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Thanks! The only thing missing is all the NBWs holding the barrel rails in place. If I do another one, I'll add those when I build the ricks. Once they're installed it's impossible to add them.

I just received word that the new many-million-dollar expansion for the Heaven Hill Evan Williams Bourbon Experience Center is going to have its grand opening on June 15th. AND… they reinstalling my model of the Bernheim Distillery there and asked me to describe the plaque that was going on it. It was temporarily moved to the Louisville distillation plant's lobby during the construction phase so it wouldn't get damaged. I'm happy they didn't forget about it. I'm thinking that they may want a rick house model to go with it. I'm not pushing… but letting matters move at their own pace. I'm giving progress reports to their COO, and very close friend of my daughter and son in law. If he would like one, I will build it.

I hope this is not off subject, since it pertains to Kentucky bourbon production, but with your thorough research of the industry, distillery and rick house, did you discover any specific, unique, railcars as supporting bourbon production?  That you might be planning to build to support these industries?  I remember an old model magazine ad for an HO tobacco hogshead car (another Ky. industry), that l should try to find. Suggestion:. Another future industry for your RR.... tobacco warehouses as once prominent in Shelbyville and other Ky. towns, one with rail siding in place, last l looked. 

With an 8-year continuous thread, nothing is off-topic. I can only speak to Heaven Hill's process. They are the largest privately held distiller in the world so their practices are probably typical. The corn and other grain products are brought in by truck not rail. The Louisville Bernheim distillation plant produces the raw bourbon for all of their different brands. They produce other spirits at different plants throughout the country (vodka for example). The distilled raw spirits are transported by stainless steel tank trucks from Louisville to the massive barreling and ultimately bottling operation at Bardstown, KY. I took this outside their Louisville Distillery. They use their own dedicated trucks and sent multiple tank fulls a day to Bardstown.

Alcholic Beverage Tanker

The distillery was originally co-located at Bardstown until a catastrophic fire in the mid-90s. Burning alcohol was pouring into the local creek and the distillery was destroyed. They bought the old Bernheim site in West Louisville and created a state-of-the-art modern, computer controlled facility. Two years ago they finished a $50mm expansion. The company is family owned and the owners live next door to my daughter. They are understated people and the CEO drives a Buick LaCrosse. The family's owned the company since the early 1930s at the end of Prohibition.

That said, distilleries consume vast quantities of grain. On my railroad I have a number of grain handling cars to do the job. There are RR tracks in that area of Louisville and Brown Foreman has a huge facility just around the corner and may bring product in by rail.

Another update about the Rick House. My drawings and pictures were forwarded by Nick Morris to the head of Buzick IT's department. They're working on a 3D printed working model of the their rick house design to use as a developmental tool. They were impressed with what I'm doing and are offering any additional help I need. Word's getting around...

I'll be working on finishing first floor planking, 2nd level joists and 2nd level rick construction. I've just 3D printed my second barrel attempt. The first was a little too narrow and a bit too thick. The second iteration is on the machine and finished, but I haven't gone down to the shop to get it yet. I'll report of all this later.

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Last edited by Trainman2001

Finished the decking that which had joists installed and got cracking on making more ricks for the 2nd level. Buzick got back to me offering more help on the project. I printed another version of the barrel, but for some reason I have a design flaw. My top rick row is to low for the normally configured barrel. I got the length right, but the width is still to large by about 0.030". My barrels are getting long and skinny.

I also finished the Bradley project.

Here's a beauty shot of the RH with the walkways fully planked including little nail holes that you can't see. It's getting kinda pretty, ain't it?

RH Decking Progress

Here's a comparison of the first barrel I printed based on the proportions of a wine barrel found on the SU 3D warehouse, and the barrel I modified to fit into the slots better. The top barrel is the re-designed one.

RH Barrel Mods

But it still doesn't fit the top rack. Something's wrong with the design, but it's too late to fix that. Since the building's actually under construction the only barrels there would be for test. Ergo, I will not put any on the top shelf.

RH Barrel Fit Problem

And here's some pics of the finished Bradley project. The hardest thing to do (for me) was painting the crew members with their modern digital camo Nomex suits. This was a fun project that pushed my plastic build skills. The tracks are metal aftermarket items which really enhanced the build. The crew was also aftermarket from Mini-Art. With the explosive reactive armor and all the stuff on the roof it really looks like… well… a tank! The Bradley only has a three-person crew.

Bradley Complete 8Bradley Complete 6Bradley Complete 4Bradley Complete 3Bradley Complete 2

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  • RH Barrel Fit Problem
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Whenever you stop typing and leave it for several hours, the thread times out and the pictures are lost. That's what happened last night and here are the three that disappeared. The upper middle decking is in place along with nail holes throughout. You can't really see the nail holes, but I know it's there.

RH Decking Progress

Here was the barrel test with the older design on the bottom and the new in the middle. I made the barrel longer so it would stabilize on the rails easier. A real full bourbon barrel weighs over 500 pounds so gravity holds it in place.

RH Barrel Mods

But even reducing the girth by about 5%, it still won't fit the top row. Not sure why I designed it so narrow. Something's wrong. The rick height is 8 feet and I can see that the middle space is just too tall. It's way to late to fix this, but if I'm commissioned to build another, I will fix all the errors on this one. Even MTH doesn't get their loco designs right the first time out, I'm sure.

RH Barrel Fit Problem

I will also produce an assembly jig that would space all the ricks in one go. It was suggested to me by my friend Marty Schwenbau at Scale Reproductions, Inc. (US's best hobby shop). It would be a laser-cut grid that had slots to accept the ricks to position them for gluing. Or something like that.

I got six of the remaining 24 ricks built yesterday. Work will continue today.

RH 2nd Level Ricks Start

So now you're all up to date.

I just repaired the error. I found that the inner-spacing between barrel rails should be about 27 scale inches. I made the mods and here's what it looks like using a more properly proportioned barrel. I also modified the assembly jig to reflect this change. If or when I make another it will be correct.

Screen Shot 2021-06-17 at 11.50.21 AM

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  • RH Decking Progress
  • RH Barrel Mods
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  • RH 2nd Level Ricks Start
  • Screen Shot 2021-06-17 at 11.50.21 AM
Last edited by Trainman2001

The devil is in the details.  While having your distillery model displayed by a distiller! is maybe the ultimate compliment, l hope you enter these models in some O scale show contests.                     It is reinforced to me why l don't put in interiors, but race on to next structure, favoring quantity over quality, but don't approach contest detail.                                  I do hope you have time and interest in future to capture in 1/4", structures from the other   Ky. "sin" industry, tobacco mfg., as l once worked for a Louisville cigarette plant.                 

Thanks guys! Interiors are fun and do push the envelope, but sometimes they're an exercise in futility. Case in point: The Hopper house which has details on top of details that no 1:1-sized human will ever see. I guess I have a thing for interiors since I've just built two armor vehicles with full interiors, have an aircraft carrier with a detailed hangar deck, an RAF Hawker Typhoon with a complete engine, and both a Avenger and Corsair which have fully detailed engines, wheel bays, wing fold mechanisms and, in the case of the Avenger, opened up the compartment behind the engine showing its innards. I pick models based on whether they have interiors or not. It wasn't until I sat down and wrote this that it occurred to me how important it is.

Today I got 1/2 of the 2nd level installed. It went reasonably fast… learning curve. Tomorrow I put on the header boards and build the ricks for the second row.

RH 2nd Level Progress 2RH 2nd Level Progress

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  • RH 2nd Level Progress

Only had a few minutes to work today. One of the gravity weights fell off the upper level's header board and did this. I removed the broken boards and repaired it. It's now looks like a floor that had some boards replaced because it is. If I don't get any more work done this weekend, everything have a respectful and somber Juneteenth and a Happy Father's Day!

RH Whoops

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Short session interrupted by a handyman working for the local hardware store who came to measure our windows for screens. Yes! We have windows with no screens and it's a pain in the butt. The lady who built our wonderful house didn't think they were necessary and we've lived without them for 12 summers. And my wife excused my sloppy dress (my shop clothes) telling him that I worked downstairs on my hobby. And then she said, "Trains!" So after he measured the five windows upon which we are going to install screens I had to take him downstairs and blow his mind. I love the reaction when folks enter into the space on the town end and they go, "nice" and then they turn to the right and see all 40' of it and they go "WOW!" It's that "wow" that makes it all worthwhile.

Being a technical guy we spent a few minutes as I explained the 3D printing process and showed him some examples of how it all works. He grasped it immediately and really enjoyed the session.

I did create the remaining 12 ricks for the partial 2nd level and took a picture showing the floor repair job I did late on Friday. Tomorrow I will get the rest of these ricks installed. That will leave the stair well and exterior wall portions. Then I have to prepare the site for installation. The floor repair will be out of view because of where the 3rd level flooring will go.

RH Floor Repair

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Mark, if you ever find your way to Louisville, I'd be glad to have you visit too.

The second level is installed. I put a partial walkway in the center aisle of the imaginary 3rd level, leaving the unfinished edges to the planking suggesting that more planks will go there.

Before I put the walkway in, I installed all the other rick frames and got the headers in place. I used carefully placed gravity clamps to hold them there until the Aleen's set up.

RH 2nd Level Row 2 Clamps\

I installed more angles with gel CA for the 3rd level joists, installed the joists and then attached them with thin CA dribbled into the joint, and then did the planking as before with Aleen's.

RH 2nd Level Complete\

Here's a closer look at the incomplete flooring.

RH 3rd Level Partial Floor\

I'm going to install more floor brackets on the outside faces of the ricks on the side aisles. There will be flooring on one side; the side with the exterior wall framing.

I now have to get that framing finalized with Buzick so I can start construction on that. I also have to decide on what to do about the stairwell/elevator shaft. I'd love to have a picture of the rick house being built to know when and how this add-on structure is built. I have enough cut columns to build five more rick frames that I will create a crane load for the site vignette.

So… the rick part of the job is finished. It could put on the layout as a structure as it stands now, but I won't. I want to finish up the whole idea.

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  • RH 2nd Level Row 2 Clamps
  • RH 2nd Level Complete
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Just found out that I made a fundamental error. There is approx an 18" man way between each rick bay with flooring so workers can work between the ricks to move barrels in and out. I had asked Nick to review the drawings, but he didn't pick this up. Not only does this change the appearance of the model, but it would use less ricks to fill the same space. The train has long left the station to fix this now, but I will incorporate these changes into any future rick house models I may or may not be asked to build.

It's called the "catwalk". Now that I look again at the drawings, it shows up clearly and all makes sense, but I completely missed it. You can see that the space between rick bays is significantly bigger than what I was doing, and the flooring that runs perpendicular to the aisle. It looks like it's paved with plywood. I really needed a field trip to the site. It's also why there's a floor joist at every column. With my spacing it didn't make any sense to have that many joists.

Nick related this to me yesterday when he was discussing the exterior wall design. He explained that window placement aligns with the catwalks. He then went on to describe what the catwalk.

WH#1_Center Aisle

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Last edited by Trainman2001

I have an always open tab for my forum posts. When I went in tonight to add today and yesterday's work, I found that I hadn't finished Friday's post and it timed out. I'll include that content with this one.

I finalized the framing for the entry structure, had it checked by Buzick and made some changes. I then printed it out in scale to make working patterns AND make a mockup to test the fit on the site. It DOES FIT, but I pity the poor semi driver who'd have to get a truck near it for loading and unloading. I toyed with the idea to move the fire house to the other side of the street and find a new place for the Gravely Building (sell it???). I moved it graphically in Corel PhotoPaint, and found that it wouldn't fit the space. So I'm left with the rick house going where it was originally supposed to.

Here's the final design for the front details. I found out that the stair well is NOT encased in a concrete firewall. Instead, it's just fire-rated sheetrock. So I fixed the drawing to reflect this. The stairs have small landings, but there's no floors to speak of. There's a lot of blocking in the walls to support the landings and framing in the elevator shaft proper. The awning is support on structural steel. Front windows don't start until the 3rd floor.

Screen Shot 2021-06-28 at 11.46.54 AM

Here's the detail of the entry area.

Screen Shot 2021-06-25 at 11.22.45 PM

I mocked up the front gluing the scaled drawings onto some scrap Bristol Board and took as series of pics with different positions.

RH Entry Mock Up 1RH Entry Mock Up 2

I think this is the best position. The only way to really view the neat entry hall area will be from the far left back corner next to the bridges, but it will be viewable.

RH Entry Mock Up 3

This doesn't work because the trains could clip that pointing corner near the curve.

RH Entry Mock Up 4

I actually started construction on the exterior walls. I'm using the same method as I did with the bridges and the Tie Hackers project: model airplane pin-the-parts-to-the-plans. I covered the plans with some think polyfilm so the glue doesn't stick. The header pieces are scale 2 X 10, the studs are 2 X 6s. The floor joist ledges are 4 X 8s. I'm using Aleen's and occasional thin CA if it needs it. To cut all the studs for this phase I used the Chopper with my extendable depth stop.

RH Long Wall WIP 1

I then added the upper level floor joist ledge to stabilize this part. The next batch of longer studs I cut with the mini-chop saw with another of my custom depth stops. I was able to cut them in a gang of 8 so it didn't take long to cut the 40 pieces I needed.

RH Long Wall WIP 2

I glued these studs in place.

RH Long Wall WIP 3

And lastly, I glued in the lower floor joist ledge.

RH Long Wall WIP 4

Up next are the blocking and window headers. I will then cut the jack studs for around the windows. No work tomorrow. We're going to breakfast and a movie with our daughter.

I also made a new movie. Grandson #1 suggested setting the iPhone sideways on a flat car and taking a movie as if you were a passenger on said train. The iPhone 12 has a magnetic surface on its back to hold it to the MagSafe charger. I added some high powered magnets scavenged from old SoniCare toothbrush heads. I CA'd the magnets onto a Simpson Strong-Tie angle plate and duct-taped this to a nice Lionel full-scale flatcar.

This video showed up a track problem that I had on the high-line. Occasionally, my Santa Fes would derail somewhere and wouldn't actually get off the track until down at the bottom of the grade. I placed the flat car in front of the lead engine and it's kind of light, even with my iPhone hanging on it. You'll see in the video that the car derails on the high-line coming out of the long "S-curve". It vibrates like crazy and then re-rails itself either on the bridge (since the track has guard rails) or when it hits the Ross switch adjacent to the town.

The camera hit the floor twice. The first is when the train makes the first full circle. I took the curve coming off the grade too fast and the magnets let go that were holding the phone. I used some more duct tape to hold the phone more securely and ran around three more times. Each time the car derailed at exactly the same spot and re-railed itself until it didn't. The last time, the car derailed more completely and the camera was again tossed on the floor. You can see the hand of god coming down to rescue the phone. My phone has a glass protector screen which cracked, but the real screen did not. I replaced the protection screen today and all is good.

It was a good proof of concept and made an interesting video. I found the spot on the track causing all the trouble. It's an exposed rail joiner pin that creates a pretty good "bump" when the trains hit it. I'll repair it by filling the space with solder so it won't cause trouble any longer. I was unaware that the train was actually not tracking. The video really showed it.

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  • RH Entry Mock Up 1
  • RH Entry Mock Up 2
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  • RH Long Wall WIP 1
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P&PRR iPhone Side Mount Movie - SD 480p
Last edited by Trainman2001

Thanks Mark! That's the way I'll do it!

With little shop time both today and yesterday, I did get more work done on the long wall. The blocking between the studs is time consuming since due to slight variations in placement, I had to hand measure and cut each piece. If a piece was too long or short, I would first try it in other spaces to see if they were a little bigger and would take the larger piece. As I went along I got better at hitting the mark first time. I used Aleen's for the bigger spaces, but just drenched the small pieces with thin CA and then some accelerator. After doing the blocking on one one side, I took the piece off the building surface and started putting window headers on the reverse side. I tried the entire wall on the building. It's pretty straight and stood up by itself for the photos.

This image was taken after I turned the wall over. The floor ledges blocked access to the spaces where I needed to put the headers thus necessitating turning it over.

RH Long Wall Wip 5

Here's the wall in place for a photo test.

RH Long Wall Test 1

When the wall is glued in place I'll put up some temporary diagonal braces to hold the wall plumb, just like in full-size practice. For the jack studs under the windows, I gang-cut them on the mini-chop saw a tiny bit long and sanded them to an accurate fit so they didn't put too much stress on the glued in blocking. This is not hard work, just a bit repetitive. I made an error. I wanted the floor joist for the side aisle to sit on TOP of  joist ledge. Instead, the ledge is level with the top of the adjacent columns, So I'll have to use my angle brackets on both sides to hold the joists, not just on the column side. I'll mark their locations in the ledges and glue the angles on before gluing the wall in place.

Building this wall built up my confidence substantially and I have no doubt that the entire entry area will work out right.

Tomorrow's session might be curtailed. I have to take my daughter and son in law to the airport and then have a haircut later in the afternoon. Probably get an hour or so in the shop.

I have a pet peeve with my new MacBook Pro. They've made the track pad so darn big that my palms keep hitting it and make the writing do strange things like jump up a paragraph, delete the picture, etc. I have no idea why Apple felt it was necessary to have a track pad that's 6 1/4" wide! The one on my old MBP worked just fine. I've complained about this on the feedback form they asked me to complete. They asked… I answered!

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Hope everyone had a nice Fourth. Ours was very quiet since our Louisville kids are in Greece. Youngest grandson is in sleep away camp. We just chilled, made rack of lamb on the barbie, and had some cocktails to commemorate the event.

The long wall is done. Didn't work in the shop over the holiday weekend. I had to add another floor ledge below the first one to align with the proper floor height. Again, this will be something that won't happen again IF I'M TASKED WITH MAKING ANOTHER.

My framing is a bit unconventional, but no one will care. It just looks complex and that's okay.

I glued the angle brackets to the ledges while off the model which was much easier to do. I marked their location based on where the brackets will go onto the existing rick structure. The new ledge inpinges on the window openings.

RH Long Wall Complete

In looking at this image I realize that more brackets are needed in the front since there will be floor brackets there as well since there is the open space at the front just like there is on the first floor.  This open space is necessary to move barrels from the side aisles to the elevator lobby. There is a "barrel lifter" device that used to manhandle the barrels (weighing over 500#) to and from the barrel rails on the rick frames. I will add the brackets to the ricks tomorrow. The long wall is not yet glued in position, but that's just around the corner. I only have 17 pieces of 8" X 10" scale stock left for the remaining floor joists… and I'm not buying any more.

RH Long Wall Floor Brackets

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Here's an image of the barrel handler.

Barrel Ejector 5Barrel Ejector 1Barrel Ejector 6

Short session today, but got some progress. I installed the side wall and got the flooring started for the 2nd Level Side Aisle Flooring. Once the joists were installed the long wall got much more stable. I will add some 3rd level flooring and joists which with further stabilize the wall.

RH Long Wall & 2nd Lvl Side Aisle 1

Like the lower level brackets, those on the upper level of the long wall are one floor plank thickness too high. I made the same mistake on the 2nd level brackets and broke them off and reglued them to the proper height. I didn't do that with the 3rd level. They were glued too well.

RH Long Wall & 2nd Lvl Side Aisle 2RH Long Wall & 2nd Lvl Side Aisle 3

So to make the floor level without much fuss I will just take a notch out of the joists so they align properly. I'll do that tomorrow. The joists in this pic are not glued.

RH Long Wall & 3rd Lvl Side Aisle Joists

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It must be and I'm not going to build one. Wouldn't be appropriate to be in a rick house under construction.

The long wall is fully in place as is the 2nd and partial 3rd-level aisles. I made notches in the 3rd-level joists to fix the misalignment. I started building the front wall and made corrections on the floor ledge positions so all the joists would set on top of the ledge, not next to like is came out on the side wall. "Live and Learn…"

This shows the notching to level the joists. Sorry for the odd camera angle. I also had to splice two of the joists from the shorter 8 scale foot ones to complete this last bit. I used 45° scarf joints to make a nice, clean joint. I don't have many 8 footers left to make some ricks-under-construction for site decoration.

RH Rt Joist Fix

Here are some images of the completed side aisle and long wall.

RH Rt Side Comp 2

The wall is surprisingly strong and stable now that the flooring and joists are tying it back to the main structure.

RH Rt Side Comp 1

I'm proud of myself. I remembered to set back that lone vertical support in front to accommodate the front wall's sole plate. There will be more supports in the foreground to support that front flooring on the next level up.

RH Rt Side Comp 3

I overlaid the entry hall's plan on the front wall framing since I needed to align them properly. Lying in bed last night I realized that I already made a possible, but easily correctable, error. Notice the interrupted top header pieces. I separated them around the front window openings. This is wrong! Those windows appear on the entry hall front wall, NOT the main building's wall. The header will be continuous on the front wall. Since nothing's glued in place yet, it's a really easy thing to correct. Glad I was thinking about it. Gang cut a pile of vertical 2 X 6 studs in prep for building this wall. Work will start again on Monday.

RH Front Frame Start

On another topic: We had a Renewals by Andersen rep at the house this week. We're getting some window work done. Eventually it came down to showing him the shop and railroad. He mentioned that there was a company selling a CO2 laser cutter/engraver for under $500. He gave me the web link. I checked it out. It's not large: 8" X 12" cutting area and 1/8" depth capacity, and would require water cooling and ventilation.

I ran this by my friend who runs the AMIST (Advanced Manufacturing Institute of Science and Technology) at Univ. of Louisville. He said not to get it. These cheap machines are difficult to set up. But more importantly, AMIST is again open to the public and has spectacular laser machines. It costs $5.00 per session plus the cost of materials. If you recall, I posted about my visit there just before the COVID mess started and it was shut down. Now that it's open, I will do my laser cutting there. It's a wonderful resource and UofL's facility is one of the best in the country. It was created as a joint venture between GE Appliances and UofL. Part of the deal was it had to be available to the community. It's one of the best Maker's spaces in the USA.

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Had a nice long session today and got a good start on the front wall which includes the inside wall of the entry hall. I've learned a lot building the long wall and this one's coming out much more precisely. I also constructed the two flights of stairs since I needed them to precisely located where the ledges need to be to support the stair landing joists. After cutting and loading the first level studs I installed the inner wall drywall leaving the door opening. I then placed a strong straight edge to align all the blocking that goes in between the

RH front Wall Start

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I had to stop writing last night and posted to keep from losing the picture. I have one more to add from yesterday's session.

I almost finished the first row of blocking for the wall and built the stairs which you can see lying above the wall. I used the drawing to determine the stair lengths and then used the stairs themselves to determine where the landing joist ledges had to go. Hopefully, it will all align properly when I start erecting the four sides. The stairs are a laser-cut set from Rail Scale Models (nee Rusty Stumps). They also include a fixture to align the stringers. Even with that, it's a bit finicky to use. After gluing in the treads with Aleen's and giving it a few moments to stability, I liberally applied thin CA to the underside to really lock the steps into position.

When looking at the this image you have to realize that part of this wall will be exposed to the outside, and the middle section is the back wall of the entry hall. I had to keep visualizing this as I was laying in the studs, since the exterior wall stud pattern is different than the entry hall walls. And, since it's really a building under construction, doors and windows are not there… just their studded rough openings. Using the straightedge as a guide really helped getting the blocking nice and straight. Should have done this on the long wall… oh well… there's always the next one.

RH Front Wall Blocking Start

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  • RH Front Wall Blocking Start

Thank you! It certainly is a lot of sticks. I fact, I ran out of 2 X 6s and ended up using up as many scraps as I could find. I got the inner front wall completed today. Still have to add the floor joist ledges. Speaking of joists, I don't have any of the 9 footers left either. I'm going to laminate some stuff to give me something that will work. I don't want to order more wood since it's an $11 minimum shipping charge. If I get an order to build another one, I'll better know what is excess and what I ran out of.

I got the 2nd level completed and tried it out next to the structure. The floor heights line up nicely. I really worked that. The 2nd detail picture shows the upper level sheetrock, but it's not glued in yet. The picture of the trial fit shows that wall glued in place. I cut the sheetrock in a single piece for the upper level, unlike the pieced job on the first layer. In the first image I still needed to put the header over the door and the filler pieces on the elevator door header.

RH Frt Wall Upper Lvl Start

In this image you can see that all the wood is in place.

RH Frt Wall 2nd Lvl fin

You can sort of see how nicely the existing floors line up with some of the front wall aspects. That lumber sticking out of the sheetrock is the ledge for the stairway landing joists.

RH Frt Wall Trial Fit

Work will stop for this week. We're heading to Chicago tomorrow to pick up #2 grandson from sleep away camp. I'll be back in the shop on next Tuesday or Wednesday.

Y'all have a great weekend.

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  • RH Frt Wall Upper Lvl Start
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  • RH Frt Wall Trial Fit

Hey guys! I'm back! The trip to Chicago was interesting in that it was quite different. We went there basically to pick up our #2 grandson from his drop off from sleep away camp in Wisconsin and then send him off to to a three week trip to Israel with kids from the same camp. He was supposed to go last summer, but it was waylaid by COVID. We first met him at my daughter's, husband's, sister's in laws. His brother in law and sister live in LA. His brother in law's brother is famous! He is one of the two-man team that wrote and produce Game of Thrones for HBO. He won and EMMY for this and got very, very rich. He's also an accomplished rock and classical guitar player. We didn't meet him, but spent a day with his parents and got lots of interesting stories about GoT, it's production and cast.

Chicago is looking more and more llke Dubai every time we visit. There are four 900+ foot skyscrapers being built at the same and many more on the books. I don't know who's investing in all this real estate. It looks kind of like a bubble, especially since 40% of the people who were forced to work from home during the plague are choosing to continue to do so.

This is One Chicago on State Street. It's rental and condo. You can get a studio for the low, low price of $1.6mm and it goes up from there to $28mm. I'll stick to Louisville. If I was rich, I'd love to live in downtown Chicago. It's one of my favorite cities. I liken it to NYC without the attitude. How'd like to be that crane operator that has to go up into that thing every morning? The boom is in the clouds. In the early 80s, I watched a skyscraper go up right next to the building in which I was working. It was fascinating watching the guys working on high steel. But the creme de la creme was watching them take the tower crane apart. The crane lowers itself to the ground one segment at a time. One of the steel workers, who actually started dating one of the secretaries in our building, actually was swinging on the little winch that hangs below the crane mechanical base. He was showing off. Below him was 500 feet straight to the ground with nothing to impede his fall. NO FEAR!

The crane has hydraulic jacks below the top that jack the crane up a few feet so the segment below can be slid out from under the crane. That where this little winch comes in. It's on a track so the segment can be moved out over the street. The main crane then grabs the segment and lowers it to the street. The jacks then lower the crane to the next segment and the cycle begins again. It is astounding to me that more of these cranes don't crash to the street. BTW: the highest paid job on the site is the guy who drives that.

Chicago 21 Chicago One Tower

I finally got back into the shop today. I got a lot done on the front of the entry hall. I also made an error which I'll correct the next time. I opened up the wall for the elevator in the 2nd level. There shouldn't be an opening since this is the outside wall. The inside gets the opening on each level which i did correctly. Since I ran out of scale 2 X 6 and used 3 X 6s instead. Won't matter to anybody but me.

In this image I've flipped the wall over to put in the blocking from this direction so it will come out flush with the front timbers. I also have to install the floor ledges on this side. I trimmed the long from wall so it fits perfectly on the base plate. In the wrong area that I highlighted, I'll be filling this space with studs. There's a lot of blocking in the front wall and I have to locate the other half of the stair ledges so they're at the same height.

RH Entry Frt Wall WIP

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  • Chicago 21 Chicago One Tower
  • RH Entry Frt Wall WIP

Myles, I'm glad you had a good trip to Chicago and your grandson got to where he was supposed to.  What are they going to do in Israel? Sightsee or do they have a mission or task to perform?

I see what you mean from the photograph about the comparison to Dubai.  I never knew how they moved the cranes up and down, but knew there had to be some mechanism to it and it is certainly a skilled job.  I'm looking at the 4-story buildings in the foreground and the contrast with the new in the city.  I've never been to Chicago or New York for that matter.

You will get back in the swing of things finishing up the rick house.  It's good to see you back at it.

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