Tag Archives: steel

The Good, and the Ugly Bad

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I’ve been having issues lately with inconsistency in my welds. Things go very right, and then go oh so very wrong. Here’s an unfortunate example. These two sets of tests were done minutes apart, with no changes on my part, or none that I could perceive. Not sure what I’m doing wrong here. It’s very frustrating. I’m emailing people, asking at online forums. I’m working on it. Hopefully I’ll figure it all out before I decide to set the whole thing out in the driveway and back over it repeatedly. I kid – sort of.

On the up side, and totally unrelated to welding, I realized the other day that if you go to Google and type in rollingballsculpture like that – as all one word – my blog is the second search result, which is kind of cool.

YESSSSS!!!!! Victory!!!!!

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weldmagic

Got it!!! I know this doesn’t look like much. It looks like some grubby little gray sticks, but I assure you that this is some of the most gorgeous crap I have turned out in weeks! It’s not perfect, but, man, it’s MUCH better than it has been for months! And, really, the thing is, although I have made some good welds previously, this time I was able to repeat the process seven times! THAT is progress! And…AND!!! – when I grabbed them and wiggled them in all kinds of directions, and nothing broke off!!! SOLID!!! That is what we want!!!!

That stuff written above the practice piece are the settings on the welder for the amperage and the size of the tungsten electrode that I used to make these welds. I thought I’d never forget it, wouldn’t need to write it down, but then it occurred to me that weeks ago I’d done some welds that looked just as good as these, but hadn’t written anything down, and then I spent weeks trying to get back to this, so, can’t hurt, right?

Anyway, I could bore you with a long story about how I figured all this out, but let’s just say I practice, and practiced, and practiced, and practiced, and in between I asked for a lot of help and did a bunch of research. Now, finally(!!) I can do some solid work of which I will be proud, and which I can use to make decent sculpture. This type of welding right here is the basis upon which all my work is done, so having achieved this I have an excellent starting point from which to grow.

In short, this is really awesome. Really, really, really awesome!!!! Woot, says I.

Pedal to the metal

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weldpedal

Here’s some more practice work from the welding bench. I just stuck a bunch of rods together, because I am still having massive trouble getting things to stick without either making cold, weak welds, or blowing obnoxiously big craters in things and overheating them. These welds are largely of the latter type. As evidence of just how crappy they are, you’ll note that there are several spots along the longest wires where it looks like there are missing “teeth.” Those places used to have short wires welded to them, but the minute I put pressure on them with my hands, they broke off. Doh.

This is not what we want, kids. This is not good. This does not make me the happiest guy on earth. However, it is all part of the learning process, and sooner or later I’ll figure this out.

Oh, and the wires are sitting on top of my brand new foot pedal control (you can switch the welder on and off with it instead of using what is, to me, a clumsy hand control). The pedal helped me get the welds started more easily, but I’m still melting everything like I have a Death Ray instead of fusing things nicely together.

More practice to come. I’ll get the hang of this yet.

…My intentions…ooh, weird…

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Rolling Ball Sculpture - looking up

Following yesterday’s questioning of my sanity, this is the part where I go, “Oh yeah – THIS is why I like to do this!”

It was quite a process to get everything lined up and ready to weld, and then the welding itself, well, that’s still a struggle, but I believe I got things going well enough to keep all of this together for at least 24 hours, if not longer! This shot is from below, looking up at the piece. You can see the nifty bracket, right? Behold the niftiness! (Niftiness?? Niftyness…niff-tee-niss…)

Rolling Ball Sculpture

Here’s an above shot.

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Side view.

And that is our outstandingness for the weekend! Lots of work, lots of crappy welds, lots of frowning and sweating and whatever, but it’s all together! It even sort of works when you roll marbles down it. Who woulda thought??

(Bits of) my creation

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Rolling Ball Sculpture - bracket

Remember that little bracket from a few days ago? Back on the 21st? Well, it was lame, and something had to be done about that. Sure, it would have worked as a plain, flat piece of metal, something you could easily forget, never notice – but what in heaven’s name would be the point in THAT??! I had to throw a little wackiness at it, make it interesting, and after some work with a jig saw, drill, and grinder, we have the magic you see above. Fun, eh? It took a long time, but I think it was worth it. I’d love to create more stuff in this style. I *really* dig it. It reminds me of old Buck Rogers stuff, that fabulous 50s jet-age sort of feel that comic books and advertisements had. I hope more of this shows up here.

DSC_0022

If you’re building one of these things, once you’ve spent way too many hours making fancy little brackets just so they’ll look like fancy little brackets, you finally get to the part where you have to actually, you know, install it. This is where multiple clamps come in handy. Not the steel blocks and clamp supporting the section of 2×4, the two welding clamps at the top of said 2×4 which are delicately balancing the platform to be welded to the sculpture, and the red-handled clips with the pipe that are holding up a long arm of the ball track (not to mention the other steel block that’s holding the lower clamp). These are probably the times where I most often go, “Why do I want to do this again?”

The answer to that question is right around the corner.

Bits and pieces…and the bits and pieces

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Today is a special edition of One-Pic-A-Day where I present you with – four pictures. I do this to surprise and amaze you, not because I’m absorbed in my own project and am a detail fanatic about documenting every step. No, surely not that…

Little legs

You’ve seen a few pictures over the last several days where I was working on some boring-looking flat thing with a hole in it. Well, here’s the wrap on that whole deal, and I thought you might be curious. If not, skip on to tomorrow where there will likely be more pictures of…the same sort of thing. Good luck with that.

Anyway, above are the little legs I cut and bent that will go around the edge of the plate and hold up the guardrail that will keep the marbles corralled so they don’t go spilling all over the floor.

Blocked up

Here I have the plate flipped upside down and held securely in place with my nifty steel blocks. It helps to be positive that things aren’t going to move while you’re welding. I’m a little extreme sometimes, but at least I won’t worry. Maybe.

Woot!

Presto – we’re done! There was a lot more to it, but I apparently got really excited about how well it was going, and I didn’t shoot any pictures between adding the railing and adding the bolts and nut. Those fasteners that I welded in there will just help the marbles bang around a good bit and wander off in all sorts of unpredictable directions. Because of this bit of wackiness, the marbles will never go through the sculpture the same way twice! Unpredictability – I like it.

Don't move!

Yet again the nifty steel blocks prove their usefulness. Not only do they help hold that brace in place, but the sheer weight of the block is enough to allow me to use a rather heavy clamp to hold it upright. I’m not reassuring you that these blocks were a good thing to buy, I’m reassuring me, although if you agree, I’m cool with that.

So, now the randomizer/track splitter is all constructed and awaiting to have the brace welded to it that will attach it to the sculpture itself. Easy enough right? One would think so…

That took longer than anticipated

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The thing to really focus on here is that plate with the hole in it underneath the other crap. I guess I put the other stuff in the photo to make it look a little fancier, because, really, all that I did the entire evening was make that plate with the hole in it. I needed this piece, so I cut it off of a giant sheet of extremely rusty metal, then I smoothed off all the sides and rounded the corners, then I ground off all of the rust, then I cut the hole in it. This doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that will consume 2.5 hours, but I assure you, it is. I got done, looked at my watch, and went, “What?!” Well, there you go. I guess sometimes the simple-looking stuff takes a while.

Dedicated space 6

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Sunday, a banner day! Things a-happenin’ all over the place!
Once I got those gussets welded on at each end, I turned my attention to the front of the table. There was no way to fasten it to the top of the frame unless I wanted to drill holes in it and bolt it through, and there was no way in hell I was going to drill holes in my nifty sheet of smooth steel. The only thing to do, therefor, was to weld a piece of flat stock at a perpendicular angle underneath the top at the front of the frame, and then drill through that and bolt it down. Below is one of the welds from that piece.

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I did not just make a weld that went all the way across the front, tempting as that sounds. When you weld, you generate a lot of heat, and when you generate a lot of heat, you warp things. If I’d just made one great big long bead across the front I would have warped the hell out of both pieces of metal, and it would have been impossible to get the thing to fit flat on the frame after that. Instead, I made four welds across the front like so. And you know what? I still warped it. The top arched up in the center about a quarter of an inch. If you look back up at the first photo you can see the little black dot that I made at the bottom edge of the steel before I welded it. Post-welding, and you can see it has obviously arched upward. I put a straight edge on the bench top, and it wouldn’t lay flat, meaning that I’d never get any of my sculptures to sit flat on it either. Ever. That was NOT going to work. I had to do something. What next? This:

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Here you can see two things. Well, you can see, like, twenty-seven, but there are two *main* things. One is my bit of welding the four spots under the bench top and the bolts now running through it into the frame. The other main thing is the dozen or so very heavy items I had to stack on top of the bench top to get it level again so that I could drill the holes for those bolts. There are, let’s see: four bricks, a bottle of detergent, a gallon can of acetone, a large piece of 1/2″-thick steel stock, four blocks of solid steel, and two halves of the differential of a 1967 Chevelle. Yup, it took all that. I thought of the bricks last, otherwise I think I would have just made a brick ziggurat and left it at that, but this is more entertaining anyway. Actually, to do it all over, I would have weighed everything down to begin with, lined it all up, drilled all the holes, run the bolts through, and THEN welded it – but I didn’t. Learn something new every day. Rest assured, I’ll not forget this little lesson.

That’s how we tied things up for the weekend, kids. I was so beat from all those shenanigans that I didn’t even bother to take any more pictures after that. More later, rest assured.

NOTE: I fully realize that I have ruined the “one” portion of “one-pic-a-day” here, but, really, you absolutely adore pictures of welded stuff, don’t you? Thought so.

Dedicated space 5

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Okay, here we are. Finally, after all this prep work, after all the sweeping, scrubbing the floor, running wiring, moving crap, throwing crap out, and all that other lameness, *finally* we have reached the good part: welding the bench!

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I realized that my original plan for the bench was going to have to be modified. The back stop was going to need some way to brace it or affix it to the top. Taking a look at things, it seemed like a good idea would be to add a corner piece below where the bench top met the backstop on either side. Triangles are structurally very sturdy shapes, and this would provide a good amount of rigidity to the joint as well as simply keeping the back stop from kind of wobbling on its flimsy sheet metal mount at the back of the bench. I was fortunate to find some small scraps of sheet stock that just so happened to be the perfect size, and this from an aborted project from at least five years ago. Coincidence? I think not.

I was actually kind of worried about this whole setup. I had never welded anything this thick before. Someone told me, “Better turn that up all the way,” on the amperage settings for my welder. I got out my little chart, saw that this was correct, and then I cranked the welder up to 150 amps and made sure I had the correct size tungsten. I got out some filler rod for the job, made sure that all my pieces were spotlessly clean and ready to go, and then I pretty much just held my breath and flipped the switch. It turned out fairly decent for my newb status, if I do say so myself. It’s not pretty, but it won’t fall apart any time soon. The other side looks a little prettier, but not much. Good enough to get the job done, I say.

This took a long time, even though it looks like all I did was buzz things together. Getting the pieces cut, fitted up precisely (always an issue), and getting them spotlessly clean – all that took a long time. Then I had to get things clamped together securely. The welding itself took maybe five minutes, but the whole operation surrounding it took all my free time for Saturday afternoon. I was pleased with the results, though. Big stuff coming on Sunday!