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.
