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!

 
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.
Weld with undercut on top, shadow shows it up  
Gena has been quite the inventor this week, as she also made this little tee-pee out of old antennas loosely pivoting in, yes, more magnet mount antenna bases ( Good thing we work in a CB shop huh? ) This is to put a little tarp over for protection from the wind while welding. It also worked well and stuck on no problem. Towards the evening we also had to use a 4 by 8 plywood to stop wind blowing down along the hull.
  Genas tent holder
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


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