So back to the workshop... also known as the driveway. We needed to cut a lot of metal as precisely as possible. Luckily I had a light duty metal cutting band saw. These are very affordable from harbor freight or even eBay. Money well spent as you can make 4 cuts at once totally unattended and they will all be the same size for sure.
So starting the layout. The most important step is to get everything 100% square. We laid everything out before hand to insure the dimensions were going to be what we expected. Note the nice new blue harbor freight welder on the left. When you buy cheap tools expect results to match what you invested in them. This light duty mig caught fire mid project. I’m not a fan of the 100% duty cycle. Lucky for me that we lost it so I had the excuse to pick up a nice Lincoln mig.
A little trick we found was to pick up these aluminum squaring clamps at our local home center. They allow for perfect alignment and while we double checked for square on every weld we never had to adjust it once with these. It’s about a million times easier than using the little corner magnets and far more accurate.
So here we go. Assembly was really a breeze. Another note on tools, the L Square you see in the lower center of the screen was my grandpa's. The reason for pointing that out is that good tools are a great legacy for any geek to inherit or pass on.
More progress. We have the main structure done for one side and the second almost done. One trick I used was to use the 3 point tack weld method on the decks as they were welded up. This insures nothing will come out of square as you work.
Next up the rear bar support section. It is important to frame this totally in. this is about where the welder caught fire. I think Danny was conveniently at the hardware store during this meltdown.
Here is a nice detail shot of the rear bar supports coming together with the clamps. By the way, did I mention that the clamps are really great and you should consider using them?
So here is the finished deck section. You will notice the deck has the full bar supports running from back to the mid sections. We will cut them later for bar placement.
So when we went to a local exhaust place had them use some heavy gauge pipe and flair some ends for the bar receiver. The flare ensures a tight fit. We will notch the bottom of them out so they slot fit onto the supports. This gives us both an excuse to use our dremel on this project, but also more weld contact insuring greater strength.
