- Joined
- Dec 3, 1999
- Messages
- 9,437
Well... I sure am a VERY VERY lucky guy!!! 
If you are taking a break with a cup off coffee go ahead and read another verbose Wheeler post, if not, feel free to skip down to photos.
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Last week-end Angi asked me when the last time I got to see my friend Bill had been. My short answer was, "too long ago..." and after a second of thought, I said, "it was when we went up so you could meet him and he showed us the CNC plasma table he built."
Yes, Bill is a fabricator's fabricator. I think if it's made of out steel, aluminum, titanium, etc.... the man can design it, build it, tear it apart, re-build it, and make it better. Whatever it is!!!
On top of that, Bill and his lovely wife Elaine are the kind of people that welcome you into their home and make you feel like family within minutes of meeting them. Of course their Texan accents have only faded a little bit in those years since they left Texas, but it helps to make you feel that "southern hospitality" in an instant.
About a year ago, Bill had programmed his CNC table to cut out a small sign with my last name, but of course with us standing there watching, Bill wasn't holding his mouth just quite right, and for whatever reason it didn't want to run. Bill told me that he figured out what went wrong right after we left and had cut the sign out that night or the next day.
*back to last week-end* Angi says to me, I think we should go up and visit Bill and get that sign. I told her that I would love to go see Bill, but with a huge shop project due for completion SOON, I just couldn't get away, but that we would set up a visit as soon as the project is done.
Here I am toiling away in the shop on a Saturday with Angi dutifully at my side, keeping me company and cheering me on, when she tells me she's going to go home (my shop is still in its old location about 20 minutes from the new house and shop) and mow the lawn and take care of some chores. I tell her she doesn't need to, but she insists. She says she'll come back up in a little while.
So a few hours later she pulls back into the shop driveway and says, "The boys [our Newfie pups] have really done a number on my backseat... it's BAD, will you come look at it?" I follow her to the car, expecting to see upholstery shredded or a head-rest broken off, etc.
But instead, I see a small steel sign in the front seat that reads WHEELER. My mind was struggling to comprehend what I was looking at. It immediately went to, "that's the sign Bill had programmed for me"
She points to the back seat, and I see what looks like another, MUCH bigger sign. My thick skull isn't computing what's going on. I just stood there staring at her with a dumb, blank look on my face.
"Wait, what the hell?"
"But you went to mow the.... ???"
"I thought..."
"Wait, what...???!?!?!?!?"
She gets this huge smile on her face and says something like, "Don't you see what it is?!?!?!?" and she proceeds to pull this thing out of the back-seat.
She asks me, "Do you have any idea how hard it was to be sneaky enough to pull this off?"
My slow mind, still reeling, hasn't quite gotten up to speed yet.
She tells me that she googled my friends' site http://www.alphaknifesupply.com and got Chuck Bybee's email. She emailed Chuck, asking for contact information for Bill. She then contacted Bill and proposed her desire to have him make a large steel sign with his CNC plasma table for my new shop. She asked me, "Remember when I text'd you, asking what the font was for your knives, and then about the shop size?"
"Um, yea, you said Christina was curious about that stuff" :foot:
So she had gone to all this trouble to get my very good friend Bill Cottrell to make me a new sign, for the new shop. I am one CRAZY LUCKY man to have THIS WOMAN and friends like this!!!!!
I haven't had time to put it up on the shop yet, but it's going to go right over the 16' roll-up door (in-line, but it was too long for Angi to hold onto in-line for the photos). Bill cut it out of thin steel, and then powder coated it so that it can safely reside on the shop exterior.
And for good measure we put the boyz, my shop mascots, in the photos. They just turned 4 months and are already just a shade under 60 pounds!!!
Oliver
We haven't gotten Bentley up to speed on beauty poses just yet
If you are taking a break with a cup off coffee go ahead and read another verbose Wheeler post, if not, feel free to skip down to photos.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last week-end Angi asked me when the last time I got to see my friend Bill had been. My short answer was, "too long ago..." and after a second of thought, I said, "it was when we went up so you could meet him and he showed us the CNC plasma table he built."
Yes, Bill is a fabricator's fabricator. I think if it's made of out steel, aluminum, titanium, etc.... the man can design it, build it, tear it apart, re-build it, and make it better. Whatever it is!!!
On top of that, Bill and his lovely wife Elaine are the kind of people that welcome you into their home and make you feel like family within minutes of meeting them. Of course their Texan accents have only faded a little bit in those years since they left Texas, but it helps to make you feel that "southern hospitality" in an instant.
About a year ago, Bill had programmed his CNC table to cut out a small sign with my last name, but of course with us standing there watching, Bill wasn't holding his mouth just quite right, and for whatever reason it didn't want to run. Bill told me that he figured out what went wrong right after we left and had cut the sign out that night or the next day.
*back to last week-end* Angi says to me, I think we should go up and visit Bill and get that sign. I told her that I would love to go see Bill, but with a huge shop project due for completion SOON, I just couldn't get away, but that we would set up a visit as soon as the project is done.
Here I am toiling away in the shop on a Saturday with Angi dutifully at my side, keeping me company and cheering me on, when she tells me she's going to go home (my shop is still in its old location about 20 minutes from the new house and shop) and mow the lawn and take care of some chores. I tell her she doesn't need to, but she insists. She says she'll come back up in a little while.
So a few hours later she pulls back into the shop driveway and says, "The boys [our Newfie pups] have really done a number on my backseat... it's BAD, will you come look at it?" I follow her to the car, expecting to see upholstery shredded or a head-rest broken off, etc.
But instead, I see a small steel sign in the front seat that reads WHEELER. My mind was struggling to comprehend what I was looking at. It immediately went to, "that's the sign Bill had programmed for me"
She points to the back seat, and I see what looks like another, MUCH bigger sign. My thick skull isn't computing what's going on. I just stood there staring at her with a dumb, blank look on my face. "Wait, what the hell?"
"But you went to mow the.... ???"
"I thought..."
"Wait, what...???!?!?!?!?"
She gets this huge smile on her face and says something like, "Don't you see what it is?!?!?!?" and she proceeds to pull this thing out of the back-seat.
She asks me, "Do you have any idea how hard it was to be sneaky enough to pull this off?"
My slow mind, still reeling, hasn't quite gotten up to speed yet.
She tells me that she googled my friends' site http://www.alphaknifesupply.com and got Chuck Bybee's email. She emailed Chuck, asking for contact information for Bill. She then contacted Bill and proposed her desire to have him make a large steel sign with his CNC plasma table for my new shop. She asked me, "Remember when I text'd you, asking what the font was for your knives, and then about the shop size?"
"Um, yea, you said Christina was curious about that stuff"
:foot: So she had gone to all this trouble to get my very good friend Bill Cottrell to make me a new sign, for the new shop. I am one CRAZY LUCKY man to have THIS WOMAN and friends like this!!!!!
I haven't had time to put it up on the shop yet, but it's going to go right over the 16' roll-up door (in-line, but it was too long for Angi to hold onto in-line for the photos). Bill cut it out of thin steel, and then powder coated it so that it can safely reside on the shop exterior.
And for good measure we put the boyz, my shop mascots, in the photos. They just turned 4 months and are already just a shade under 60 pounds!!!
Oliver
We haven't gotten Bentley up to speed on beauty poses just yet
