OnlineMetals.com - Made With Metals Ep. 1 | Fabricating a Forever Sprinter Van Roof Rack

This has been kind of a dream for about five years or so. (car engine roaring) Really the whole purpose of this vehicle is gonna be for mobile studio purposes. So, this will be able to go onsite and stay for extended periods of time and focus on projects. (car engine roaring) - Joshua, he reached out to me because he just recently bought this sprinter van. He was all excited about doing this remodel. He wanted to put a rack up on this thing there. And I was like, "Well, that sounds like a great project, you know." [Joshua] I started picking up some 3D modeling software. - I made few iterations and sent it back and forth. And I sort of red lined it saying, "All right, I need these dimensions." And these are the upper rails right here. - You can kind of see it go from your head to a physical form pretty quickly, especially when you have folks like Joe to work with. - So first thing we're gonna do is get our cut list out and cut up our aluminum. We're gonna cut up our various pieces of aluminum. They're all different lengths based on where they're being used in a particular project. (upbeat music) For this project we selected inch and a half by inch and a half aluminum square tube, 6061 alloy and the thickness is three-sixteenth of an edge. So, it's fairly thick. When you're working in technology, a lot of times you're working with your mind and not your hands. So, this is bringing back some old school skills from my farm boy days. - So, what we're gonna do is take our various pieces and lay it out on the table, put them up and fit them together. Close this corner here. So, let's just use this temporary piece here. We'll do some light clamping just to make sure everything's secure and not wandering on us. For tackling purposes and for speed. We're just gonna lay things down a hold and flush and sort of, "Man clamp them", as I say. (upbeat music) Kaiser, shop foreman an architectural elements there. So, we're bringing him in because there's more work than both me and Josh can pull off in a single day here. (upbeat music) We'll use simple fixtures like plywood plugs to basically locate all of our bars. (Sparks) Gotta get me some. (Sparks) (upbeat music) (Sparks) (drilling) Once the rack itself is fully welded out, we'll flip it over on the weld table and we'll weld the individual feet on there. (machine buzzing) We'll go ahead and put two wells on that aspect of it. 'Cause we want a little higher quality, more secure well. (machine buzzing) (upbeat music) (metal screeching) The finish on the aluminum, you know, we kind of went back and forth a little bit. It's like, "Maybe we powder coat it. Maybe we leave it raw." At the end of the day we decided to go ahead and leave it raw. (machine buzzing) When it's all said and done, you know, it kind of has a fabricated look, you know. It looks like it was made by somebody. (machine buzzing) Going to be using tiger wood. Great wood, because it has good resistance to rot, basically will last forever. (machine buzzing) (drilling) We're going to pre drill the wood and then use it as a template, to drill through the aluminum. So, basically what it's going to take each individual boards, there's 14 of them, lay them on there. Put individual shims in between every board to maintain perfect spacing all the way down the length of it. (upbeat music) One of the things that we're going to do to make sure that we can actually set the screws into the aluminum, is we're gonna apply a little bit of a lubricant to them. It's basically a sticky wax to every screw. I believe there's 420 screws, so that's a grip of screws and it should keep us busy for awhile. What we've done is we've selected basically, a number 16 drill bit and that was selected for just the right thread engagement in which it'll bite it real tight, but not snap off the screw. Stainless screws are notorious for shearing off. So, you have to find that perfect balance. - I know it was surreal to watch it actually cause it looks better than I actually thought it was going to look. You know, at the end of the day it's fairly stout. (machine buzzing) I think it weighed in about 370 pounds, but it definitely is structurally sound. And so what's most important is that you can actually have a party on there. - A little daunting to draw something and then put it into the world. But all the questions, the aesthetics, you know, once you start to see it in person, it starts to really come to life and it looks beautiful. (car engine roaring) I think it's, it's a forever rack The tiger wood that's on there is a like a bazillion hardware to last forever. The aluminum will never rot out. I think it will out last the van easily. (upbeat music)