David Berggren - Projects
House
In 1998 after several years of working on ships I purchased my grandfather’s house in Point Loma. The house sat more or less vacant for about 25 years, so when I took ownership I had my work cut out for me. I spent the next 3 years working on remodeling the house with the help of my father when I was not at sea. I had not done much home improvement before this so it was a great learning process and a lot of fun. One of the biggest self-accomplishments in the house is the concrete kitchen counter tops I designed and built, which turned out amazing. The house is now more or less finished, as much as a house is ever finished, and a project I am very proud of.
Boat Project
In 2000 after taking a break from working on ships I began a new challenging project. My father has built commercial steel fishing boats since I was 6 years old, on the side from his full time job in the school district. You could say I grew up in and around a boat yard. In 2000 my dad received an order for a 58 ft Salmon fishing boat for Alaska. I worked full time, for the first time, on this project. I managed work crews during the day (while he was at work), provided design ideas, designed and built the engine room and all of its components. For the first time I felt, and was, a major player in the design and fabrication of this vessel. I delivered the boat with the owner to Alaska in May of 2001. Needless to say I am very proud of creating a fully functioning fishing boat from a pile of steel and components.
BlueChip Machine and Fabrication, LLC
My father has pretty much always had a side business where he was building various items from steel, whether it was fishing boats and various parts for fishing boats or heavy mining equipment and custom fabrication. I have spent many hours and days working with him on as many projects. In 2005 my father and I started our own limited liability corporation called BlueChip Machine and Fabrication. We now have a shop with many heavy machines, tools and equipment where we work out of. Currently we machine and fabricate parts for heavy mining equipment such as large conveyor systems. I also do some architectural metal work and miscellaneous odd jobs. It is a great outlet for me to build and create which are some of my favorite things to do.
BlueChip has also played an integral part with our robotics team here at High Tech High not only with their many resources but also as a finacial sponsor. Students are now able to design parts for our robots here at school, in CAD, and then take their designs to our shop and make them a reality. In addition BlueChip has offered paid internships to our team members. With out the resources of BlueChip our team would not be able to build the high tech 'bots that we do.
