Metal Work

Re-acquiring my welding skills is proving to be more difficult than I thought.  I figured a few practice welds and I would be back in the groove.  It is not working out that way.  I am making progress, but not as fast as I would like.

Here is the welding setup:

This view shows the tanks.  Well, almost.  The shorter acetylene tank is to the left of the oxygen tank. The stack of boxes in the background is waiting to be flattened and put in the recycle bin.


I had been struggling with cutting the practice coupons.  I tried putting a metal cutting wheel on my trim saw.  That did not work so well.  I think the trim saw simply turns to fast.  I found that the hack saw with a really fine tooth blade works pretty well. I also have a variable speed jig saw.  I put a fine tooth hack saw blade in that, and it works OK, too.  But it really isn't any faster, or any less effort, than the plain ole hack saw.




And then I ran across a tip on the EAA site relating to turning a table saw into a cut-off saw.

So I mounted the cut-off wheel in my ancient Craftsman (actually Rockwell) table saw. This works extremely well.  The board clamped to the miter gauge makes it easier to slit sheet steel.  As an aside, they don't make tools like this old table saw anymore.  At least, not at prices us mere mortals can afford.  It isn't very big.  The  table is 16" X 24".  I have a 5HP motor mounted on it.  The thing is very solid and makes nice cuts.  It takes two strong people to lift it, despite it being rather small. The tilt arbor has no detectable run-out and the gears on the adjustments are smooth with no backlash. Pretty amazing.

Speaking of things that work extremely well:

The little tool mounted in my vice is a simple press brake manufactured (in Canada) by Veritas Tools and marketed by Garrett-Wade.  It is held in the jaws by the tabs on top and strong magnets.

Simply slide in the stock and tighten down on the vice.  This is a piece of 16 gauge and required practically no effort at all.

The finished bend is great.  I was worried that without any adjustments the little brake would produce inappropriate bend radii.  As the photo shows, not at all.  This simple, high quality tool produces very nice bends.  The specs say it can bend up to 1/8".  I'm not sure I am ready to try that in my vice.  But the brake ought to work fine bending small parts out of .090 chrome-moly. And what's to loose for under thirty bucks!