Nice work on the transmission too. Nothing wrong with those welds. It isn't like you can just go from one end of a joint to the other with predictable travel etc. I have welded a lot of cast. The only way welds really come out any neater is if it's something superficial just to stop a leak or someth...

Nice work Jeff. What will be used for a sling point on that basket? Maybe web strapping on the top four corners I guess. Nice work guys! I'm not sure, Bob. He gave us some photos of him holding tape measure against the pipes, on center of all things. The original didn't have this much of a headrest...

A helicopter water rescue trainer for the local PD.



Some other odds and ends.

You ever see one of those old timers solder radiators at car factories back in the day by hand? I loved brazing or even gas welding but it has gotten kind of expensive. I have a bunch of gas equipment. Smith's, Victor and Harris torch sets. After doing TIG for so many years, gas is a cinch. It's str...

Good technique demonstration in that video.

As an aside, had someone at the shop wanting to try our way of welding. I pulled my tig finger out and asked him if he wanted to try it and he pulled one of his own out of his pocket.

That and they are more health friendly with lower radiation tungsten and for people who don't have access to semi-industrial electrical hookup. I would have one at my home but upgrading my service wasn't a big deal and I like having the extra power for other machinery. I just remember in welding sch...

That's right, the welding machine does not make the weldor. Teach people to weld aluminum on balanced AC welding with pure tungsten and full time HF, you would see nicer welds than what we see with many of these machines that give too many choices. One thing you notice these days with these new mach...

Cool. And an ornamental gusset to boot. Nice use of scraps.

That's some nice pipe work. Under the circumstances, or until you get another vise, you could make some offset pipe jaws for that vise that fasten to it where the inserts go? Could even make them articulating to where they hold pipes at different angles.

There's more to it than bead pattern and penetration. It has to do with leg and throat of weld relative to the base material and it's expected duty. When in doubt, use a fillet gauge. Those beads look concave to me, indicative of filler metal spread too thinly.

Nicely done.

Especially now in the day of DIY and home ops where you don't even have a substantial fab table to use for fixturing, or even straightening after the fact. We had a guy at our shop build a small part and it was racked, so he clamps it down to the table and goes to pushing down on it's extremity and ...

Yes, and put all the braces in place as spreaders etc. I built a hinging base CB antenna once and that was a project that made me really pay attention from then on to be a lot more strategic with my approaches. When we have had people working at our shop, none really thought about it without thinkin...

your work. Do any of you aluminum fab'rs do this? Aluminum moves a lot. Many of us don't get to use much in the way of jigs or fixtures, especially once projects start going towards 3D. I used to notice a lot of other fabrications with that bamboo effect between joints etc and it used to irk me. The...

I agree that sometimes it is just better to clean it than to find out after the fact. But, we also have to realize that many of the school ingrained procedures were adopted before we were competing with countries that pay their workers 3.00/day or .75/hr. I weld in such a way that contaminants are s...

Nice work.

Nice piece of work there.

Also depends on what treatment the part gets afterwards. Many things are treated further after they are welded, say, media blasting and protective coatings. I weld a lot of things that get powder coated. After they are finished, it's difficult to tell that there is actual welds there with even the d...

I have had good luck with most brands of automobiles. I like Ford as well as anything. Here's mine. It has a freshly rebuilt (all new gears/bearings etc) toploader 4 speed out of an SCJ Torino adapted to fit a small block. 4:10 gears and a bunch of other neat things in it. I love this thing. '70' Br...

Nice to see project threads going on with a bit of frequency here. Keep up the good work. The world would be a better place if there was more welders.

I agree with you, Otto. It's really not that difficult. Seems that nowadays parents have one eye on the prozac bottle and the other on suicide watch. Now we have school shootings and kids hiding behind either the victim card, or on the other end of the spectrum as self absorbed sociopaths. You look ...

Some people still have it. Usually it's working stiffs like us. I'm too old to change now. I can't imagine getting ambition for dog-eat-dog advancement, financially, or otherwise by this point in the game. When it's all said and done, it's easier just to work for your money instead of all the stress...

You have touched on one of my peeves with kids these days. I have a nephew that had been thrown under the rug and fallen through the cracks. A real attitude problem etc. He moved in with me 3 years ago, homeless. Had already been on probation and in jail. A wannabe faux gang banger with all the tatt...

I designed a new concept project, based on my own boat as the prototype and everyone questioned my sanity. I built it, and another customer saw it and wanted the same package on his boat. I told my boss not to do it until we had a concrete contract, that they (a major manufacturer I had dealt with b...

Hey, You will still find a number of places like that over here. But I always say, we are about 20 25 years behind you guys. I also know a large number of bosses that either forgot where they came from, were never even there or when they were there they were so crap that they jumped at the first ch...