Welding Tips and Tricks

Wasn't lookin for a personal project but the workshop did need a proper cart (fed up with the bamboo cart, you know the one!). Nothin took my fancy until I saw Jody do the open frame concept cart. I liked it and decided the time had come. He originally said he was going to wrap it up in one to two videos but took three. I know why, it was a freaking lot of work once you include the full fit out and finish. And I decided to tig it to make it pop. Also tried to do a good job to keep up to Jody's standard. Took the time to make sure all was square and neat while experimenting with fitup and warp control. So here it is....

I chose not to offset joints mainly because all the cuts 90 and 45 were done on the new horizontal bandsaw and were perfect allowing me to do perfect fitups for the first time. I used Jody's method of welding from the inside out which worked a treat but still ended up slightly less than square. You couldn't really see it but in the interests of standards I decided to correct it. The middle level was corrected by the placement of the bottle bracket post. the top level was corrected by heating the to vertical members with the tig torch (shiny patches) and using the shrinkage to pull it back into perfect level.
Didn't feel like doing pie cuts.
Rear axle goes on with mig.
Bottle bracket (3" channel) goes on with mig.
Front castors go on with spacer plate to level the cart
Done! Paint finished with Rustoleum Farm Equipment Enamel - Ford Blue. (close match) Used 1/4" rivets to fasten down the chequer plates onto 3/4" rolled angle framing. Very pleased with the result. Now even the plasma cutter has a place to live all set up ready to go and plenty of lead/torch hangers for everything. No more looking for stingers or leads somewhere else. It's plug and play from now on.

Thanks jody!

Well done Coldie - sweet job.


Kym

Looks good, nice fab work.

Very nice! Love the pipes for hanging cords. Gonna steal that from you

Thanks guys. Incidentally I went to get the gal mal caps from my local plumbing supplies branch. They said it was old technology and they don't keep gal mal anymore. Had to get them from the engineers supplies. Us engineering types must be old fashioned.

You must have spent some dough on those weld elbows....they didn't follow you home did they?

Every hardware store and supply house around here stocks them. Even old tech has its place!

They were short radius elbows that were hanging around for a long time never to be used. Was pleased to find a use for them.

I have a couple of butt weld reducers 3/4 inch x 1/2 inch that are on my truck. Been there for about 2 years and I still haven't found a good use for them yet.

I like how easy the cart will be to blow off any grinding/ plas dust that ends up there without getting caught in eddies. My stupid HF crappy thing I hav the mig welder on is just piles of rusty dust in the corners.
I would like to offer one suggestions though. How about painting the large wheel hubs silver or black? I think it would be more feng shui with the rest of your color theme. Then your aura can flow more freely from the mountain, or to it or whatever.

Yer I thought about that. Maybe I will. I guess I was worried about over capitalisation at the time

maker of things wrote: I think it would be more feng shui with the rest of your color theme. Then your aura can flow more freely from the mountain, or to it or whatever.

Nice one, you know some people get paid big bucks to come up with that sh!t, er, ideas...