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Old Posted Feb 2, 2012, 8:39 PM
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plinko plinko is offline
them bones
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Santa Barbara adjacent
Posts: 7,388
^I've only done one other residential canopy out of steel and it was years ago. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of it and the firm is now defunct so I likely never will.

My approach to these is to use standard steel sizes (bar stock, tubes, beams) and connection rods wherever possible, but the designs of all the components are always custom. My first job out of school was at a firm that did alot of these types of things on commercial buildings and so I got pretty good at detailing steel. In my experience, while a factory applied finish is desired, these things tend to be far too complicated to construct in full and then set in place. There are just too many adjustments to be done in the field with welds and fitting and whatnot. So they are usually delivered just primed and then field painted. On that last orange canopy I did for GNC the contractor (cheap bastard) really pissed me off because he had it hand painted. It looked like hell so I made him do like 4 coats. It still doesn't look right but unfortunately the owner didn't care. I'm probably the only person that will ever notice.

BTW, rolling is absurdly expensive for something like this but occasionally you can get a client to pay for it. Using a little bit of geometry by rotating flat pieces you can get pieces that appear to curve or have some fluidity though.

SLO, I'm curious...have you worked long enough yet to have one of your projects demolished?
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