Welding table done and starting the belt-grinder build

Welding table

Just a lot of cutting, drilling and welding!  Oh, and grinding.  I moved the welder up to the garage where I had room to work (since the tractor and UTV are out getting serviced).  The welds I was doing here were on 1/8" or less thicknesses of metal, so the 110V power cord worked ok.

Welded the two side "rails" on to support the rod used as a hinge and guide for the other tubes.

This is a .5" rod that goes through all of the tubes/rails to act as a hinge and alignment point.

I welded a washer on as a stop 

Now just need to cut these off to about where I am pointing in the picture.  I want some overhang, but not that much.

A bit hard to tell from this picture, but the height adjustment corners are welded into place (and the table is shorter - I cut the top of the previous angle brackets at the corners).  This is taller than my workbench, but way less than before.

Moving the table into the shop!

OK - table is essentially done - moving it to the shop.. oh my.

This is where the table is to go... I want it near the incoming power.

Actually, it cleaned up quick but it was a bugger to move from the garage to the shop (there was 4" snow on the ground and its kinda heavy by hand - no tractor!).

Tada!  In its home!  I even have a chair - it's important to be comfy when welding

Moved the welder back in to the shop.

That wall needs to be cleaned up though - depressing looking at that thing!

Welding table in action!  I need to get the welder and tank off the table.  Time to make (or buy) another welding cart?  Maybe just a shelf...

Belt-grinder build starts!

First thing was to cut and shape the steel parts.  I just used the plans themselves.  Printed them out at 1:1 scale, cut the parts out in paper and then use spray glue to paste them on the metal.  Then I cut, shape, drill, etc... until the parts look like the templates.

I have been using the belt-sander with coarse grit (80) to do most of the grinding.  With large amounts of steel to remove I will use the metal cutting bandsaw first.  Its slow, but faster than just grinding and doesnt get as hot.

When I drill the holes I use a lubricant (WD-40) which tends to dissolve the glue - then the paper falls off!  So I have had to re-print and re-glue the templates in many cases.   

To make the channels for the belt-grinder frame and tables I decided to move to full MIG welding.  I had to set up my welder with solid MIG wire, which I bought locally (Yay!  my local hardware store is improving).  I also bought some grinder wheels for my angle grinder (again, yay, local store!).  I went home to install the new wire, then I realized that I didn't have the right welding/wire tip!  I thought I had bought a pack that came with multiple sizes, but that pack only provided tips for the welding gun with the wire feeder at the hand.  So, I went back to the store and YAY!  they had the tips I needed!  Very happy about that!  So I set the MIG gas up and move the welder over to the 220V line and try a quick test weld on some scrap.  Beautiful!  It is so easy - much cleaner than flux core too!  Whew. 

So, I shimmed up the channel box with about .008" of aluminum soda can walls.   I clamped to the table and tack-welded the small box up in short order.  Then I forced the bar out and all seemed well.  But the real test comes when you do the final welds - will the box warp so much that the bar won't slide in easy?  I went ahead and got the long box ready and then I went to tack weld .... ACK!  Something went wrong - the wled sputtered and popped - just ugly!  

This just looks like picture of what happens when you don't use any shield gas - but I had not changed the setup between this and the previous weld that worked perfectly!  I checked the gas, gas pressure, flow-rate - it was fine!  WTF?

I did some deeper investigation and discovered that when I switched out the wire I had forgot to tighten one of the wire feeder thumbscrews.  It was the one that held the gas channel into the cable/hose to the gun!  UGH.  The fact that I had just used the same setup to do the short tube and that it worked nicely is a mystery.  All that I can think of is that I must have jostled the hose loose and disconnected the gas line between those two welds. 

In any case, this got me somewhat upset and I think lead to the next problem - weld overheating and warping!  I removed the bar from the long box, again, no problems really yet - except bad tack welds.  I decided to try to weld over the bad - porous - welds.  Not a good idea!  It just gets worse.  SO i ended up grinding ot the bad porous welds and trying again.  I was able to correct some of the porous welds but not all.  Also, I think because I was too focused on fixing the porosity issue, I wasn't paying enough attention to letting the welds cool and moving around to let the heating occur uniformly.  Bottom line is that I finished the welds and headed in  for the night.  I was obsessed with it though, so I got up around 4am the next day and went out to check to see if I had warped the boxes too bad.   

Yep!  I did.  I got the bar into both boxes and then they were stuck!  ARGGGH (yes, both boxes! stop laughing! :P)

The first box, the short one, is on the left - looks fine - the 2nd box is one the right - UGH!  

After grinding out some of the porosity

Just couldn't grind enough of the bad weld out to get rid of this porosity.

Most of the welds were saveable - but, by then I had forgot about being careful about overheating any particular area!

I was able to use a hydraulic jack to push out the bar from the large box, and most of the short box, but I noticed that there was some significant galling on the bar at that point.  Damn.  One workaround that I was thinking about was to simply get that bar out and mill off a few thousandths until it fit nicely again (I still might do that - I have to think about it).  I really didn't want this project to take a long time!  DANG.  Haste and impatience got me in trouble again!

So, just in case I find that I am unable to remove the bar from the small box I stopped on the way home and picked up some more steel to weld up two new boxes.  Unfortunately, Foltz (in Hagerstown) didn't have any 1.5" square bar.  I did find that Onlinemetals.com did have the 1.5" steel I needed, so I ordered another 2' section.  It should be here before next weekend (I hope).  

Here are some pics of the Foltz metal storage area.

The really nice thing about Foltz is that they are just off my path between my city and country homes, and when I buy metal here I don't have to pay shipping!  Shipping for metal is significant!

A visit to Foltz of Hagerstown, family easter, and spring chores

Easter at Mom's

We all got together at mom's place on Saturday for our Easter celebration.  Was wonderful weather and good food!

Tom did the camera work.  He set it for time delay and was able to get in the shot.  Great job!

After the meal we went on a quick walk around the place to fix some damaged fence stringers and just take in the spring beauty.

Katherine and me! :)

Katherine and I are trimming mom's Elderberry bush.

A visit to Foltz in Hagerstown, MD - AMAZING!

Katherine had done an internet search to find places that sold metal stock that were on my way to our farm.   I have been getting some stock through the mail, but shipping can be a bit high (metal is heavy and awkward).  She found a place in Hagerstown that we decided to stop at on the way to the farm. The front of the store, what you would see if you just saw it from the street, is nothing particularly special.  However, I asked to see what metal stock they had in their inventory at present and was permitted to go into the back section and look...

This is the metal stock rack!  Plenty of hot rolled and a bit of cold rolled steel.  Even some brass and copper!  A good selection

OMG - the old, wonderful machines!  this is a Mill/drill - looks to have about a 8-10 foot throat!

Millings machine

A metal lathe with what look like a 6 foot swing and a 20 foot bed!  The owner says this was brought in from Baltimore by horse and cart in 4 sections.  It was used to service the trolley system in Hagerstown.  That face plate on the lower right is about 4 feet in diameter!

The old machines were powered by a steam traction engine out back of the shop.  Here are the power distribution pulleys

Another view of that faceplate!  You can see the headstock of the lathe better here too (up and to the left of the faceplate)

Drill press.  Massive.  Hard to get a good sense of size in this picture.  It must have been about 12 feet tall,
maybe a tad more.

This place also has some nice deals for machinists metal workers near Hagerstown.  They still have one gentleman on staff that can fabricate stuff, if you have a need.  I might have to visit them if my tries at making my milling arbor don't work out...

Gardens resize and plowed!

I wasn't feeling great this weekend due to springs wonderful allergies, but I was able to get out long enough to pull and move some garden posts and to plow all the patches.

The big patch was pretty much cut in half.  I sectioned off the "clay" region since that was not very productive anyway.  I plan to plant some of the new elderberry plants there in a couple weeks.

"big patch" - not so big anymore.

Plowing went very well.  No broken shear pins and soil didn't stick to the plow blades.

Here you can see the unplowed old section that I am not going to garden anymore.

Soil looks fairly decent.  I may still have some water issues, of course, but this should help by keeping to the section without so much clay.

The "new" section of the front patch plowed much better than last year due to the fact that most of the tree roots are now gone.  The soil is still not up to snuff, but it will get there - just need to keep putting mulch on there!

I left a bit more room on the left between the blackberries so that I can mow easier.

Again, plowing went pretty good.  Very few tree roots left.

The soil is still crap, but it will improve as I add amendments.  

The paw-paw patch also changed shape a bit.  I moved the patch up the hill a little bit and extended it toward the road a few feet as well.  I sectioned off the wet section.  I redrilled the posts but did not put up the fence yet.  I figure that can wait until after I till.

The grounding rod for the electric fencer put up a hell of a fight!  I never did manage to pull it!  I think I will just cut it off below ground level and bury it.

The soil in the paw-paw patch looks so rich!  This is where the sweet potatoes go this year.  I think I have beans scheduled to go here too - although it might be corn.  I can't remember.

These patches will sit like this for a months or so before I till and plant.  This will give some of the organics in the mulch to decompose and get integrated with the soil.

 More flat-electric fence put up

I didn't get to do a lot on the farm, but i did get some more of the flat electric fence up.  Just did the blueberries.  This stuff is way more visible than the old polystrand.  I hope the deer take notice!

More work on the spindle thread protector

I mounted the thread protector into the 4-jaw chuck and dialed it in.  It is within 4-5 thousandths of centered, which is fine for this purpose.  Then I used brill bits in the tailstock drill chuck to drill out to about 1 1/8".   After drilling to 1 1/8" I was able to mount up a boring bar and start boring to the final dimension (I am not 100% sure what the final dimension is yet, but I have a ways to go before I have to worry about that!).

I found these big drill bits in the stuff I bought from Ken's family.  Biggest is 1 1/8".  They have .5" shaft so that worked out well!  I am not sure drilling bigger than 1 1/8" is advisable.  The drill chuck did slip a couple times in the MT3 tailstock.  No damage was done, but anything bigger I think would cause excessive spinning in the taper possible causing damage.

Showing boring bar and hole in center of spindle-thread protector.

When boring I noticed that a lot of chips go inside the spindle.  I guess its ok to use air to blow those out.

Looks like at least another 1/4" to go.  The bore is about 1 3/8 right now.

Discovered some Wilton Vises!

While looking for some drill bits to enlarge the bore in the spindle-thread-protector, I discovered several little vises - about 2" jaws.  Two of them are Stanley, and two of them are Wilton - little bullet vises!   Very nice!  I really need to get a workbench surface so that I can mount these - I need a vise or two installed!