The Gridbeam Chronicles #2

Though the eventual goal is drill my own gridbeam sticks in wood, I wanted to get started as soon as I could, so  I purchased 10 bars of 4 foot aluminium gridbeam from 8020 inc.  They call the product line “ready tube.”

The only concern I had was rather they would be able to form “tri-joints,” the real key to gridbeam. And so after I opened the box, I had my wife set up three into a basic tri-joint, and then I grabbed some pencils to make sure they really lined up.  Thankfully, they did.  So I knew I had gridbeam.  I, however, didn’t have any nuts or bolts to hold these joints together.

Though it was already become dark, I was eager to get started, so I headed out to the Ace Hardware, which is only 7 minutes walk from my house. I'm sure I looked like a crazy person by carrying two sticks of gridbeam with me.  I had never bought nuts and bolts before so I had to ask some stupid questions, but then
I went home and made my first tri-joint.

 After that I was left eager to make something that could have some kind of potential use, so I made a frame.

 I sit in it and imagined it as a study-cube  in the mode of work of Ken Issacs. Next, I tested to see how easy the frame was to tinker with.  I found that I could modify the frame while it was still up.

My first "invention" became a cat holder.

Then the same night I disassembled, and put in the garage to make what I thought would be temporary organizer.  And that was it for my first day with gridbeam.

Over a week passed, and as I spent more time working with make-shift structure, I came to like the set-up more and more.  I visited my grandparent's old house took down my grandpa’s old peg board that he used to organize his garden tools and used the hooks to make an organization system for myself.

It includes a bucket for cleaning.  I'm really happy with it.

An earlier version of this post was a tweet-storm

https://twitter.com/KeithHudd/status/832875741465440257