Stuff

While the focus is on the interior of the Cessna 150, there is still some progress on the Wag. The materials and parts for the compression struts have arrived and I will start the jig for the struts in the very near future.

Side Track

The Wag-a-Bond is going on the shelf for a short period of time while I do some work on my Cessna 150.

Go to N8346J.blogspot.com link to go to that blog and follow that project.

I will be back here working on the "Wag" in a few weeks.

"Airline" Torch

Some time ago I scored a Harris 15-3 "airline" torch handle on eBay.  I got it for about 1/5th of retail for a new torch.  It was advertised "with box" and looks like it has never been used. The box was beyond salvation.

It took awhile to get all the rest of the pieces to turn the "handle" into a complete torch.  But here it is beside the Victor medium duty torch.

It is the torch on the left.  It is much lighter and works great on small items.  I made a few welds with it last night.  I am very pleased with the lightness and balance.  And, truth to tell, it is a higher quality tool than the Victor. 

Having said that, there are a few adventures in dealing with Harris.  Both Victor and Smith, the other two big torch manufacturers, have easy to figure out tip charts that help choose the tip for the application.  Not so Harris.  It is difficult to figure out what you need.  Complicated by the fact that, whereas Victor (at least) has just a handle and tips, the Harris has a handle, a mixer, a tip tube, and the tip, all that must be matched to the application.

Fortunately, there was someone at the Airgas franchise in Aberdeen, WA  knowledgeable and helpful regarding the Harris line.  He helped me determine what I needed, though it all had to be special ordered, and others at the shop had some difficulties when the one guy was on vacation. 

The Harris 15-3 torch (and other "airline" type torches) was, at one time, very popular with auto body shops.  However, with the way modern cars are built, the auto body shops do very little, if any, welding anymore.  What welding they may do is TIG. With that, the demand for this type of torch has dropped off.  It is now pretty much relegated to us airplane builders (and just the rag-and-tube folks at that) and the few hard core car builders. With the limited market one can hardly expect the local welding supply shop to have much in the way of supplies and accessories on the shelf.

And the welds?

Well, here is one.  It still leaves something to be desired, but that is not the torch's fault.  I am still working on getting a good rhythm in order to produce a nice even weld pattern.  However, though this weld is not as "pretty" as it could be, it is, structurally, a good weld.

I feel that just a bit more practice and I will be able to start on the real thing.

TESTING

It is important that welds be AT LEAST as strong as the joined metal.  In order to test that, the coupons are put into a vice and stressed until the joint fails.

OR NOT!!  The test successfully demonstrates that the weld joint is as strong as the steel. A little more practice so that the welds look pretty, and practice adding filler rod, and I will feel like I can start tackling the fittings.

One of my advisers pointed out that I need to be as comfortable as possible with my arms supported in order to produce nice even welds.  That advice helped quite a bit, though I am still working on ways to keep my arms supported while being able to move the torch along the weld.

SUCCESS!!

After burning, literally, through a bunch of sheet metal, I have gotten some decent welds.  Not perfect. Not things of beauty.  But good penetration and decent looking ridges.

All during my practice if I got a decent puddle, I promptly burned a hole in the coupon.  I either burned holes in a lot of metal, or had very poor welds with no penetration.

Today, there was breakthrough.  The furthest set of coupons was the first set that had good welds. However, if you look close, you can see that I had some blowouts while doing the tack welds at each end.  The weld itself is pretty consistent and has good penetration WITH NO HOLES!.

The middle set is another good weld.  Plus I managed to tack both ends while blowing a hole in only one end.

In the closest set of coupons I used a bit of RG-45 rod while doing the tacks.  NO HOLES!  And, a pretty good looking weld.  Not quite as good as I want to be before I start welding up fittings, but certainly a workable weld.

Getting here has been quite frustrating, but I am elated at the moment.

Now for a bit more practice!

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!

Relearning Welding Session 1

I got the chance to do a bit welding practice last night.  I was hoping that it would be like riding a bicycle.  Not quite.

I managed to create pretty good, though not even puddles.  But the penetration was not good.  I think the material I am using for practice is too thick for the tip I am using.  So I will be getting some thinner material in the next day or two.

A note on the blog...if you are not familiar with the blog format, the latest post is always on top.  Don't neglect to go to "Older Posts" see earlier history.