into the workshop today people had already disassembled the lower level that was left standing last night and had reassembled the structural framework for the second level. I asked someone what we were going to do next and they told me, "we're going to build the next level on top."
Oh, I see, this tree stump is three stories high!

Before I could move Babs and Sara grabbed me and dragged me over to the bark substructure they were busy working on. They then went on to explain to me at length how the parts fit together and what was needed to complete each section - just so I would know in case I might feel like helping them out. Then Sara said we needed more bark in order to complete the next section so we went off to make bark.

This required texturing the pieces I had been cutting with the plasma cutter on Tuesday night. For "texturing" read "hit with a hammer".


Sara hammers a bark piece

 So I pounded away at that for a while...this is where some blacksmithing training came in handy. swinging a hammer all day is tiring work and can really strain your arm and wrist. There is an ergonomic way to hammer.

• Make sure the work is slightly below waist height so that your forearm is horizontal when bent ~90 degrees at the elbow ;
• Hold the hammer mid-shaft with a 'soft' grip made by the thumb and fore-finger;
• Raise the arm from the shoulder keeping the elbow locked;
• Bring the arm down allowing the weight of the hammer to do the work;
• As the hammer head approaches the work snap the wrist forward to strike the work with the hammer.

People were bashing away all day to make bark. Even then we only have enough to cover one panel of a section of the bark substructure. This is going to be a massive undertaking!

Minions hammering bark

Meanwhile Margaret had started to assemble the next story of the structure.

Margaret welding

She came and grabbed me too "You're a hot commodity" she said meaning the fact that I am available regularly makes me useful for different departments and they all want to use my labour. Kind of flattering...in a way.

Margaret wanted me to help assemble the structure while she went and helped the Geeks with some other task. She handed me over to Dan and we did an inventory of the pieces required to make up the third story.
Each piece of the structure is labelled with a numbering system according to:

• the level i.e. A, B or C;
• the section eg. section 8; and,
• the number of panels in that section eg. 2

Labelled parts C8.1 and C9.2

 The parts are labelled this way to avoid confusion. They all have to go together like a big jig-saw puzzle so they can be welded into place.

There was a pile of cut pieces stacked in the racks and we matched each piece to its panel. Then took stock of what needed to be cut. Pretty much most of Layer C!
OK.
So which are the easy bits to cut?
Oh, the ones that someone has already cut.....

Dan and I set about measuring and checking the angles on all the pieces and then with the remaining two lengths of 2"x2" box steel we determined an order and marked them out for cutting so that there was as little wastage as possible. Then we cut the box steel using a band saw - but not like one you use for wood, this one is mounted sideways with a pivot at one end. The weight of the saw puts downward pressure on the blade to make it cut but this is resisted by an hydraulic cylinder that you can adjust to alter the rate of the saw.

Dan monitors the band saw as we cut a section off the last piece

Once all the pieces were cut we laid them out around the lower section (layer B) to make sure they were all accounted for.

Friday Night is Date Night

Not much happening at the workshop today.

Apparently Friday nights are renowned for being quiet. Friday night is date night! The chance for busy FLGs to reconnect with their loved ones before working like mad all week!

There was only three of us in attendance this evening; Anthony, Diane (with the blue hair!) and myself.
In preparation for building the substructure for the second story we had to dismantle the whole second story, dismantle the first story then reassemble the second story again so the substructure for the bark can be built onto the framework. We managed to finish the top story. This involved unbolting each section one at a time and bringing that section down to ground level where they were stacked on the floor.

Anthony lowers a section from the second story with a forklift

Fire Effects - Glamourous job or just plumbing?

I woke up this morning with some spare time before work begins in the evening.
Because most people in FLG have day jobs only a very few attend the workshop (known as the Box Shop) during the day. The majority attend from the late afternoon from around 4pm until 11pm.

Which leaves some time for sight-seeing in the morning before work!

So in order to get the tourist sights out of the way I took the Bay Area Rail Transit (BART) downtown to the Ferry Building and went for a stroll. My walk guided me to Coit Tower a 1930s Art Deco tower that overlooks the bay.


Golden Gate Bridge in fog

Downtown SF with Trans-American pyramid in background



Inside Coit Tower

I then traipsed down the hill and caught a cablecar. These were designed around the 1870s  as a manually operated cable-driven system. The driver needs to pull a brake onto the cable to stop/start. They also only go in one direction and must be manually turned around at the end of each line.
Having fulfilled my touristly duties it was off to work.




Manual Cablecar Turnaround

Cablecar driver operating brakes

View from outside cablecar

Wednesday night is the FLG recruiting night where volunteers can come and try out the organisation and see if it suits them. There's a lot of manual labour involved. A lot of hammering, beating and welding but also some tinkering, electronics and gas plumbing. Volunteers often don't return but a steady stream of short-term volunteers provides the raw manpower to get the job done.

This Wednesday there were about 30 volunteers (old and new). We all gathered in the yard and were given an outline of the structure of FLG. The organisation is essentially divided into 3 groups - the fabricators (welding, grinding and metalwork), the Geeks (electronic lighting and control) and the Plumbers (gas fittings and fire effects).

Xylophage construction plan

Since I am interested in learning about fire effects I joined the Plumbers. They made an effort to point out that this was possibly the least glamorous part of the build and most people get bored with it pretty quickly.
We then went on to spend about 2 hours screwing together brass fittings.
The plumbers are in the process of  designing the plumbing for the mushrooms that will form part of Xylophage.
Each Mushroom will be constructed of six segments forming a mushroom cap. Each of these 6 segments will have a gas "poofer" that blows a ball of fire into the air. Since there are six poofers the Plumbers are referring to it as a "sex-a-poof". The fittings we were screwing together go into forming the six outlets from the gas holding tank.

I learned a lot about propane gas and fire safety that night. From experience FLG now only use fittings and tubing rated for propane. The cost of the parts multiplied by the cost of a lawsuit if the fire effect goes awry makes using rated fittings better value than made up fittings.
FLG also use a vapouriser to distribute the propane. When the propane gas under pressure leaves the vessel it cools due to endothermic processes and because the temperature drops the effectiveness of delivery ceases. To prevent the flames from going out they vapourise the liquid propane prior to distribution to the gas lines making the gas flow even and constant.
We then went on to test a pilot light for the sex-a-poof. This is essentially a piec of slotted steel tube at the end of a gas line. As part of the work they want the pilot lights to burn with a blue flame. That means allowing oxygen to mix with the propane. To do this they purchased a barbecue fitting called a venturi that mixes air and propane. This was fitted at the pase of a tube with a t-piece at the top that fed two pilot lights. The gas line was attached to the venturi, and the venturi to a gas bottle and regulator. Gas was released into the regulator and as many joins as possible were sprayed with soapy water to determine if there were any leaks. If a leak appears it will show up as a gas-filled bubble. There were no leaks.
A butane torch was then lit with strict instructions given not to open the propane valve until the signal. The propane was released and the pilot light worked first time!

So ended that evening's work.

1st Day on the job

I flew in to San Francisco at about 7 at night and promptly boarded the SF Underground  known as BART (Bay Area Rail Transit-celebrating 40 years in 2012!) to the Mission district where I was staying. I've arranged to stay in a few places through a site called airbnb.com where people rent out their spare room as a bed and breakfast affair. This place is located on Alabama Street in the south of the Mission. It's a typical San Francisco house - a small wooden apartment on a street filled with small wooden apartments. I have to admit the architecture is generally pretty fetching. My hosts are three 30-somethings that share this space. They are all very friendly and helpful.
I went to bed that night in my soft bed and was strangely filled with apprehension about the weeks ahead.
Where my other choices of BnB's going to be as nice? Are the suburbs safe? Exactly how do the buses work here? How will I get around? Where do I buy a bus pass? Eventually I fell into a restless sleep.
My big plan for the day was to go and see the Golden Gate Bridge - tick that one off the list.

Golden Gate Bridge

OK so the weather wasn't that great!
 Actually, everyone's been telling me "You should have been here Saturday!" apparently it was sunny.

So then, after negotiating SFs public transport system, I headed over to the FLG workshop.

I arrived around 5pm and there were a couple of people in the shop. The Box Shop is a compound down by the bay made of two teirs of shipping containers stacked one atop the other. These act as artist studios/workshops. Then there's a large communal workshop space filled with welders, rolling mills, pipe benders and assorted machinery. The entrance of the compound is a brightly painted red door with a keypad for entry. I rang the bell and was greeted by Stephanie, a "Lounge Activist and People Connector". She is originally American but is now an Australian resident and literally left for the airport later in the evening to fly to Melbourne. We joked that I'm the token Australian coming in to replace the outgoing token Australian.
Stephanie led me up to the main workshop where the FLG are constructing their artwork - Xylophage.

Box Shop First Impression

Stephanie manhandling the root-substructure for the two-story high tree stump in the background

 

Sara,  who was doing some welding at the time, broke the ice - "So, what can you do?" In a matter of minutes I was grinding some welds back and then disassembling the root substructure.

Meika, a German artist (well...actually a nero-cognitive scientist), was looking for some help to make the bark that goes on as cladding to the root substructure. "Have you ever used a plasma-cutter?" she asked me. To which I replied no."well, now's your chance" and pretty soon I was cutting 18 Gauge steel. There's quite an art to the plasma cutter. It must be applied judisciously - not too fast or the cut won't penetrate, not too slow or the cut will burn and leave a messy edge. By the end of the night I almost had the hang of it.

Mika plasma-cutting

By about 6 pm the crew fired up a barbie and for a few dollars donation a dinner of hamburger was served!

This provided enough fuel to continue for the rest of the evening.

The remainder of the evening involved measuring the bark, cutting the bark, rolling the bark into curved shapes and finally trimming the edges with the plasma cutter to give them an organic look. We packed up shop around 11pm and thankfully someone was kind enough to give me a lift home.


So ended my first day on the job.

What do you do when you graduate from Art School?

In 2012 I graduated from Art School.
"What will you do now?" came the constant refrain.
It was a difficult question. What was I going to do? 
What was likely to happen was that I would just return to my Day Job,  grind out another year of work and then one day suddenly realise that I hadn't produced anything in over a year. "You've got to keep active" I told myself.
I started trawling the net for inspiration and stumbled upon the Flaming Lotus Girls. Their work absolutely blew my mind...and what's more, it dovetailed nicely with some work I'd been doing for the last couple of years creating mechanisms and automata.

Cat-Dog

Life Support System for a Broken Heart

There's a Ringing in my Ears

 I wondered what it would be like to scale my work up and add fire effects and hydraulic movement. Would it look like the Flaming Lotus Girls' work?

 I was excited by the possibilities.

I wondered if they would consider allowing me to help out on one of their projects. Drilling down further into their website I cam across this:

"Through an open and supportive cultural environment, the Flaming Lotus Girls promote creativity, education, volunteer contribution and leadership opportunities. 

Ladies (and gentlemen) can join the FLG with no previous experience in metal working and the fire arts. There are hands-on opportunities for members to learn the techniques used in the design, building, and operation of our projects. Many work to refine these skills to further their own art.

Our collaborative process includes an open and supportive culture promoting volunteer contribution and leadership opportunities."

 I could not believe it. Not only were they willing to take on volunteers, they actively seek them out - and to top it off they use a management hierarchy based around community and volunteerism; subjects close to my heart.

I flicked off an email to FLG to query if they might happen to want some help this year with some stuff and if so would they mind having a small-fry Australian grad student to come and help them. Much to my surprise I got a reply back the next day saying they'd welcome the help and have volunteers from around the globe.

Four grant applications later I finally won a grant from the Helpmann Academy to support my trip. 

In a few days time I'll be arriving in San Francisco to become a Flaming Lotus Girl!