THE COMPETITION VIDEO IS HERE!!
It looks better if you go to youtube,
and watch it in high quality
HJK MASONRY
Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome.
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HURRICANE DAVE GETS ASSHOLE OF THE YEAR AWARD,
FROM EYEBALL.
| FLICKBALL |
| HURRICANE DAVE |
| STEVE MILLER |
| IRRITATING THE MEN |
| THE BONEHEAD DOCUMENTARY |
| MESSING WITH TOM |
| PORTA-JOHN MAN |
| MISCELANIOUS 1 |
| MISCELANIOUS 2 |
| FREEZING PAUL |
| THE WINE CELLAR We're taking a 12' x 12' chunk of floor and turning it into a bad ass wine cellar. | |
| After laying out the walls, we'll stock it up with some block. |  |
| after we were scaffold high we'll build scaffold and stock again. |  |
| Now that the walls are up, we'll install some heavy duty lamb beams which will support everything. |  |
| Inside 3 of the caticornered piers, we'll install ventilation ducts to keep the cellar at 58 degrees. 2 supply, one return. |  |
| Now we'll make a pendulum out of plywood to hold the saw, rotate, and cut our arches flawlessly. |  |
| Now we'll construct our barrels, hang them, and secure them into place. |  |
| Now we install the cross-spines. |  |
| A lot of cross framing will also be used. |  |
| We begin installing the ribs. |  |
| Now we cover it with flexible plywood, with screws and culk. |  |
| Wayne didn't leave enough wire for the light so he has to crawl in there and feed some more! |  |
| We now install the tar paper. |  |
| And then the metal lath. |  |
| Now we trowel on fiberglass reinforced mapei planitop 12 (9600 psi). Base coat then scratch coat. |  |
| It made one hell of a mess on the floor. |  |
| Now we can begin to lay brick! |  |
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 Now THIS is a genie boom!! |  This is the base of a MONSTER!. |  Think your rent is high? This bad boy costs about 3 grand... A DAY!! |  Each of those weights weighs 10 tons. Theres 14. |
That's Eyeball, ladies and gentlemen.
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| The piece of steel. (to be hung like that) | Cody, Mr. Leeroy, Big Jimmy, and Me. | Nick klein and Me. | Me and Tucker | The whole croud | Me and Chuck Leftridge | Alex Benevitez, Jose and Me | The PIG! |
Last winter, we did Hopkins.
| Hopkins was a big job. At its busiest time we had 22 scaffold units + accesories. (cranes, bridges, safety rails, etc.) Most were Hydro-Mobile, but we had some Fraco and swing scaffolds also. (I know, I know, They were a last resort, trust me.) To run all this (not including tractors) took 65 gallons of gas a DAY. And tractors, at one time we had 3 gradalls, 2 small 15 foot boom lifts, and a propane lift. Needless to say, a lot of shit needed to be moved. But enough about that, here look at some pix. | ||||
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KISS MY ASS, HOPKINS!
ABOUT MESome things im known for among the company. | |
Helping Chuck Klein layout Herringbone windows for The Hampton Inn in Easton. | Not too spectacular, but I thought it was neat that a laborer was helping with that. And it wasn't him doing all the brainwork while I got him shit either. It was 50/50 Everything. Seriously. |
Developing a mathematical formula to match exisisting brick | We were doing an addition to Universit of Maryland DC, The boss (Charles Deickman) said to me: "The existing brick are 70% red 25% pink and 5% black. And we need to match it." A little While later I found him and said "Hey, there's 10 bricks in a tong. (A tong is a tool you use to pick bricks up.) If we randomly put 7 red bricks in every tong, and alternate between 7 red and 3 pinks, and 7 red and 2 pinks and a black, mathematically it would work out." So I mixed the 3 colors of brick together into cubes according to this formula, and the building came out beautifully. you couldn't tell it was an addition. |
Designing a core drilling jig | Sounds easy, but when a special and very unusual arch was dreamt up by an architect which required wire to actually be ran through holes in each brick, They needed a core drilling technique that would have the holes preciseley in the same place in each brick. And they called on me. Then when the drill could only drill halfway through the brick, this made it even harder. Now the brick had to be drilled, flipped, and drilled again with the core drillings meeting exactly. Now if the holes were in the center of the brick, it would have been fairly easy. But all the holes had to be off to the side and still meet. Now you can understand why such a complicated jig was needed. |
SOME THINGS IM INFAMOUS FOR AMONG THE COMPANY! | |
MAKING A BRICK DICK, AND GIVING IT TO THE BOSS | Contrary to what it would appear to be, it was not a time consuming undertaking. It was strategically worked in to avoid any interfearance with production. But you should have seen the faces of the management when it was brought fourth! "Whoever did that must have a lot of experience with them, because thats pretty damn good!" -Paul Then they put a hardhat on it and wrote "chris".  |
CATCHING MYSELF ON FIRE. | This is what started it all. A brand new chopsaw was brought to the job along with the message: "take care of my saw, its brand new". Someone who shall remain nameless filled it up with gas and later handed it to me. Rushing around like i usually am, I started it up to cut some rebar. Well maybe because it was new, the gas cap did not hold like it should and as I was cutting, it came off releasing gas all over me. As you know, cutting rebar, throws sparks everywhere so it didn't take much for me to spontaniously combust. The topic of every safety meeting of every job for the next 6 months was how "mike conn" went running across the job in a ball of flames. I was put out by Paul. And it got me a free t-shirt! |
MOONING AN OPERATOR, AND THEN MAKING A SONG A BOUT IT. | This was a person everybody said is nobody to play with. Hes an inner city loan shark and probably packs heat. Well, one day he didn't have much to do and fell asleep while on the forklift. (It was parked thank God) And somebody (who again shall remain nameless) dared me to moon him... so down went my pants along with me yelling "HEY, KISS MY ASS!!" This didn't go over to big with the operator, as he got pissed and threatened to kill me. "If I was a younger man, I'd take the top of your head off! I dont play that shit!!" were his exact words. And I dont think he meant he was gonna scalp me. THEN, I had the audasidy to go and make a song about it, put it on CD and distribute it throuout the company. Everyone said I sound exactly like him... Listen to this shit! Or you can download that song by clicking here. |
RUNNING OVER A TOYOTA AVALON WITH THE FORKLIFT. | As if news doesn't travel like wildfire as it is, news like this gets around even faster. This is not something Im proud of. But it happened. The machine was a gradall 544d-10. For those of you who don't know, thats the biggest boom lift there is, short of the military. Anyway its like 12 tons of solid steel and i'm opperating it for like my 3rd (and probably last) time ever on a main road with a trash hopper on the forks obstructing my view. I had just been agresively warned to keep the boom low so as to not hit any power lines. So im scared to take it up any higher. Well they are rear steering and its hard to get used to. As I ws pulling over to let cars pass, I couldn't see the car due to the trash hopper, but seen it at the last minute and instinctively yanked the wheel like you would in a front wheel steering vehicle. Well, it swung the ass of the machine right into the ass end of the avalon. Totaling it. I heard the noise but the tractor didnt feel a thing. Then we get to talking to the lady, and wind up doing a side job for her.. Go figure. |
SENDING ALL THE FOREMEN A TEXT MESSAGE. | Oh man Paul was hot about this one. It was a rainy friday so we weren't working. and the next day was a manditory OSHA safety class all the foremen had to attend. Well I decided to be a smart ass and write up a text message around 9:00 that said "Just a friendly reminder, OSHA class tomorrow, call Paul for new directions". Now all the foremen's phone numbers are the same exept 1 digit. So it was very easy for me to add all the formen to that message and send it. Well next thing ya know everybodys calling Paul all confused wondering if it had been changed or whatever. So Paul gets my number from someone and calls me up bitching like hell. "YOU WANA KEEP WORKING FOR ME? YOU KNOW I GOT $2000 INVESTED IN THIS F***ING CLASS. AND PEOPLE DONT WANA GO AS IT IS!!!" and on and on. So I ended up having to call all the foremen up personally and say I'm sorry, and I'm an asshole".. So yea, I called up like 12 foremen and said that. |