40 Gal build

[Squiggle]

Sweet toy dude, very jelly!

[soccerguy83]

Well, it's been 6 months since my last post, and absolutely nothing has been done in that time frame haha. I got the idea over the summer to try to get my dad's old boat back in the water and that took up all my free time. That and chasing my 15 month old son around!

The weather is getting cooler, the boat is going to be winterized and I'm back in the full swing of BBQ Comps and starting to get excited about picking this project back up.

I'm hoping to burn a little wire this weekend and I will post the results!

Now if I could just dig up my drawings for what I had planned for this thing! (now thinking about making it a RF, but not set on that as I still like the simplicity of a traditional offset)

[soccerguy83]

A couple more welds. The top one was me playing with settings and dragging instead of pushing and the bottom was me pushing.



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[Squiggle]

Nice work dude, coming along nicely! I'm a big fan of pushing, gets a bit better penetration (& before you say it DC, that is what she said, lol) but I do pull my welds every now & then, mainly on thinner stuff. Have you been playing around with the side to side wiggle? I find that makes the welds flatter & the puddle is easier to control.

[Rodcrafter]

Those welds will hold it together for sure


Making memories!

[soccerguy83]

Thanks Squiggle, I'm still learning and have a long way to go!

I have not played with the side to side wiggle, I've been using the cursive "e" approach. I feel like I'm not going fast enough, I turned the wire speed way down from the recommendation on the chart as I was ending up with just a massive bead as noted on the top piece, I feel like the bottom was much more consistent. Another thing I need to learn is how to merge the two beads when stitching.

Rod, I appreciate the encouragement!

[Squiggle]

The bottom weld is very nice. I always overlap when stitching, I start just behind the centre of the last puddle, I'm sure there's probably a proper way to do it & one of the pros might step in here to help.

I found a video on a UK welding site that shows what the right sound should be when welding, he starts off way too slow & slowly moves up till it's way too fast. Helped me heaps with diagnosing which way I was out.

[Rodcrafter]

What I do when connecting stitch welds is as I stitch I pull away just before I stop welding, this causes the last of the puddle to be very flat. Then when I connect to that point I begin about a 1/2" to the right with the arc and quickly move over to the flat puddle and move on as normal. It will be just a tad higher than the rest but not a big deal.

jm2cw

[soccerguy83]

Thanks guys!

Squiggle, I have seen the same video, it is a huge help!

[soccerguy83]

Got the mounting bracket for the pump and motor removed and bungs removed from the top. I still need to get some grinding done to make it flush but making some progress. I learned that I will need many more cut off wheels haha. Went through one just doing the two things noted above!

Next step will be laying out the door and filing the holes for the bungs. The plan is to go 1" past 12:00 and 3:00 and most of the way to the end cap joints. Will leave about 3/4" from the joints for the overlap of the sealing edges of the door.

[Big T]

Those cut off wheels don't last very long but some brands do a little better than others. You may want to try a few different ones if you have access to them. I found a local hardware store that sales cut off wheels that come in packs of 10 for $10 and they work as good as or better than the big brands. The old man that runs the place pulls the sticker off of the package so I have no idea who makes them.

[KarateDoc]

Just be careful with those cut off wheels. I have seen so many injuries from them. Be sure to use the guards and wear a face mask and hand protection.

[soccerguy83]

Yep, I don't want to be pulling pieces out of me; full welding mask on grind mode, heavy full sleeves and pants with leather gloves, grinder guard in place.

[Dirtytires]

Have to throw in my 2 cents on the grinding/cutting wheels. I shop predominately at the orange big box hardware store. They used to carry 'norton' brand wheels and I had descent luck with them. A while back the store started carrying 'diablo' brand to save a few pennies. Sorry to say, they did not work out for me. I had a few blow apart and the rest started coming apart about half way thru the disk making it unusable. I have used a few other off brands with no success and now use Dewalt extended performance disks. They last a crazy long time and seem to cut/grinder more efficiently which justifies their increased price. The bad part is the orange store doesn't carry them at all and my local blue box store doesn't carry everything I use so I have to mail order them.

My point....it sounds like you are burning thru disks pretty fast. Try a different brand or look to see if they come in different disk thicknesses. Everybody has a preference for their style of usage but know that they are not all the same and sometimes the disk that costs twice as much will last 3 times as long.

[soccerguy83]

Dirty, you make a good point! I must clarify that I was using a 1/16" cutoff disk, I'm not surprised by how quickly it went. I'm in the process of trying different wheels out to see what I like best!