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)
Contact Smokin Joe
