All RIGHT already. Here's another update. Geez.

 I'll start off with a shout out to my friend Remo who sent me the above "new" torch! It is a Weldcraft flex head with a large gas lense setup. It is a lot different than the previous torch I was using. I am not sure if I actually like it yet, but, I will keep trying it out to give it a thorough workout.

I put it to good use finishing up Dave's header!

That is a 70 something Honda CB350 that I've done a bunch of odds and ends to before, and FINALLY finished the header, which is the second to last major fab project left to do before it is all up to Dave to get back together. 

 The pipes nearly all tacked up:

 For those of you, who like me, are motorcycle retarded, the frame and engine are flipped upside down. heh

Here is what happens if your fitup isn't exact:

 It isn't horrible, but, get your fitup as good as you can so you don't have to deal with silly crap like that.

Nearly completely tacked and ready for welding:

We raided the kitchen for some aluminum foil:

 Why the foil? It is cheap, works well and doesn't leave a sticky residue like the foil tape (which still has its place, though, so don't think I'm JUST being cheap), which prevents a whole lot of cleanup.

It looks like I should have turned up the gas a bit more:

 But at least I was starting to stack dimes.

Here we were getting a sense of where the tailpipe needed to go:

 I squished the end of the tailpipe and flushed the collector off at the necessary angle, then tacked the tailpipe on:

 Above and below you can see how I formed the tailpipe to the collector:

It was a bit crude, as I took a cold chisel and bopped the tailpipe until it matched up. It is a bit trickier than that, as you have to tack the pipes together at the right spot, then apply directed pressure at the right spot. You can use anything with a blunted edge or even a drill bit, but, a cold chisel was handy and yeah, it left some marks, but, it got the job done!

The other fun thing about welding a header off the engine is how much it moves. The two primary tubes moved (ONLY!!!) about 3/8" together. It makes for an interesting time getting the header on, but it is still manageable. If I ever make more of these, I'll have a jug set up to prevent that from happening as much.

YAY!

I have more updates ready soon.

Ginourmous Update

Yesterday, I got a huge metric tonne of work done. Dave arrived in the morning and we set to work on his CB350 and Mike's CB750. Best get to the pics instead of jabbering on about what we did when you can see the work.

Oh! The next few pics are from earlier in the week and I hadn't had a chance to upload them yet, so I'll go in chronological order. 

Here is a view of the inside of the vertical brace on the front piece of the seat pan for Mike's CB750:

The angle is a bit funny, but you can see that the center line of the vertical brace matches the center line of the seat pan:

 I did this to try to ensure that the seat pan would stay longitudinally aligned with the frame.

Here is a view of the rear seat pan and rear vertical brace:

I started out with this:

 And ended up with lots of these:

The welds came out pretty darn well on the edges of all the pieces of the pan and tray! I actually enjoyed laying down those beads. =) I didn't get a pic of how I set the up to be welded, but basically I clamped them to the vertical sides of the stainless shelf I use as a welding table top, which allowed me easy access and a very good ground. Grounding is soooo important to welding!

After I got the seems welded together, I tackled welding the vertical braces, which was tricky to ensure that they fit the frame correctly (as the chassis braces are NOT exactly parallel to the frame tubes!) but I did a good job, I think. 

 Another view of the rear seat pan and the mini-magnets I used for positioning the braces for welding:

 Once I got the braces welded in, it was time to weld the front and rear sections together!

I used the clamp on the rear section with a piece of angle under the frame tubes to hold the rear section in place:

I tacked the front and rear together lightly, then held the front in place with some heavy stuff to keep it from pulling while I put more tacks to hold everything in place.

Side note:

 This is what happens to a pyrex cup when you drop them while they are hot! This is one of the main reasons why so many guys dislike the pyrex cups, but, I can honestly say I like them especially for tight work!

I didn't grad a pic of the tray welded together, but it fits REALLY well! (Dave can attest to that as he was surprised at how well it fits!)

The last major piece of the seat pan puzzle is the rear trim piece:

 This was what I started on yesterday morning. It kicked my butt for a while. I figure I will post my failings as often as I can so people can learn from them, and this is certainly a good time to learn. heh

Here is a shot of me starting to tack the ring I hand made previously that I thought would work really well:

 And . . . I was really wrong! As you can see in the next pic:

 The collar/ring/piece was curling way too much, to a much smaller radius than what I thought would happen. Here is the top view so you can see it from a different perspective:

Here's the whole thing with the bends slightly exaggerated after I trimmed the tacks off:

 I figured that if a ring-type section was curling too much, a straight piece should work just fine! I measured the inside cord length with the cardboard template I had used in mockup with another piece of cardboard I rolled up a bunch of times so I could match the inside radius:

I didn't get a lot of pics for a while since I was busy tacking and bending and generally making a mess of stuff. The straight piece of steel didn't want to bend enough. Instead of fighting, trying to make one piece of steel work, I just went simple and started cutting pieces:

 As you can see in the above pic, I welded those pieces on and that was a much better start than what I had before.

A view from the top:

Rear view:

 Pieces cut from the original ring-style trim piece:

Clamp and tack and weld and smack and tack and weld:

Some other crappily lit photos of the nearly finished product:

Weld closeup:

While I was working on the seat pan, I was also heavily involved in Dave's swing arm. He had previously had some bracing welded into the swing arm, and while I generally liked the look of it, I had my concerns about one area:

That thin spot has bothered me since I saw it months ago. I wanted Dave to do something about it. Well, I helped him do something about it! Recycling a piece that I had chopped of Mike's seat hoop, we cut the tube to match the contour of the bracing nicely, then I welded it in thusly:

You can also see some seam welding I did to make it easier for Dave to smooth out the area. It's not straight because I was just following the edge of the factory MIG welded that dave had already ground down. The seam welding will allow him to use less body filler and still have a strong swing arm without a cosmetically nice but structurally compromised unit.

More seam welding:

After the seam welding and additional bracing were completed, I finished up the welding on the seat pan and switched over to a thicker tungsten and got ready for some nasty aluminum welding! (Nasty because I was welding on cast crap, which is nearly always ugly.)

First up:

Dave wanted that nice new aluminum welded onto that brake lever. Note the rubber on the end of the lever . . .

Getting set up:

I also clamped the new piece to hold it in place. If you aren't familiar with welding aluminum, you have NO idea how frustrating an experience it can be. Aluminum acts like warm marshmallows when hot, with a gooey, weird consistency that can be hard to manage, especially as USED cast just sucks up so much gunk, grime and greasy stuff that comes out when heated up, exactly while you are attempting to weld pieces together. You MUST camp things in place, or at least prevent the pieces from moving around much until tacked well on two planes perpendicular to each other. (That is USUALLY enough for most things people are going to be welding.)

Be prepared for ugliness:

Pretty? No. I know it isn't. However . . . it IS solid. Once the welds are smoothed over, you will be hard pressed to tell that the pieces welded together were ever separate.

Dave has some cleanup to do and one hole to drill for the brake lever to function, and he might just want to get some new rubber for the end, also:

Ooooooops!

I don't envy him cleaning that off, either!

The next bit of aluminum welding is a repair to a brake drum for Mike's CB750:

The broken piece is the mount for the brake cable. Mike bought some 3/4" round stock and I cut a piece to fit, which you'll see in a moment, but I have to make a statement about something first.

NEVER give something this greasy and mucky to a welder!!!!

A welder shouldn't have to clean up a part all that much. Sure, some touchup is always necessary, but . . . this drum cover was really gross. I didn't pay much attention to it at first because just after Mike mailed it to me "shop," he said to ignore it because he was getting another sent to him in the mail. That one turned out to not be correct . . . so I had to fix his drum cover and deal with the nasty burny smokefest it created! BLECH!

Here is the mount after a thorough cleaning and shaping:

Again: CLAMP ALUMINUN IN PLACE!!!!!

 I flattened and beveled a side onto the round stock. This turned out really well.  I was happy with the fit you see in the previous pic!

 After:

Again, ugly, but solid. A bit more cleanup and a new hole drilled, and Mike will be ready to rock some rear (I think) brakes.

Dave also brought a new toy:

It's a 30" sheet metal brake. It's made decently well, especially for the price. I sure could have used it a couple of weeks ago when I started bending up Mike's stuff, but, I'll certainly be using it in the next few days after I clean up the packing grease on it.

Dave also brought a small steel table frame that, with some additional bracing, will be perfect for most of my welding! I'll grab pics of that after I clean up the shop tomorrow.

As to why I haven't been posting much the past two weeks, I'll write a separate blog entry about that later today, maybe. 

Long Weekend Update

Friday

I spent most of Friday pulling the rockers off my friend's minivan, but I did manage to get some work done on my Father's day present:

What is it? It's a charcoal chimney made from stainless steel! If you aren't familiar with charcoal chimneys, they are for starting your charcoal without lighter fluid. You crumple up newspaper loosely in the bottom and place some charcoal on top. You light the newspaper from the bottom and it gets the charcoal going without using any nasty tasting lighter fluid. It also gets the charcoal ready faster, which is a really good thing for charcoal. The above pic is as it arrived to me. It came with two halves which were bent to fit together and the handle, which is resting on top, hanging over the side.

In the following picture, I took a closeup on the protective film used on the shiny side of the stainless. Good stainless shouldn't come all scratched up, because of the film. The laser can cut right through it and it is sticky enough to stay on even when the base metal is bent. The holes are for plug welding, or if you wanted to, bolting through the side of the chimney. I will be plug welding. 

I didn't rotate this next pic, oops. The details on the chimney are really well thought out an executed. The thin slot you see in the pic is cut to allow a tab in the bottom plate (yes: "Insert tab A into slot B") to facilitate welding the bottom plate in. 

The sides are even made with tabs that fit together to help located the edges!

Here is a good closeup of the edge and how fine a cut you get from the laser:

The long piece you see in the pic below was formerly joining the two angled pieces:

Holding a few pounds of charcoal in a chimney that weighs another few pounds is hard when all you have is a flat handle, so I cut the flat out and will replace that with a wooden handle.

I smoothed the cut pieces with my sander:

Then clamped them together for drilling:

Matching holes is important for things to look straight:

In testing my "router speed controller:"

I've found that it works to a degree. It is useful for normal twist drill bits, but have found that it does not actually allow "full torque at all RPMs" as advertised. For the money I paid, it is worth it. I used it to drill holes well enough in the stainless of the handle, and that one thing paid for itself. I don't have cheap drill bits. Keeping them sharp is worth spending a little extra time and money making sure they stay sharp and useful.

I also picked up some cheap sheet pliers from Harbor Freight:

The fit and finish on the smaller pliers was abysmal. I had to file some of the nastiest edges I've seen on a tool:

If I hadn't done that, the edges would rip any metal to pieces when bending! The larger one is actually decent enough, though, and didn't require any work.

I did some quick layout work, as well:

Then I marked some quick lines to make the piece more manageable:

The thick angle was used to clamp the sheet instead of clamping directly onto the sheet, since that style clamp would bend and warp the sheet if used directly on the sheet:

That wrapped up the day on Friday. 

Saturday

I spent a bunch of time in the morning cleaning. I hadn't done that for over a week, and things were jsut too cluttered. I broke down cardboard boxes, organized errant tools, cleaned off my workbenches and swept. I changed the gas line to my TIG welder to a longer one so I could move it about better. I changed a burned out bulb on the halogen shop light that I use for additional lighting. It was a really productive morning and early afternoon.

I was anticipating Dave's arrive in the morning, but he was delayed by a stubborn woman. Then he hit traffic. Then the Ferd Exploder he was driving started to overheat. Badly. He called me after he had pulled over into a parking lot where just after he had pulled in, the entire front of the car poofed into a coolant mushroom cloud of doom. I ran over as soon as I could with what coolant I had. We both figured it had just gotten low due to the fact that his dad thought that the coolant level was the stain in the overflow, not the actual coolant level! ARG! After pouring in the about half a gallon of coolant mix I had, I drove him to a gas station where we got another gallon that the engine just swallowed without showing up in the overflow. (The overflow is also the fill point on that and many more modern vehicles, which is really annoying as I think that makes bleeding the cooling system much harder than it should be.) Once we dumped that gallon in, we saw we needed more coolant! How low was this thing? We drove it to the nearest gas station and started poking around and found this:

That, dear readers, is a PLASTIC thermostat housing that is glued together. And split at the seams. Seams meant to stay together so coolant doesn't puke out of the engine. Ugh . . . 

By this time, it was getting on towards parts store closing times, so we hoped on the phones and started calling around. Not even the dang Ferd stealership had the part in stock. We had to get it towed as the gas station attendants (this is New Jersey were you are not lawfully allowed to pump your own gas, for fear you might blow up the gas station  . . . but I can't complain too much since the gas is waaay cheaper than in NY) were getting anxious with us in the lot pulling parts off a car that really wasn't going anywhere. We got it towed back to my "shop" by some really great guys who were actually some of the best tow truck operators I've seen in the civilian world. Dave's dad got a hold of the part, but that left Dave mostly stranded in New Jersey without a ride home. So I drove him home, but not until after I welded the box of the charcoal chimney together so I could at the very least show it to my dad the next day! I wasn't going to miss Father's Day for anything short of death or dismemberment. 

I drove Dave back home and was greeted by his appreciative parents with a steak, fresh corn on the cob, mashed taters and apple pie a la mode ice cream, and a bottle of 12 year old rum (which I will open on my birthday)! Talk about pretty darn cool. It made the drive to Brooklyn totally worth it. 

Sunday

Starting charcoal with a chimney is pretty easy, as long as you aren't a goober who packs the newspaper so tight it chokes off airflow to the charcoal and you get a smokey mess . . . I wonder who did that?

Here is the new chimney next to the old one that was only a couple of years old:

I do happen to like the heat shield on the old one, but, as you can see, that thing is nearly rusted out and on its very last legs. This new one should last several lifetimes!

Here is one of the better welds:

Some of the welds weren't as pretty as I would have liked, but, at least they are solid and I didn't smoke the stainless out of the metal. heh

Here is a closeup of the handle/heat shield of the old chimney:

The handle I am going to install on the new one has much shorter legs (which is better for supporting the massive amount of charcoal this thing can prepare), which is really going to need a heat shield of some sort so fingers don't get cooked when moving the chimney around, or even dumping the coals out.

Action shot:

This is what I was cooking:

Everyone loved them! I just did a simple marinade of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sea salt and granulated garlic. I mixed it up and brushed it on, letting everything sit while I got the charcoal going. 

I am a firm believer in not messing with the meat. The more you poke at it, the tougher it gets. Leave it the heck alone! If you don't have a meat thermometer, get used to the texture of the meat as it hits different doneness points. The last thing you should do is cut the meat to check doneness, but as a last resort, make as small a cut in the thickest region of the meat and if you see that the thickest part is not quite to the degree you like, pull the darn meat then! The easiest way to overcook is to forget that what you pull off your heat will still have enough heat to keep cooking itself for minutes after you pull it off the direct heating source.

Also, LET YOUR MEAT REST! Never carve meat straight off the heat. The juices will pour out and you will be left with dry, tough meat. Wait at least 5 minutes before carving. It will still be plenty warm.

This has been your BBQ PSA for the day! LOL!

Monday

Today is not technically part of the weekend, but since we worked on stuff that was supposed to get worked on this weekend, I might as well include it in this update.

Dave had his calculus class in the morning, which meant I could sleep in a bit and also mow the lawn at my grandmother's place that is generally what is considered "home." I got all that done, showered and headed out to meet Dave at his girl's parents' place since he dropped off a motorcycle that he had recently finish doing some work on.

Aside from Google Maps on my phone being abso-tarded-ly stupid, everything went fairly smoothly with the trip out to the "shop" until . . . we roll into the driveway and as soon as Dave sees the Exploder he says "I forgot the keys . . . " DOH!

We didn't waste the time, though. He called his dad, who agreed to ride out and bring the keys and we got busy replacing the thermostat housing with the new one, which was not forgotten. That actually didn't take too long so we moved on to much more fun stuff!

Let the motorcycle work commence!

Here is a lovely picture of Dave's work increasing the ID of a SS fender washer with an 1/8" carbide bit:

After a good while, he ended up with this fit:

Excellent work!

The OD needed to be taken down to match the exhaust port dimensions. Dave trimmed down the OD in the bandsaw and then came up with a GREAT idea on how to speed up AND increase safety when cleaning up the OD of he washer to the correct size:

After a long while at the sander, he got this:

I'm definitely impressed with his work. It is accurate and the fitment is very good, which, with stainless welding, is absolutely critical for solid welds that are also aesthetically pleasing, not that anyone will see the welds on these bits. heh

I wasn't being a slacker, either! I laid out the final piece of the seat pan, which took a while, especially since I had to make a radius tool:

That worked fantastically well! I need to spend a some time on the sander to clean up the radius, but, the piece, as it currently sits is really good:

I used the same trick for the radius on the seat pan top to mark out the "hoop" that will get welded to the radius to finish the seat pan off:

Here are the two pieces superimposed on each other to check if they are within tolerance:

They are! 

 They are! Some more sanding and filing of the main piece and everything should be good to go!

Tomorrow I am going to do some work on Terry's new truck so it can pass inspection, and then I am going to concentrate on finishing the seat pan for Mike. I have some additional bracketry to finish, so that the seat and battery tray can be secured safely yet easily removed for sercice.


Geez, that was a long update. I hope you enjoy!