OnlineMetals.com - Made With Metals Ep. 3 | Transforming Steel Into a Timeless Model Cabin

[Joe] The idea was to potentially in someday when I have a little bit of money to build a cabin on my property. Like most anything that I do, I try to sort of plant the seed and water it over time to see if it can come to anything. (suspenseful music playing) - [Jon] You know, initially, you don't want concepts to be constrained. You wanna kinda harvest good ideas out of crazy, you know? Cause there's truth in some of that crazy. - [Joe] Jon Falcon's been a friend of mine for quite some time. Seemed like it's just a natural pick for somebody to work with to design these concepts for these cabins. - [Jon] These concepts are kind of pushing the limit of engineering. - [Joe] The idea was to go ahead and to see if we can take one of them to the next level. Which is sort of, you know, taking it from a sketch to an actual model. See if it should actually exist in reality or not. - [Joe] You know, the idea of making this architectural model out of metal was for longevity, you know. I personally don't wanna make something that has no staying power. (machine roaring) - [Jon] The more typical process would have been to use balsa or pine or some type of very softwood. For our scale model, we've got, you know, materials that are very hard. They require laser cutting and precision drafting. (drill roaring) - What's the point of making something at all, if it's gonna be garbage and in a short period of time. (tools roaring) - [Joe] We had a couple of people help us out with this build, because like usual it always takes more than just two people, a couple of days. (energetic music playing) We had Brandon help us out with the welding aspects on this thing. (tool roaring) (spray spritzing) We also had Lahra from architectural elements, come give us a hand. - [Lahra] I'm gonna go evenly, continuous. - [Joe] She's one of our expert finishers. The easy way to do this would probably have been just sort of laser cut steel plates for the wall. But Jon had suggested that we sort of layer the steel. Basically cut rings, so to speak and stack them up. (hammer pounding) - The bonus of that would be you get all this texture, all this inherent kind of, you know, layering. That process is much more difficult, more intensive. - [Joe] Looks like more effort went into it. And it certainly was a bit more effort, that's for sure. - [Jon] We ran into a series of problems where things were distorted by heat and inconsistencies and something that is, you know. Constant expose to... (Twinkling sounds begins) Did you get bored midway? (Joe laughing) - Sorry. - [Joe] So when we bonded all the pieces together, we ended up having to sort of call an audible and do things a little bit differently than we were initially thinking. And end up sort of screwing the thing together rather than dowel pinning it all the way through. (low bass music playing) - [Jon] Like a puzzle piece. The veneer that we adhered was an attempt to blur those lines of indoor and outdoor, right. - Sort of that inside-outside look. - Yeah, that's what I just said. (intense music begins) - [Joe] As everybody knows, adding lighting to something makes it cooler, right. (jazz music playing) They actually sanded off the very tip of the LEDs as well. Which is sort of a technique to get the lights sort of diffuse out. Cause add another layer of difficulty and interest, yeah? - As if we didn't need one more, right? It's like let's do metal, let's do glass, and some casual lighting. - [Joe] Yeah, how long could it take to make an architectural model? And it's only this big, right? - Oh, well. - Eh, that was hard. (techno music begins) - [Jon] You know, one of the values of a scale model is that we get answers to a problem that in a digital space are sometimes hard to get answers to. - [Joe] It was cool to sort of visualize it and see it all come together. I feel like I'm definitely more inclined to actually make the real version of it. - [Jon] It takes a certain level of ambition to make something out of steel, the first time. - [Joe] Part of the reasoning for making this thing out of steel, for me, is the idea that, you know, 60 years from now this thing could still exist. Whereas, if they was, you know, made from paper or balsa it would pretty much have started some architects fire by then, you know? - And when you're this invested in time and labor, you know, more apprehension to throw it away. - Yeah. (both laughs) - Exactly saying, it's like, well, this actually has some inherent value here. It's like. - Yeah. - At least I should recycle this thing. - Yeah, my grandkids should probably play with this. (techno music playing)