Steel Fab | Steel and Wood Display Kiosk

Why are we here?

The steel fab of my steel and wood display kiosk was a necessity build.

In the course of putting my name out there, I decided to put myself in the public eye. I have a Painted Tree kiosk. I’ve have more ideas than time. I’m looking for a formula that works. Results are promising while not profitable. Not discouraging! We are just starting out. More blood and treasure without return, but there is hope.

The bright side is stuff sells! We’ve got a foothold into the outside world. If your reading this you learned about it from the store itself, or someone who knows about it. Whether we do business or not, it worked at least a little bit!

Steel Fab | Nuts and Bolts

This was the drawing I made for the booth. From this I know my long dimension is 9′ 5 1/4″. I took it from the inside of one wall’s trim to the inside of the trim on the other. My height of course was 8′ 3 1/4″ from the floor to the top edge of the wall. The depth is 4′ 7″ from the trim to a floor marker placed by the store.

First, if you set out to build something make a plan. Have a detailed plan that lays out exactly how things are connected. It should include and account for material thicknesses, and mounting solutions and locations. Try to avoid loosely concocted images of what it would be nice to achieve. I would not suggest “build as you go” or “vibe building” as the hippies call it.

I have good luck flying by the seat of my pants. I’ve also got a fair amount of experience. I’d be lying if I said it was faster than building to a print. Even on a simple build there is a lot to keep in your head. It’s easy to burn time doing repeated steps that would normally be done once. You roll out to weld the same project 4 or 5 times. Using a print you’ll do it once. Silly stuff will turn up and take little nibbles out of your time.

This was exactly one of those projects. What kept binding me up while doing a formal plan was over-engineering. I kept over-complicating the project. I was operating with the this general design criteria.

• it had to have enough stability to carry the weight of my heavy metal artwork
• it had to be assembled onsite and be man portable.
• it had to be modular enough it can adapt to varying products
• I also wanted to booth to be tall. – The store “limitations” allow for tall height – I wanted to take advantage of that
• I needed to try to build the steel bits out of material I already had

Not an impossible task, but also not cut and dry.

Steel and Wood

I knew very early on I wanted to incorporate wood into the design. My first plans involved corrugated steel panels, then I considered decorative steel infill panels. Both were nixed as they didn’t allow for easy MODULAR mounting after installation. I can weld or drill brackets for items I already know the size of. What would I do later? Certainly I’m not rolling a welding machine into the Painted Tree store for something as minor as putting up merchandise? Using a cutting wheel to take down the old product hangers?

Wood was going to need to be the predominant wall material. I can’t screw wood to the walls that are already there. There will have to be a frame of some sort. I wanted to show off some metal working skills so I liked the idea of fill panels of some sort. Another thing about this project was it was guided by the materials I had on hand. I dropped quite a few dollars on the wood and the paint alone. I was going to have to use the steel I had laid about.

This fabrication is built from two sizes of square tubing, some 1″ x 1/4″ flat bar, and 1″x1″ angle iron. There is a tiny amount of plasma cut sheet used for the mounting tabs holding everything together.

One of the nifty upsides to this design is it truly can be assembled and disassembled by one person. Way easier with two of course.

I made my own c-channel out of angle iron and flat bar. This is what allows the wood to be captured in the tracks.

Each wood panel is made out of a rectangle made with this c-channel on either long side. Flat bar connects those two channels together to make a panel. The wood required about 1/16th relief routing to fit easily into the created channel space.

The Wood

I could have skipped this step, but it would have added heartache to the assembly.

I didn’t illustrate it well above, but each piece of wood was fed into the track from the top. So if the first piece is/was stubborn you fought it all the way down the nearly 8′ length

.

Times the above process by 8 and you get something like this.

The infill panels are made exclusively out of flat bar and the scroll work is all bent by hand.

Here I was messing around with the layout. I often don’t know what I’ll do with scrolls from the beginning. I like to bend some common ones and play around with them. I’ll go off a general idea of what I want and go from there. They are a little sparse, but I wanted to keep the weight down a bit. It is easy to go overboard with these things.

I toyed around with placement until I came to something I like. I think it is simple, elegant, and has a good flow. I realize there is nothing new about making scrolls, its been around for ages. Someone who is leans towards the contemporary may not appreciate these tried and true lines.

The assembly, like a lot of field work was a pain in the butt. While each piece was person portable, each section still has good weight. It was a long walk! Each piece was carried from the back of the parking lot to the back of the store.

It has been haunting me that I didn’t stain the wood for the booth. I think at some point my conscience will get the best of me. I’ll have to pull each section out one at a time. I’d like to do it in store because that would be the easiest. Although I don’t know how much everyone wants to breathe oil based stains for days. How long it takes my conscience to catch up, we will see.

This is the booth in all her glory.

It is still rough around the edges, and will always be a work in progress. I like to think she’s got good bones that will support a long future ahead.