Steel Framing & Plywood Lining a Max Security 8ft Shipping Container | The Container Guy
Steel Framing & Plywood Lining a Max Security 8ft Shipping Container | The Container Guy
Follow along in this video as we attempt to modify this specialized 8-foot shipping container into a max security unit! We are not sure exactly what the customer is using this sea can for, but we know they wanted it to be impenetrable and have as much interior room as possible.
In order to fulfill their request, we will be removing the window and bars and then welding in some corrugations in its place. We will also be replacing the access door with the customer's non-removable hinge door and Mortise handle.
Next, we will be framing the conex box with steel studs and then lining the inside with plywood. They want us to save as much room as possible inside the can, so we have elected to glue the steel studs to the wall. We are not sure how this will turn out, so watch this video to find out how we do it!
Note: We are doing a lot of new techniques for modifying a container in this video, such as welding the door frame together, welding the frame onto the container, and gluing the steel studs to the outside corrugations. These are not the ideal way of modifying a sea container, especially not for a container home, but it was still a lot of fun figuring out how to save as much room as possible in this 8-ft container and fulfill all of our customer's requests.
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YouTube Video Transcript
Over the many years of modifying shipping containers, we never get
two of the same requests. They're always very unique and different, especially this one here.
This container is going to be a max security unit, a little eight footer inside of an
existing building, and so we are going to be modifying this to be extremely secure.
We're not exactly sure how we're going to go about it,
but we're going to figure it out as we go, so follow along.
Starting off with a specialty 8-foot container from China
that is pre-modified with an access door and a window.
The customer originally wanted a window,
but last minute requested that we remove the window and fill the hole with corrugations.
We'll also be removing the access door, and for the first time we'll be fully welding
our dual swinger frame together and welding that same frame to this shipping container.
To fill the window, we had a spare man door cut out laying around the same colour.
It didn't allow us to perfectly line up the corrugations,
but it turned out nice and performs its function.
Notice that William has ground off all the paint about one inch from the edge prior to welding.
[Will] So we had just finished welding the window patch back into place. I'm just going
to spray some zinc rich galvanizing compound onto the weld to protect it from rusting.
[Channing] Another first is we'll be putting a
North American steel insulated door slab in our Dual Swinger Door Frame.
We found this door slab in the snow bank, and we'll be using it as a
placeholder until the new door that's prepped for Mortise hardware shows up.
The rough opening in the container is so tight that the hinge screws needed to be cut down,
and even the rivets at the top and bottom of the door holding it together had to be removed.
William did this while he fully welded the rest of the frame together,
then finally hit the bare steel with more zinc to reapply the sacrificial layer.
I got this where it needs to be and I'm going to mark out
uh where the latch goes through, and then we'll be able to
pull the door away, grab our plasma cutters and quickly cut that out so that their
customer supplied lever lock
doesn't collide with the frame of this container, so I'm gonna do that right now.
I can't believe how out of square that is. Do we have a six foot level?
We're thinking we might be able to just fix the warpage by just removing what we need.
Our door frame comes way past here anyway, uh so we can just cut a chunk out of here.
Now this is going to bend and we'll be able to suck it back,
and then we won't have any problems with our interior wall finish bowing outwards.
William did a great job notching the door frame and capping the square
tubing. This straightened out the bow in the shipping container, and this also--
Once we installed the man door frame back in place, we're able to clamp
the door frame to the rough opening, HSS, and that straightened this container perfectly back out.
And so, while it was clamped, he just ground some paint spots away and was able to weld the frame
perfectly in place, and now when we go to finish the interior of the container,
the wall is going to be nice and straight and not going to be boomeranged.
We just went over all the welds on the inside here with a rubberized coating just to make
sure that it's all sealed up, and if there was a tiny pinhole anywhere that now that's sealed.
And then inside this window opening, we took some two and a half inch steel
stud because the corrugations are deeper and that seemed to line up nice and flush
with the uh the HSS frame that was already welded in this can.
So now, when we take plywood, we'll be able to actually screw it right into the HSS frame,
but also into the steel studs that are in there.
And then the distance out here now is an inch and five eights steel studs, and so we're very
curious and we'd like to try out these.
I've never used the inch and five eights yet because
it's not deep enough to give you a two inch spray foam, which is the minimum for a vapour barrier.
But, because this is not getting insulated and it's going indoors inside of a shop,
we don't need that, so let's try these things out. That's going to make everything nice and flush.
This is new. William here is
applying glue to the steel studs and sticking them to the outside corrugations in the container.
We're gonna go with the hat channel. This is like uh typically a sound bar that's used when you're
trying to soundproof a basement or something.
If you had a basement suite, it's kind of a drywall thing, and that's gonna--
If we glue this to the inside corrugations--the outside corrugations of the roof, we will be
able to now screw up into something and not screw right through the roof of the container.
And plus, we'll also be able to glue this
uh plywood to the the lower, the inside corrugations, what we call in the ceiling, so.
Uh, every however many inches, we're gonna be able to screw this into the, into the roof,
and then also that'll hold it while the glue sets.
And then the glue and the side pieces of plywood
are going to be what actually holds this roof sheet up eventually, so.
We're going to go shopping. We're going to get some of these hat channels and a bunch of uh inch
and five eighth steel studs, come back, and then just keep playing around try to figure this out,
how to save the most interior room and have the
slenderest framing system and still not poke any holes through this container, so.
If we can't screw it, we're going to glue it.
So don't judge us, we aren't tin bashers. This is just an experiment, we're playing
around with these hat channels here to see if we can make a very slim framing system here.
There's actually some sound clips that these hat channels clip into that could
be mounted prior to this, and we want to mimic that design with something
that would install ahead of time, and then these would just nicely clip in.
But because we're so limited for space here, we're actually--we
have to glue these half channels right to the roof,
and so we have these uh temporary braces just applying upward pressure on these.
We're gonna leave this overnight,
come back in the morning and hopefully nothing's, not everything is laying on the ground.
So you'll notice here as William's moving around the container that it's kind of
wobbling, and that caused other problems as we were framing this container.
We realized this whole container is warped, and so when they applied
the heat as they were welding this in China, they really bowed, uh you know,
the roof corrugations and the sidewall corrugations, and it's quite warped.
And so, instead of just gluing the steel studs directly to the uh outside corrugations
and putting our plywood right up to that, we actually had to run
horizontal hat channel or furring channel across these steel studs yet
just to even things out a bit better so that you didn't look at our
plywood interior finish and really notice the bow on the inside of the container.
The hat channel that stuck to the ceiling adhered very well.
We were confident that the weight was going to hold the sheets of plywood,
so William began sheeting.
William mentioned he didn't glue the roof sheets to the ceiling, so we pulled them down
and made sure we did that right. Whenever you're figuring things out like this,
it's often that we'll have to do things twice or even three times.
We also made some unnecessary changes to the horizontal strapping. These guys are
journeyman welders not carpenters, so be easy on them in the comments below.
Remember, this container is going inside a climate controlled building, so this
system is not being insulated, it's not being heated, and therefore we can do this like this.
If you're planning on building a container home or something,
this is not the way that you want to frame.
You'll want to frame it with a larger two and a half inch steel stud,
and then apply at least two inches of spray foam to get your proper vapour barrier.
One thing I've learned through failure by finishing the interior of containers
with a plywood lined surface is, I've tried in the past to caulk the seams and that looks
like garbage after, especially once you move the container, everything cracks.
I've had a customer make me come back to their site and do another three days of work just
So, in this instance, we actually randomly had a container roll in and it had some
hardwood concrete form chamfer,
and this stuff is perfect and it matched the good one side fur plywood finish so perfectly.
And so we utilize that to trim all the corners. Honestly,
if anyone was plywood lining a container, this is the stuff to buy.
Before plywood lining the container doors,
the customer demanded they be welded shut. So we did that, and then touched up the paint.
I'm really impressed with William's finished carpentry skills. This thing turned out great,
and I'm sure the customer is going to be extremely happy with it.
I'm proud of Curtis here. I see he's got the paintbrush out, not just the roller.
If you're trying to blend paint, especially on new containers.
If you're just using a roller, you get a hard paint line and it doesn't really look
very good. It seems like, if you use a paint brush, you can kind of blend from the stock
container paint from china to our touch-up paint and it just transitions a lot smoother.
The customer mentioned they could paint their own door frame, but I knew they
weren't going to have the right colour or paint, and so we decided to do that for them.
The new door has just arrived, so the final step is to reinstall the bulb seal
and get the door installed with the self-closing device.
We also ran into a little bit of trouble with the self-closing device.
One thing to note, if you are buying our Dual Swinger Man Door frame and supplying your own
commercial insulated door slab, make sure you install it a half inch to three quarters of an
inch below where the installation instructions recommend it to ensure it clears our bulb seal.
The plywood lined interior provided complete freedom and flexibility
for the electricians to pipe in their electrical.
At site, the customer plans to plug in this container to a receptacle in their warehouse.
We satisfied all the customer's design criteria,
and the final step is just to ship this off to them.
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Hope you learned something.
