Just gotta check the frame on this 55 real quick. You guys seem to have a point. Everyone knows high carbon steel rusts faster than cast iron, and heating the frame to 200F will solve the inherent cranking of a vertical weld.
If you think your welds are great, Here’s a test: Weld a derrick, put 100T of load on it and stand under or even work under the ****ing thing. I dare ya.
Making this pump rig was one whole summer under the hood in Las Vegas, and there were two of us on it. The other guy was the only person I ever heard dad say could weld better than him. (Grandpa had passed by then, but they always argued, sometimes about whose welds were better.) I can’t remember his name, but I do remember he could cuss better than anyone I’d ever met, and he was .. highly critical of my welding, but I learned some from him, including how to pull that derrick back straight when it started to move without tearing the existing welds.
That picture is from 30 years later when I had to help dad repo it from the POS that tried to use the law to steal it from him. Last I heard it’s somewhere in the panhandle of Texas, still working.
Dad and grandpa taught me that controlling the pool / puddle was important. I didn’t hear anything about making ‘e’ shapes until the past couple years as I’ve been getting back into it. MIG is all new to me. Always ran stick on a Lincoln 200 back then.
Went into high tech shortly after I dropped out of college, and didn’t weld again until I bought a tiny Home Depot flux core machine in Hawaii to rebuild the trailer for my wife’s sailboat back in … 2007 or 2008. Everything rusts with salt water, so it was more “build a new trailer” than rust repair. After we were done, it seemed to carry the boat just fine. Pulled straight. Didn’t do any failure testing though. Did get a lot of lookie-loos from the Waikiki Yacht Club membership, but not as many as the crowd I had in Kaneohe (other side of the island) when I re-poured (sand cast) the 1,200 lb keel bulb for the larger boat we had at Kaneohe Yacht club. Lots of people telling me I didn’t know what I was doing then, too. That’s fine.
(You try finding bentonite to make “green sand” for casting in Hawaii..)
Anyway, they wanted too much for delivery of that tube, so we moved the 2”x3” tube for that trailer on top of the fj62 (it had bars for carrying my surfboard.)
Ken (brother, gone in 2011) laughed at me trying to strike an arc with that wire feed flux core machine.. “just pull the trigger!!”
damn thing would overheat and force a break about every 2’ of bead.
Way back in 83 or 84 I spent several weeks in Lovelock, NV drilling a supply well for a huge natural gas storage tank site. Every inch of weld on that tank was x-rayed. Turns out certified welders can’t weld perfect either, Bob. The on-site engineer there taught me a lot about welding, and it damn sure didn’t have anything to do with drawing es or zs with a pencil.
. Welcome anytime 
️🛳 on ****ing occasion 
sweet 
