Day62 | Welding down the hull |
Great !!! Gena's little
invention came through for us! As can be seen in the pic above, it's a guide for welding. It guarantees a straight good looking weld, with the ability of the welder combined of course! It's held on with small mag-mount CB antenna magnets glued to the underside of a piece of 1" angle steel, and a piece of aluminum channel to allow for height clamped on. Then the 2 large speaker magnets offer extra support as iron filings are slippery critters. The rivets on the speaker magnets were left on to bite in for good grip. She then put a piece of antenna mount drilled out to fit the welding torches tip cover that rides on top of the aluminum to keep the height. |
The tip still
must be wiggled back and forth as welding but the guide
always stops it falling of track. ( That is if the guide
is on straight in the first place! - pic to the right
haha!! ) It sure has improved things anyway. A steady hand is difficult in uncomfortable conditions. This has really helped, and we're girls so we're able to admit we're not good enough at it lol! |
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To the left is
a typical undercut weld on a vertical surface, we did a
few of those before getting the amperage set right for
the conditions. This was one of Genas too, I won't show
mine because I hate simpathy emails ! It took a long day to weld the horizontals from bow to stern, but that's almost 90 feet of welding. The weather was just perfect except the late afternoon when it became windy. |
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Weld with undercut on top, shadow shows it up | |||||
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The welds would
have little bubbles in them if ANY wind at all got at it
during welding. Sometimes we wish we had've built a shop
to build in, but then miss all that glorious sunshine?? Next weekend we do the radius vertical welds. Can't wait! |
Day 62:
11 hours - Fixed weld near bow, no splits! Welded from bow to
stern top and bottom of radius sections