I Hate Waiting...

Well, still waiting on a pair of 3500# hubs for my axle.  Called Northern Tool, and they don't know whats going on, and had to call me back.  It turns out that the hubs are still on back order, but the shipment of hubs to their central warehouse from the manufacturer that was available earlier this month (when they first said that they would be here) wasn't large enough to fill all orders, so I had to wait for the next one.  I could start fabricating the top of the trailer (box sides, tailgate, ect) but I wanted to do that after I had the axle on it because it is getting harder and harder to turn over by myself, and the additional weight of the walls would make it that much harder, particularly with the full weight weight of the trailer resting on the walls.  Well, it wouldn't be a problem if it was just resting upside down while I put the axle on, the problem would be rolling it over for the last time with the entire weight on the upper corner of the wall as it rolls.  The front would be supported, but the rear wouldn't be, and I think it could bend.  So I have decided to just follow my original plan, which means waiting for the hubs to show up.

Ugh.

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The Red Cars Win!!!

nothing new in the shop, still waiting for parts (hubs), but i did watch the Grand Prix of Italy at Monza today. Almost the best possible result. Ferrari won the race, and Lewis Hamilton (PPPTTTTTT) crashed out in the frst lap. The second Ferrari team car finished third. the only way it would have been better was if Ferrari finished 1 2 and MClaren didn't finish in the points (one of their cars finished 2nd, Hamilton (PPPTTTTTT) of course didn't finish, thus earned no championship points.

so, heres to Ferrari winning their home Grand Prix. I think I will have pasta with RED sauce tonight. Ace celebrated by putting on his red collar.

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Gussets Finished

Finished welding all of the gussets today.  I ground off the welds from the top of the frame to allow the floor of the trailer to lie flat as well as make it easier to position the corner posts of the walls square with the frame.  With them gone and the top of the frame flat, the square 2x2 tubes will lie much flatter and form a stronger weld than the irregular gaps that would be there if I balanced the tube on the welds and just filled them.

Now I am waiting on the hubs from Northern Tool.  I have the axle stubs for the axle.  I also need to get another stick of 2x2x.125 wall square tube to fab the axle.  unfortunately, I will also need to buy at least one wheel/tire combination to get the length of the axle correct with 100% certainty.  I want to keep the overhand of the axle as short as possible, which means keeping the tire as close as possible to the frame of the trailer without actually hitting it.  Typically, a space of one inch is used as the distance between the tire and frame.

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What the Hell???

Well, I had an interesting problem with the welder while doing the last gussets. The wire welded itself to the liner where it enters it inside the machine. I ground off what looked like a tack weld on the end of the liner and tried to pull out the wire from the nozzle end, but even after I got the very end loose, it wouldn't budge. There must have been another area where it was melted inside te liner. Nothing was inside the machine cabnet that could have contacted the power source connections and the liner so I don't know what happened. The guys at the welding shop don't either. I bought a new liner, installed it, and everything works as usual. Maybe it was a freak accident. In any case I now have a great wire fish (the old gun liner) for getting the trailer light wires down the frame.

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A-Frame Gussets

Finished welding the gussets for the end of the A-Frame.

Looks like I will be able to finish welding the rest of the gussets tomorrow when I have the help to flip the frame on its side to weld to tops of all the gussets.

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Gussets

This is where I realized that I should have waited on the spring hardware, and did the gussets first.
 

Now I need help flipping the trailer frame over so that I don't bend the spring brackets.  Luckily I don't have that many to do, there are only going to be 8 of them, one in each corner of the trailer bed, and 2 large gussets backing up the areas in the A-Frame where the tube was bent and welded, and two more little ones in the sharp angle behind the short straight portion of the tongue.  I had a real hell of a time figuering out he angle to cut the gussets at that went behind the bends.  The actual angle was fairly easy to figuer out, but the saw only goes to 60 degrees, and the tube can only go into the saw one way if you want the "holes" of the tube to show up on the correct side of your "triangle" to close up the angle.  It took me a couple of tries to get it right.

Eventually I got the fit up to be very good, so I scrubbed off some of the mill scale with a wire brush and burned it in.  This is where I am in the project, I have the gussets all positioned and tacked, ready to be welded on.

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Spring Hangers

About this time I bought some axle parts from Northern Tool, and being kind of excited to do something differenet, I dove right in and started with the spring hangers.  These were prety easy, just measure carefully and burn them in.

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To Much Tongue

Getting into the sharp angle of the tongue with the standard mig gun nozzle didn't work all that well, so after some searching on the internet I determined that I would buy a couple spare nozzles and take the old one and grind it so that it could fit closer to the seam that I wanted to weld.  This will be a lesson, don't design parts that have very deep corners if you can avoid them.

Here is the modified nozzle.  Initially I started with both ends sharp but found that it fit too well and I couldn't see around it to the weld puddle, so I shortened one leg so that it obstructed the view less.

This could have been completely avoided by making the straight portion of the tongue flush or nearly so with the A-Frame, it would have been easier to weld, and I would have only had to make one large gusset instead of the two small ones.  This is what I should have done, but not being an experianced fabricator, didn't.

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The Tongue (No...Not Gene Simmons)

For those of you wondering why I have the sides of the trailer sticking out 4 feet beyond the deck, this is where it becomes interesting.  I planned on cutting a wedge out of the inside face, leaving the outside face intact.

These were then bent in and welded together to form the A-Frame portion of the composite tongue.  I tacked a stick of 1x1x.125 square tube along the centerline of the trailer frame to assist in placing the tube that the trailer coupler with mount to.  Only one side gave me problems that were sorted out with a grinder, I just needed to relieve some material from parts of the wedge so that it could close evenly.  The biggest problem was that since it "bent" wrong the first time, bending it "correctly" the second time required significantly more pressure to force the tube to bend where I wanted it too, and not slightly cock-eyed.

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Burning Metal

Started welding together the trailer frame made of 2x3 rectangular tube .125 wall thickness to produce the ladder fram for the bed of the trailer.  I decided to do this in my actual garage and not the extra stall because the floor is flatter in here.  With a digital level, the floor is no mor than .3 degrees off in the worst direction, good enough for me (it also explains why I have puddles on the floor in the winter, because there is no drain that thee floor would slope to).  I had to spend alot of time initially grinding the tubes to remove the mill scale to make it easier to have complete fusion for the critical welds on the frame.

I used a piece of particle floorboard as a primitive square to align the tube for weldment.  I used a 4 pieces of 2x4 lumber along the factory cut edges to make the "square" and clamps to hold the tubes against the 2x4 pieces while I welded them.  You can also see the areas on the inside of the frame rail where I ground off the mille scale.

Eventually the full ladder frame was fully tack welded together and ready to be completely welded (the tack welds are only short welds meant to hold the pieces together long enough to piece together the assembly, and help keep it square while the weldments are finished.  It is also the job of the weldor (the actual person producing weldments) to move around and not add to much heat in one place with the welder (the machine that assists in producing weldments) to keep heat distortion to a minimum.

Here you can see the frame with the extra legs sticking out of the front that will become the tongue while it was having all of the welds completed.  Also, the frame is pretty heavy to have falling down, so there is a couple ratchet straps holding it to a garage beam so it can't fall down (on me, or otherwise)

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Arriving Home With the Steel

The ride home was interesting, due to the length of the steel (most pieces were 10 feet, some 12 and 13) the tounge weight of the trailer was very light and at 50 MPH there was a sway problem, so I had to take the back roads home and avoid the highway.  The check engine light also illuminated on the way home, not to mention that on the country roads a wasp of some sort blew in the windo and dissappeared somewhere while I was driving.  I was also followed by a state patrol for a mile or so just after I left the steel warehouse.  I was ready for a nap when I arrived at home.  The check engine light was later determined to be the fuel cap, and the wasp turned up dead a few days later.

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The Utility Trailer

I started designing a utility trailer a few weeks ago. It was to be a 4x8 3500lb box trailer. since it wasn't to complicated I didn't bother with a CAD program, and just stuck to a note book with some simple drawings and some notes on ideas I had along the way.

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It Begins

     Over the years I have collected some hand tools, not a mechanics set but good solid workable set of tools that have served me well.  I have had to stop what I was doing to go buy another tool to finish it, but with each project, the box got a little heavier.  After moving into a house from an apartment I started to buy tools to fabricate other tools and items for work and pleasure.  These are mostly what this blog will be about.  I have a few wood tools that I use very often, particularly a Ridgid miter saw (chop saw to some) and a Ridgid table saw used for house projects, and maybe some jigs in the shop.  Right now the Burnt Metal staff consists of a Jet horizontal band saw, a Protools 105 Tube bender with a Tube Bandit digital read out and the BendTech pro software, a Miller Millermatic 211 MIG welder and the first purchase that I learned to weld with, an HTP Invertig 160DC.  Along with various clamps, grinders safety equipment and a bunch of other equipment that isn't as sexy as a power tool.

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