Legends Park-fabrication-the cut out

So after i got my feet wet building the fence, mark and i went down to southern steel to pick out materials. we needed 10" pipe for the center of the bat (everything will essentially be built out from this piece) sheet material, both for the music notes as well as sheet to skin the bat, and angle iron to construct the frame inside the bat.

below is a photograph of a shearing machine, basically the length of a car, that can cut through a 1/4" sheet of steel in the blink of an eye. i find the writing on it to be quite amusing.

after getting loaded up we head back to the studio to unload and get to work. i have drawn to scale each of the notes and cut them out to use as a template- then traced them onto the sheet of steel with a limestone stick. i'm sure these have a proper name because they are sold by the box and are an absolute essential in a welding shop.

after laying out the notes, i proceeded to cutting them out with a cutting torch. very tricky and tedious stuff. it's hard enough to draw a straight line, but to then do it with a roaring torch is quite different. pretty exciting though.

did i mention it's the middle of summer?

when using a cutting torch there's a good bit of metal that melts and curls up on the back side of whatever you're cutting. so after cutting the notes out, there was a good bit of clean up involved to remove the undesirable; grinding and wire brushing. it doesn't sound like much but it turns out to be hours of back breaking work. hours and hours.

R - E - S - P - E - C - T

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