So its early and im bored so i figured i would post up a topic about the kind of work i used to do before the economy took a shit and my workplace went out of business. Careerbuilder.com and monster.com havent been leading anywhere so i figured i would see if maybe there are some new opportunities out in the work place that my fellow s2ki'ers may have leads on. For around 2 yrs up untill this past February i had worked my way from the bottom to the taking over and running the entire work shop for Pinnacle Door/Window Gallery here in mooresville. When I started, we were a 3 man workshop team, and 1 manager and cad/cam designer and cnc programmer. We were building custom, one off doors/sashs/sideslights/jambs and entryways for the abundance of $800,000+ homes in the area that wanted a one of a kind doorway to set their home apart from their neighbors. The majority of the work we did was done out of an african mahogany which is a very dense wood, with a dark reddish tone and very deep and sometimes exotic grain patterns. We did do a few "special" orders in species such as red and white oak. quarter sawn white oak, spanish cedar, cherry, and walnut.
After around my one yr mark at the shop and due to varying circumstances i was left to run the entire shop alone, and was averaging over $40,000 in production. A normal like basic sapale door and jamb was around $2500 to $3000 with the most expensive single door entryway i did was over $20,000. My job details included, ruff cutting parts to size/width designated, then running them on a anderson exxact cnc router, assembling the cnc machined parts, doing all the fine/detail sanding, installing the glass and any other add on detail parts, and installing all the hardware in preparation for the products to be installed by one of our installers, then however any staining/finishing work of the wood which was required for the wood not to rot or warp was sub contracted out and done on site after the install. Heres some pictures of the machine i ran and some of the work i did before George W. ushered in this global economic crisis and a lot of us are left without work. Sorry for the low quality cell phone pics but i thought this would be something cool/different for everyone to see, and hey maybe theres someone with a need for this type of tradesman. I got a few more months to look around but then it may be back to finish the engineering degree if things dont start to turn around for the building industry in the area

anderson exxact 2 head cnc router running to tollerances within .003"


quarter sawn white oak door and jamb for a home in Asheville sold for over $7500


one of the two of walnut doors that is the entryway for a japenese style home in Asheville sold for around $8500 i believe. what a pita walnut is to try and make doors out of. due to knots and warping made this we very difficult piece to make since it was 10" tall and the customer wanted it knot free and walnut is a very knot filled material. and add on the fact that the doors are 2.25" thick and the thickest material we could get was around 1" thick and 6 inches wide the boards had to be surfaced and leveled out to be as flat as possibly so i could glue 3 boards face to face to get the thickness i needed and then had to be glued on the sides to get the widths i needed. this was the last walnut doors we did due to how much work is involved with using it.


the grand daddy of all doors the $20,000 jamb/door/sash for the personal estate of one of our top customers owner of Patrick Joseph custom homes. at Pinnacle we offered 2 different door thicknesses, either a 1.75" or 2.25" were our standards and depended on the customers wants/needs/budget. Well for this truely one of a kind door he wanted it over 10' tall at its peak just over 5' in width. He also asked we design and build it to be 3.5" in thickness and have 3 working breezway doors within that door that would be glass on the inside working cabinet doors and screens on the outside that could be opened up to let the breeze in without opening this massive door. although it felt lite opening it after is was lag bolted through 6 super heavy duty hinges hung to a special frame work built into the house to support the weight and stress of such a heavy swinging mass. the door alone weigh in at over 600lbs and to make it and achieve the 3.5" thinkness the customer wanted i built two identical 1.75" doors. once i had the two assembled they each went back on the router because they were too wide to fit through the wide belt sander that normally was used when surfacing down the final assembly to bring the slight inconsistency's of the various parts thicknesses down to a smooth, uniform surface throughout the finished piece. these were too large for the widebelt and after trying to sand them out perfectly leval and smooth enough for the two to be glued back to back seamlessly. after that task proved too daunting my boss wrote a program that allowed our cnc router to surface down the doors in prep for them to be glued together. then also due to the longevity this door will be used and weight of the door hanging on its hinges and it going to be pulling itself apart at the glue joints if built and hung like any ordinary door, plans for an internal steel skeleton that would be sandwiched in the middle of the two doors with the hinges thought they looked like they were just screwed into wood were actually bolted to .375" thick steel plates welded on the edge of the laser cut steel skeleton that we drew up and subbed out to a metal shop. when the steel skelton arrived the door went back on the router to be groved out so that two doors would glue together and look as thought it was just 1 door and the steel structure is hidden inside supporting it. well here it is lol i wish i had more pictures to show all the details but the was a really cool def one of a kind piece. constructed of sapele


heres just a random sash for above a door in an entryway. nothin too exciting just a lot of time consuming intricate miter cuts for all the glass stop. dont know what our retail on one of these alone would be, probly between $500 to $1000 for one like this


and last is a bi-folding, we always called them accordion doorways that usually consisted of at least 3 doors and all the doors in the unit would fold up and tuck away along one side of the entryway. this one my boss designed to be our display at a trade show back in '08. He designed the tree image that flowed over the 4 doors, and this was the only doors we ever produced that were 100% complete as is staining/finishing was done by us in house for the show. it sold to a custom at the show for a little over $14,000 and was constructed of sapele



my old boss Tim showing off his design skills lol


this is how the bi-fold hinge system worked and folding up the doors to one side



thats just a few samples i have of some of the projects that really stood out among the probly 300 or so doors i produced while i was there. largest single door project is that big baby you see above thats now in a home out in the penninsula yacht club in cornelious. the largest quantity of doors for a single customers home was John Fox, the coach of the carolina panthers. i made 38 custom doors for his house and god i dont evem rememeber what his bill was. i want to say it was over $250,000 just in custom doors. i wish i had that kinda money lol.

so theres my book for the morning, now i wonder how many of you out there were bored enough to have read all that. must of been as bored as i was to spend my morning writing

 

and to the haters out there i hear yelling take your daddys car home, sorry buddy i may be 24 thought i look about 19 but i worked my ass off the s2000 was my first big purchase i made myself. i wanted one since my buddys dad picked up a new bb '01 back when i was in high school that he would let us take out. well i knew i had to have one so i randomly got on auto trader back in nov, and purchased my S within 24hrs on getting on AT to look and see what was available. well ive now bought myself almost everything i want for the car short of putting together a turbo setup on k-pro that i want to do as soon as i can start making some real money out there again. sucks that now the only places hiring are fast foods and retail so looks like i'll be sittin on my ass cus unemployment pays me more to sit at home that a full time job at one of those places would

 

so its time to find a new challenge out there if anyone has anything. from what ive seen is its definitely an employers marker due to the overwhelming number of those without a job that continues growing larger by the day. jobs that are "available" that i have seen are paying way less than jobs that require someone with very specific trade skills. i know how much im worth to a company and i may have to start at the bottom and work my way to the top again. people that were potential buyers of the products i produced to were blown away to see someone as young as i am running an entire operation like that, and producing not only the quantity to keep our business profiting but more importantly was the quality of every project i had my hands on. i had over a million dollars worth of equipment at my disposal and my former boss who was like the friggin smartest guy ive ever met in my life behind me, i had it made untill the housing/construction market virtually has come to a stand still

 

I didn't read all of that, but I see you are out of a job.
I know it's a tough time. This economy is getting better, I just hope Obama doesn't screw with small businesses too much as I am in a small family electrical contracting business myself.

Good luck bro...

 

thanks rich

 

I didn't read all of it. But I enjoyed the pictures. Great craftsmanship. Good luck finding a job.

 

I actually did read all of it. I wish you the best of luck finding a new job. I enjoyed the pictures of the work you guys did. Very impressive. Two things. First of all as much as I don't care for George W. the current economic crisis has very little to do with him, I fear you have downed some of Mr. Obama's Kool-Aid. Secondly I would love to know the actual total of John Fox's door bill because that monstrosity was built across the street from my parent's house. That thing is outrageous but consistent with all the craziness that was going on in Charlotte at the time. Nothing like buying a 2 million dollar house and bull dozing it to make way for your super mansion.

 

yeah that building site was pretty crazy. that was one of the few houses i got to go out to and help install them cus there was so much work to do out there. the majority of his doors were identical half round bi hinge pairs broken up into four large panels of glass in each door. it wasnt so much the style of his doors that ran his bill up it was the type of glass he chose. with all of the exterior doors getting lowE glass which means there is a special coating on the exterior pane of glass that blocks part of the suns light and heat that passes through. works kinda like a tinted window only u cant see the tint. his other doors for his media room all took one way mirrored glass and like a 2% tint, blacked out interior glass to effectively block out just about all light comming into his movie theater. i know that stuff wasnt cheap. out of everything i made there his media room doors are the only ones i ever did that had IG "insulated glass" that was one way mirrored and tinted like that

 

Dam adam, you are talented. man i wish you the best of luck finding work. times are tough,but it could be worse. i think things are going to change here before long.

 

ever try finding work around fort bragg area?

i know the economic downturn did not hurt the area down here.

I think due to the fact that the people in the army coming home from iraq frequently and they have money saved up and when they go home they spend it all i.e. for cars... buying a house.... etc....