What's up with this banner thing?
If you don't see a navigation bar on the left, CLICK HERE

January 24, 2004

Welding Homework

I took some time today to practice welding some sheetmetal. James found some 18 gauge metal in the scrap heap at work and gave me some tips on getting this thin metal to stick together. So far, my biggest problem with all my welds has been moving too fast along the bead, which reduced penetration. With sheetmetal, staying too long in one place will lead to burning through the metal. I've read in many places that it is often better to use a series of spot-welds to fix sheetmetal in place to avoid any warping, skipping around to keep heat from building up. I decided to try a test.

I cleaned the weld areas of the sheetmetal and clamped them together.
Having clean metal for welding is critical to quality.

Then I tacked the ends and one in the center to keep the metal
from buckling and enlarging the gap.

Then I lay down a single bead from end to end to weld the two pieces
together.

And you can see the results. ...

Then I did a second test and used a series of short spot welds to join the two halves and elminated the warpage problem. And just for grins, I ground down the weld to take a look at its integrity.

Weld penetration seems pretty good after grinding down the bead. The
two separate pieces are now one and wouldn't be noticable after paint.
This is how bodywork replacement is typically done.

Bolstered with some confidence, I decided to build my buffer stand using the steel I got from work. Read on...

Previous Restoration Day
Buffer Stand Construction

E-mail me at toolman8@sbcglobal.net

This page accessed times
Last modified on 05/19/2005

Thanks, Fidget!