Who Cuts up their Brand New Toys - We Do

Now that the shifting the containers back and forth millimeters is over (I hope) and they are bolted together, we were able to get inside and mark out where some of the cuts need to be in the container walls and START cutting.

Kyle started cutting first and it went pretty quickly. I did a few spots on this first panel but it didn't pop out quite as easily as I had anticipated. It definitely took a little pushing and shoving before it let go and gained its freedom.

The second wall we decided to do from the same side since we had everything set up, lights and we wouldn't need to cut through some big hooks that are integral at the top and bottom along the walls.

This probably wasn't the best idea as it was more difficult to cut the second wall and was tricky to get it to pop through the first hole. Lesson learned, cut each wall on its own side and don't try to cut corners (hehe). It was also pretty stinky in the enclosed space so we set up a fan at one end pushing out dirty air and small fan at the other pulling in fresh air. Made a huge difference while we were in there cutting.

We also weren't sure how big a panel to cut at each go. We wanted to minimize cuts to save time and energy (the plasma cutter uses A LOT of power) but also wanted to make sure we could handle the panels once they were free. 

Here is Kyle in a blaze of glory cutting through one of those big bolts, its a dramatic undertaking. In the containers there is a seam in the walls every 3-4 ft or so. We thought we would start with this dimension and if it was manageable we would cut bigger pieces next time. HaHaHa, that sized panel was more than enough, which sharp edges, heavier than expected and so unwieldy, we are sticking to this size and not going any bigger. 

Here is a shot of the first panels cut out on both sides. Its nice we can now walk through to the next container. This will be key when we move to the second floor where we can't jump over to the other one quite as easily as we can on the ground floor;-)

Thought I would just show Kyle's cool welding helmet. Its one of those that has a bright screen until the welding arc lights up at which time it automatically dims and then clears as soon as the arc is gone. And the flames are pretty wild.

And you can see inside it has settings for sensitivity to light which came in useful as the arc on the plasma cutter isn't as strong as when welding so it would only dim about 50% of the time so we reset it and it worked perfectly.

This week - cut, cut, cut, cut,cut, cut, cut...you get the picture.