Generally speaking, quality craftsmanship means doing the job once, putting up your tools, and being done with it.
When it comes to welding that's not me. . .
Not quite a year ago I built this cart for hauling the trashcan up to the county road for pickup behind a 4-wheeler. This morning the cart tried to become trash itself when a weld connecting the body of the cart to the towing portion very rudely highlighted the quality of my welding skills.
I briefly considered removing the wood portion of the cart from the steel chassis before affecting repairs, but the very first carriage bolt I attempted to remove in order to make this happen showed a marked tendency to spin in place, so I abandoned that plan.
Instead I cleaned things up a little with a wire brush, clamped the wandering parts back where they belonged, and grabbed a couple (There's another one on hidden over there on the other side.) of brackets out of my project bin that would hopefully protect the wood bits while I muddled around with a live welding rod.
I think I'm starting to get the mechanics of welding down since this time I didn't blind myself by forgetting to turn the self-darkening shield on or leave any stray scars or burn marks behind by aimlessly waving a live welding rod around,
but clearly I still need help, lots of help, with the actual welding part of the process!!!
As ugly as this looks, the joint survived several blows from a hammer before I tried disguising the mess with a fresh spritz of paint. The last weld survived approximately 45 round trips up to the county road, the counter is ticking for this weld. . .
No comments:
Post a Comment