To make the frames, we hired a welder that lives in los Mameyes named Alé. He charged us RD $300 pesos per house, about 8 US dollars. If we ask him again to weld some frames, hopefully he will lower his price because as you see here, he actually hardly did any of the work and hired two younger guys to do it. As Darien and I learned from hiring someone from the ferreteria to cut the varilla, supervision is necessary so we camped out in white picnic chairs for a few hours to make sure that all the dimesions were correct. When I ordered the varilla to be cut from the ferreteria, I asked for the length of 20 feet to be cut into 1.3 m pieces (51 inches). When we picked up the varilla the next day, we saw that it had been cut to different lengths that were around 1.3 m. The employee had to recut them all over again. A back-breaking task because he was using a hand-saw. The 3/8" varilla frame consists of three straight pieces and three bent pieces that have legs that are 15 cm long. The day before, we had shown Alé the video on how to make them that Kelvin had given us to make sure he got the idea.
This is me practicing quality control.
The welders here use almost no protection from the sparks. When they are welding, they just close their eyes so they are not damaged. Luckily it didn't affect the quality of there work and we had 20 perfectly welded houses. Alé could make 20 frames in one day, as long as there is constant power of course.
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