"It'll look good when it's done," said Borjas, who was the youngest guy in the shop — and operating the most expensive piece of equipment. "I really enjoy this. It's good to be here, you know, have a job."

The Hawaiian project is slated to be complete by the end of March, when Gingras said he will have a luau "and cook up a pig" for "his guys" to make it official.

The crew will assemble all the elements around a landscaped pond in the employees' outside break area.

Time to finish their metallic utopia may, however, be interrupted by pesky serious work. The company is waiting on five projects that have been delayed by contractors. One of the projects, a four-story building project, is sitting in piles out in the steel yard ready to be manufactured and shipped.

"But it's all been stopped," Gingras said, looking out a window at the piles. "It would be nice if we could get going on some of these (contracts)."

If work doesn't start moving, he may have to think of more creative ways to keep his crew.

Besides his Hawaii project, he's already turned his welders into sheet rockers, painters and tile installers. He and his crew remodeled thousands of square feet in the company's office — a chore not everyone enjoyed.

"That part wasn't any fun. Grrr," welder Doug Barron literally growled. "But it means a lot not to be out there standing in line, struggling to pay our bills. A whole lot."

Even Gingras admitted that not everyone of his tough-and-rumble crew enjoyed sponge-painting the walls in an antiqued Tuscany style, but "they were good sports, and they're glad to be back out there doing their thing."

At least Marty "Marty Man" Samuelsen is. He was out in an adjacent shop, alone, hunched over a rugged, waist-high table, studying pictures of coconuts. Classic music played through the shop's speakers.

His assignment: "coconut maker."

"I didn't know they looked like that when they grew," he said, sketching out his second prototype. "My next one will be rounder."

He went to work crafting scraps of rigid steel into delicate-round coconut spheres ready to be welded to several trees where Gingras can finally hang his hammock.

E-mail: jhancock@desnews.com