Imperial Journey

AfterCoolin’

Posted on March 22, 2022 by RussD

After fighting rust in the previous article Door Three “Delights” I decided to finish off another workshop project to upgrade my air supply.

One of the problems with air compressors is moisture. A basic physics fact is warm air can hold more moisture than cooler air. When there is high humidity this shows up as water in the tank – which has to be regularly drained out – and moisture in the air lines. When compressed air is used it expands. When it expands the air cools. When the air cools any moisture in the in the air condenses into water in the air lines. This water damages air tools, ruins paint jobs, and causes general problems.

Moisture isn’t much of a problem when the humidity is below about 50%. I never thought of New England as being especially humid, but over the last couple of summers I discovered that the humidity is a consistent 70%-80%, with frequent excursions into the 90%+ range.

This caused major problems with painting. I had to use expensive dessicant filters to remove the moisture – and these quickly became saturated and wouldn’t work any more.

One solution is to add an after cooler between the compressor and the air storage tank. This after cooler cools the hot air coming out of the compressor causing most of the moisture to condense out as water where it can be drained away before entering the rest of the system.

Of course it was Garage Journal that introduced me to after coolers. They are called after coolers because they are installed after the air compressor and before the air storage tank. After reading several threads there I decided to use a Hayden Automotive 1290 Heavy Duty Oil Cooler. This is basically a large high pressure/high temperature radiator

One of the recent fabrication projects involved building a mounting frame out of 1″x2″ steel tubing to hold the Hayden cooler and bolt to the air compressor.

Testing fitting mounting frame and Hayden 1290 cooler to air compressor

This frame was closed with sheet metal and an 8″ 220V fan added to draw air through the Hayden cooler. Normally an automotive cooling fan would be used, but automotive fans run on 12V DC and the air compressor runs on 220V AC. The fan was connected to the motor output terminals on the pressure switch so that it only runs when the compressor was running.

Fly cutter on drill press cutting large hole for cooling fan.

After test fitting everything the after cooler was disassembled, the frame painted, and then put back together and installed on the compressor. Actually connecting the air lines was delayed a bit by tracking down the plumbing fittings needed.

After acquiring the needed fittings the original copper lines connecting the compressor to the air tank were removed and replaced with new soft copper lines going to the after cooler.

The after cooler includes an automatic drain which will – wait for it – automatically drain the water that condenses in the after cooler and prevent it from reaching the tank.

With the final plumbing installed and all fittings tightened it was time to fire up the compressor and see if it worked.

The compressor started to run – always a good sign! – and pressure began to build – another good sign. The pressure built to the full 165 psi and turned off. Nothing blew out, yet another good sign. The new fittings were checked for leaks with soapy water and no leaks were found.

And there was much rejoicing!

Did it work? The basic test is output temperature from the compressor and input temperature to the pressure tank after the after cooler. Air gets hotter when it is compressed and can reach up to 350 degrees F coming out of the compressor. I monitored the output of the compressor which reached a maximum temperature of 315 degrees. The maximum temperature going into the tank was just over 90 degrees – a reduction of over 200 degrees! But still at least 30 degrees over ambient temperature.

The initial test was done without the cooling fan working – I wanted to make sure all of the plumbing was solid before making the electrical connections. After hooking up the cooling fan I cycled the compressor again. Initial temperature going into the tank was 59 degrees. Maximum temperature observed while the compressor was running was 62 degrees – a really excellent result!

The air was extremely dry today – humidity was only 16% – so no water was collected in the automatic drain valve. I expect the drain valve to get a workout as soon as the humidity goes back up to 90%+.

Update (August 2, 2022): The air compressor has been getting an extensive workout. I just dumped out close to a gallon of water from the automatic drain. There was virtually no water in the tank and just a trace of water in the original water filter. On humid days I’m no longer getting a fine mist of water from the air tools like I was before. The aftercooler is a success and a very worthwhile project!

Next: time to quit stalling and tackle the last door in Door Four Debacle.

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Door Three “Delights”

Posted on March 11, 2022 by RussD

After upgrading the power windows on the first two doors in Electrical 13: Relay That Window! it was time to stop stalling and start working on the drivers door. This door has the worst rust on the entire car, so it will be a bit of a project. After removing the glass – including the vent window – the door was pulled off the car and set on the bench. Which revealed the full challenge.

In addition to extensive rust across the bottom of the door, the rust wraps up the sides in areas with complex curves. This is where the door fits to the car and where the weatherstrip is, so the repairs have to precisely match the original shape.

The good news (the eternal optimist said…) is that there is enough metal left to retain the original shape. This makes it possible to replace the rust with solid metal bit by bit and match the original shape. Tedious, but much easier than working from nothing!

The starting point is the brace going across the bottom of the door. The brace itself is in good shape, but the rust goes well under it. The brace has to come out so that the substructure can be replaced. This involves locating and drilling out the spot welds on the brace.

Once the brace is removed the full problem is revealed:

Yeah, that needs some work. Fortunately only straight bends are needed here. Measure the area to cut out, cut and weld in patches, and this part of the door is stabilized for the next steps.

Next work across the bottom of the door, replacing the flat sections first:

The drivers door is the only one with rust in the outer skin, so the door is flipped over. A patch panel is fitted, held in place with magnets, and welded.

The fit on this patch panel isn’t too bad – maybe I’m getting better! Or, more realistically, less bad…

With the door skin patched, flip the door back over and start working on the curved section. The process remains basically the same – cut and fit small patch panels, cut out the rusted section, tack weld the patch in place, and move to the next patch.

Repeat the process on the front corner of the door and then time to start the process of grinding the welds, identifying gaps, and welding and grinding until everything is solid.

The brace that was removed earlier was welded back on using the original spot weld holes as locators. This completed the structural repairs. While the complex shapes of the inner door structure were rigid enough to hold their shape during welding, the relatively flat outer door skin had just enough warping to be noticeable. The double skin in this area kept me from being able to properly work the metal. A skim coat of bondo and careful shaping with an auto body sanding board made everything perfectly smooth again. This is a very thin skim coat – roughly 1/16″ – 1/8″ maximum thickness.

Door seams were filled with seam sealer and a coat of epoxy primer was applied to keep the new metal from rusting:

With the metal work done the door was ready to go back on the car. The big question: Will it fit?

Yes! Yes, it still fits! And there was much rejoicing!

With the first hurdle overcome it was time for the true test: would the door still close with the new weatherstrip installed? The weatherstrip was fitted and held in place with tape. And the door closed! And opened and closed and opened and closed. Success! Sweet, sweet success.

With repairs on the door complete the next step will be to re-install the glass and adjust everything. And apply the power window upgrades to this door.

Next: drying air by AfterCoolin’.

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Electrical 13: Relay That Window!

Posted on February 20, 2022 by RussD

The last electrical article looked at dash lighting in Electrical 12: Dash It All!. It is now time to deal with a sticky situation – specifically, power windows that stick going up and down.

Power windows are the among the worst cases for old car electrics – the motors require high amperage and are fed through long wires and small switches. Over time the window mechanisms become harder to operate, requiring even more power from the motors. At the same time the wiring degrades, reducing voltage available to the motor and making it work even harder. The result is that power windows simply don’t work well on old cars – when they work at all.

In my case one of the windows (drivers door, of course…) doesn’t work at all, two windows barely work, and the fourth window is slow and doesn’t always go all of the way up.

Part of the work on the doors includes cleaning and lubricating the window mechanisms. This certainly helps, but doesn’t go far enough to solve the problem.

Really solving the problem requires completely replacing the existing power window wiring with something that can handle the power requirements.

Relays will be used to provide power directly to the window motor – basically the same thing that was done with the headlights when they were upgraded. The existing switches still control the windows. But instead of handling the 20-30 amps that the motor draws, the switches will now trigger the relays and only have to handle less than 0.1 amps. The existing wiring and switches are easily able to handle 0.1 amps.

The window motor requires two relays – one for up and one for down – which makes the wiring somewhat more complex than the headlights.

Power for the relays will be provided by a new dedicated 12 gauge power line that is run directly from the relays to the fuse box. Power will now come from a shorter run of heavier gauge new wiring – the motor will now get full voltage and full power.

Since I’m paranoid – in other words, I have experience… – the relay upgrade will be done as a series of incremental steps with testing at each step. Thus the first step is to build a test harness to allow testing the window motors outside of the existing window wiring. This test harness will go through a series of modifications and upgrades as the build proceeds.

The initial test harness was simply two wires connected to the battery. There are two wires to the motor – I was pretty sure that the motor case is ground, and you apply +12V to one wire to go up and +12V to the other wire to go down. But it could also be reversing plus and minus between the two wires for up and down.

With the two wires connected to the to the battery, the negative wire was held against the motor case and the +12V wire was applied to one of the wires to the motor – and the window went down! +12V was applied to the other wire and the window went up. OK, motor wiring is confirmed.

Next a two way switch was added to the test harness. Technically this was a dual pole/dual throw momentary contact switch, also known as DPDT momentary contact. This allowed using the switch to control up and down on the motor. Connectors that mated with the motor were added. The test harness is long enough to reach from the battery to each door and to the workbench, making it easy to operate the windows either on the car or on the bench. This was convenient since you need to move the windows up and down to remove the glass. As previously mentioned I’m paranoid, so a fuse was also added.

Since the test harness will also be used to implement the new dedicated power wiring, a matching power connector was added. The test harness can be used to directly power and control the window motor in the car or on the workbench as well as provide power to the relays.

Power Window test harness connected to a window motor

With motor operation verified and the test harness ready to go it was time to build the relay setup. The first step was to lay out the design on paper, double check it, and determine how to connect the relay wires. I’m using Bosch style relays which have five wires – trigger/source, ground, power in, power out normally open and power out normally closed. Since the relay should provide power when the switch is turned on the normally open (NO) output is used and the normally closed (NC) output was sealed off.

The relays I’m using came with sealed sockets and pigtails – this makes it easy to wire them up. The good news is that the pigtail wires are color coded. The bad news is that the color coding didn’t comply with standards… Notes that include pin number, color, function, and wiring instructions kept me from becoming excessively confused when making the four relay packs (one for each window).

I wired up the relays on the bench – it is much easier to work on the bench, and it gave me the chance to double check everything before installing. Note the labels on the wires – this minimizes mistakes and makes it much easier to troubleshoot in the future.

The test harness and a voltmeter allowed complete testing on the bench. No mistakes were found in the wiring. OK, OK – no mistakes were found when the relay packs were ready to install in the doors…

The window motor was originally grounded through the door skin. Since it is very little additional work to run two wires instead of the planned one wire for power, a dedicated 12 gauge ground wire was added. This ground will tie directly into the upgraded grounding system under the dash and is bolted to the power window mechanism frame which is connected directly to the motor. This also provides a convenient high quality ground point for any other potential electrics in the door.

The new power and ground wires are connected to the relays using a waterproof Metri Pack 280 connector. The relays are sealed, and all wiring connections are sealed with marine grade heat shrink tubing – the result is that there shouldn’t be any corrosion in the power window system.

The motor originally used non-sealed Packard 56 connectors, which I replaced with more of the Metri Pack 280 connectors. When I cut the old connectors off and stripped the insulation, the wires were solid black with corrosion. Sandpaper and electrical contact cleaner cleaned up the wire ends and the new sealed connectors should prevent more corrosion in the future.

The test harness was plugged in to provide temporary power to the relays and window operation tested. It worked!

With everything ready to go I spent an hour or so making a bracket to mount the relays. I then tested window operation and watched the window hit the relays as it neared the bottom position. Actually I stopped the window just before it hit the relays. I’m getting paranoid about that sort of thing…

Studying the situation more, I decided that the relays could be mounted directly to the inner door skin. The relays were mounted in this new position, the window run down, and nothing hit. OK, one more problem solved!

The window now goes up and down smoothly. It will need to be adjusted to fit the new weatherstrip I’m installing. This will probably be a nightmare; if it is I will do a post.

This process will be repeated for the other three doors.

I also need to finish connecting the new power wiring. As I do each door I’m running the new power and ground wires up to under the dash. The next to last step will be to connect all of the new power and ground wires and splice into the existing power window feed from the under hood fuse box.

The last step is to enjoy the new smoothly operating and reliable power windows!

Next electrical: Electrical 14: MeterMatch.

Next: battling rust in Door Three “Delights”.

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What’s Behind Door Number One?

Posted on January 29, 2022 by RussD

I’ll confess – one of the reasons for doing all of the projects around the workshop has been a bit of stalling on actually working on the car.

In an early post I described the Imperial as being essentially rust free. Yeah, about that…

While the car is solid overall there are some problem areas. The doors need work – three of the power windows don’t work and the fourth one barely works. The locks on the back doors are frozen, most of the door weather stripping is missing, the door glass weather stripping is shot, and there is rust on the bottom of the doors. The driver’s door is in really bad shape, so I decided to start with the other doors and get some practice before tackling the worst one.

Pulling the door card off the back door shows some surface rust, but not too bad. The rusty brace will be cleaned and painted before it is re-installed.

The door was removed from the car and the window mechanism taken apart, cleaned, and lubricated. This is the power window that works – the motor is in good shape, so cleaning, lubricating, and aligning the window mechanism and tracks should restore it to full function.

As expected the latching mechanism was partially frozen. Fortunately no rust, so a good cleaning and lubrication should be all that is needed.

The door shell was lifted onto the workbench for closer examination. Not good; a fair amount of work is needed. The rusted sections need to be cut out and replaced with good metal. Two things to note: First, this is very common – water runs down the inside of the door, collects in the bottom, and is trapped. Second, this is one of the better doors…

The good news is that there is plenty of solid structure left in the door. This makes it easy to make patch panels that maintain the shape of the door. If large areas are completely missing it is difficult to make a precise replacement. This part of the door has to be precise – it is the sealing surface between the door and the body of the car.

The bottom of the door is fairly simple – it is flat with a few straight bends. It is a “Z” bend, which means I can’t make it as a single piece. The answer is to make it as two pieces with a single bend each and then weld them together to make the third bend. I have a small bending brake that can’t handle the whole length as a single part, so it will be done in two stages.

Cutlines are marked with tape – this gives you a straight line and can be re-positioned until you are happy with it. The old metal is cut out, patch panels are fabricated and fitted, and the new panels are stitch welded in place.

Sheet metal warps badly when welded, so you can’t run a continuous weld bead. Instead you briefly trigger the welding gun, producing a small dot or spot weld. You do this about every two inches, allow the metal to cool, and then add new weld dots between the existing weld dots. You repeat this until the entire seam is solidly welded. This approach minimizes the amount of heat applied to the sheet metal and reduces warping. You still get some warping, but it is easier to deal with.

This picture shows the first patch panel stitch welded in place and the second rusted area ready to cut out.

The second patch panel is cut and fitted. While most of the patch is fitted fairly well there are still some excessive gaps. I need to do a better job of fitting patch panels – one of the reasons for tackling the easier doors first! Magnets hold the patch panel in place for fitting – this makes it much easier to get things lined up. When everything is correctly located the corners will be tack welded to lock everything into place and then all of the seams stitch welded.

After welding the weld bead is ground down flush with the surface. Done properly you won’t be able to tell that anything was ever done. When stitch welding it is common to have small gaps or pinholes between the weld dots. You can find these by shining a light behind the weld and marking any gaps. These gaps then receive a weld dot. Stitch, grind, and repeat until the entire weld is solid.

The corner of the door was a problem. I spent over a day trying to make templates using just two patch panels and wasn’t able to get a good fit. I finally gave up on that and made several smaller patches. This proved much easier to do and actually ended up fitting quite well.

After the welding and grinding is finished you should have a finished piece that is ready for painting. I’m not there (yet!), so some body filler is needed. Fortunately not much – while I need to get better, this isn’t a complete hack job.

To make sure this doesn’t happen again seam sealer was applied to all seams. This will completely keep water out of all seams in the bottom of the door. A coat of epoxy primer was applied to seal and protect the surface. The epoxy primer was also applied to the inside of the door – something that should have been done at the factory!

The metal work on this door is done. The next step is putting it back together. Unfortunately I’m waiting on some parts for that – hopefully they will show up soon.

Next: upgrading the power windows in Electrical 13: Relay That Window!

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Bandsaw Stand

Posted on January 22, 2022 by RussD

The horizontal bandsaw has been getting a real workout cutting up the steel tubing for various projects. While it does a good job cutting there are issues – mostly with the stand.

The included stand is the most criticized part of the bandsaw: it is flimsy, provides marginal support when the bandsaw is used in the vertical position, and is too low. In addition it is somewhat difficult to move the 140 lb. saw around.

The biggest issue is that it is too low. Since the main use is cutting up long pieces of stock you usually have to support the other end of the stock. I have a set of roller stands I use with the table saw, chop saw, drill press, and fabrication table for just this purpose. Unfortunately the lowest position on the roller stand is higher than the bandsaw. I ended up quickly welding together a temporary stand just for the bandsaw. This temporary stand is clumsy, awkward, and difficult to store – I’m looking forward to cutting it up and returning it to the stock pile!

All of these issues can be addressed with a new stand. The base was sized for stability – both side to side and when using the saw in the vertical position. The height was set to ensure that the roller stands can be used. And casters make it easy to move around.

There are still a few things to do: First is adding a piece of plywood to the base for storage. Second is to add a pan to catch the metal particles from cutting and make cleanup easier.

Next: getting back to actually working on the car with What’s Behind Door Number One?

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Workbench

Posted on December 21, 2021 by RussD

Its not a workshop without a workbench! Currently the workbench is a plywood top laying on a couple of 44″ tool cabinets which has been waiting for the materials to build a proper workbench. With materials in hand, courtesy of Steel This!, it was time to get going. The inspiration for this project is a Steevo Bench as covered on the Garage Journal website. Yes, this is another bad influence from Garage Journal…

The Drill Press and Welding Cart projects were warm-up for building the workbench. Design goals for the workbench included:

Built around two Harbor Freight 44″ tool cabinets and a Sears 26″ cabinet.
Lower than the current workbench – basically build it as low as possible.
Adjustable feet so the workbench top can be level.
Use the 1″ x 2″ steel tubing also used in other projects.

The two Harbor Freight cabinets were purchased with this project in mind. The Sears cabinet is one I’ve had for about 20 years.

The current workbench – a piece of 1/2″ plywood sitting on top of the Harbor Freight cabinets – is too high and interferes with the electrical outlets. The casters on these cabinets are 7″ tall, so the bench can be lowered up to 7″. The steel tubing frame goes around the cabinets with frame members above and below the cabinet. Using the 1″ x 2″ tubing on its side, the top and bottom pieces add up to 2″. Add another half inch to this for clearance gives 2-1/2″. The leveling feet are made from 5/8 steel plate with a bolt running through it, so the plate plus bolt head is about an inch. This adds up to 3-1/2″, meaning that the workbench top can be dropped over three inches.

All measurements were checked, double checked, and checked again. And then were test fitted multiple times while building out the bench. Steel tubing was cut to length, fixtured up on the welding table, and welded into place. An overhand was added to the back of the frame to accommodate the lip on the concrete foundation.

The adjustable feet are made from 1/2″ bolts. I have mentioned the 5/8″ thick steel plate that came with the steel tubing. This was cut into 3″ lengths, drilled and tapped for the 1/2″ bolts, and welded to the bottom of the frame. The bandsaw had no trouble cutting this heavy plate and the drill press made short work of the holes. I’m getting spoiled by a decent fabrication environment!

I was initially concerned about welding these feet on. Welding heavy pieces to thin pieces is difficult. Then I realized that all of the force will be downward – the only times the welds will be stressed at all is when moving the bench around. Which will be done once. When the bench is empty.

Welding guidelines are to focus the heat on the heavy part and watch the puddle. I was pleasantly surprised at how well this worked – I was able to get solid welds with very little blowout on the thinner tubing. Maybe my welding is actually improving!

With the frames welded up it was time to paint them. The welding cart was painted at the same time. I was originally going to paint it all black, but decided to paint the file cabinet blue.

With the frames completed it was time to move them into position and adjust the feet. All that was left was to slide the tool cabinets into place.

This may have been the most challenging part of the build. The cabinets weigh about 350 lbs. They are loaded with tools, making the actual weight 700-800 lbs. And they are sitting on casters that need to be removed…

First step was to remove all 14 drawers. Then tilt the cabinet over on its face and unbolt the casters. With the tool cabinet still on its face, lay the frame on its face, lift one end of the frame with the engine joist, pick up the other end, and drop the frame over the cabinet. Run some ratchet straps around the frame and cabinet to hold everything together and then tilt frame plus cabinet upright with the engine hoist.

Slide the workbench into place against the wall, check that it is still level, and re-install all 14 drawers. Then repeat the process with the other tool cabinet. With the two sides done the center piece can be bolted into place and the third tool cabinet slid into place.

The old workbench top is being used temporarily. I would like to have a 1/4″ steel top, but steel prices are too high. Maybe next year. For the moment I will add another piece of plywood to cover the entire frame and perhaps cover it with a sheet of rubber. At some point I would also like to replace the Sears cabinet with another Harbor Freight cabinet.

The next project is organizing tools and supplies into the new storage. I may have almost enough space for all my crap! Which clearly means that it is time to start acquiring more tools and supplies…

Next: Construction projects continue in Bandsaw Stand.

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Welding Cart

Posted on December 6, 2021 by RussD

Larger fabrication projects, like the drill press stand chronicled in the previous article How Much Does A “Free” Drill Press Cost?, have been leaving me increasingly dissatisfied with my welding setup. The actual welder, a Lincoln HD140, is fine. The issues are with the cheap Harbor Freight welding cart it is mounted on and the way the various welding equipment and supplies are scattered across multiple locations in the shop.

It should be clear by now that I’m really trying to have the workshop organized and effective for the various jobs I do in it. Part of the madness (please accept the premise that there is a method!) is to use closed storage to keep things clean and organized.

After a few weeks of mulling over various ideas a bit of inspiration struck – what about using a two drawer filing cabinet for storage and building a welding cart around it? Good brands of filing cabinets are durable and can handle heavy loads. One of the drawers is large enough to hold a welding helmet, gloves, and jacket, and the other drawer can be organized with plastic storage containers to hold the various tools, parts, and supplies. New filing cabinets are expensive – at least for the good ones – but used filing cabinets can range from cheap to free.

Nothing cheap enough and close enough showed up on Craig’s List, so I headed over to the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. They had a number of filing cabinets, including a two drawer Hon for $15. A bit beat up, but the drawers opened and closed smoothly. OK, I’m doing this!

When I got the cabinet home I discovered that I might have been a bit optimistic. The bottom was badly dented and some of the re-enforcing brackets were torn loose. Not a problem – first, this is for a workshop not an office. Second, I have auto body tools and a welder and I’m not afraid to use them! Out came the body hammers and dollies and the filing cabinet became much closer to original. The welder made quick work of re-attaching brackets and frame. I could have added auto body filler and made things perfect – but, “workshop”.

The welding setup includes both the welder and a large gas bottle, so the frame was designed to support both the filing cabinet with welder on top as well as the gas bottle. It was also designed with a handle for pulling it around. I will probably be adding another welder in the future, so the design needed to allow two welders and two gas bottles.

A set of large heavy duty casters were available – the ones from the drill press project that made the drill press too high. That won’t be a problem with the welder. Plus, an easy rolling cart is one of the design goals.

Finally, hangers were needed for the hose going to the MIG gun and ground cable. Since the first thing I have to do when using the welder is grab an extension cord to plug it in I decided to just include an extension cord in the build.

After measuring and making sketches pieces of steel tubing were cut to length, fitted together on the welding table, and welded up. The base was the first thing built: corners were cut at a 45 degree angle and welded together for a finished appearance. Cross beams were welded in place to support the gas bottles and the end of the filing cabinet as well as provide a place to mount the casters.

Mitered corners couldn’t be used everywhere. Where the end of a tube would be exposed an end cap was welded in place:

With the base completed the rest of the frame was fitted into place, adjusted, and tack welded:

Fitting up cart frame on welding/fabrication table

After the frame was tack welded, and before doing final welding, the filing cabinet was test fitted:

Next up was mounting the casters. On the drill press project I welded 1/4″ steel plates to the bottom of the frame to support the casters. With the welding cart I noticed that the cross braces would fully support the casters. The problem is that the 14 gauge steel tubing is too thin to thread for bolts and welding nuts on the outside of the frame is, to put it mildly, ugly.

It should be possible to weld an upside down flange nut in place so that the nut is inside the tube. I had been considering various ways to hold a flange nut in place for welding and decided to just make a test piece. It turned out that a step drill would cut exactly the right size hole. Further, if you didn’t run the step drill all the way through the wall of the tubing it would leave a lip that supported the flange nut flush with the outside of the tube!

The end result is a nut contained inside the tubing. Welding all the way around the nut provides full strength, making this an attractive solution.

I made a template of hole locations from the casters and used it to locate all the mounting holes in the cart frame. After welding all 16 of the flange nuts in place the casters bolted right on.

The gas bottles for welding are large, heavy, and dangerous – they hold high pressure gas at 2,000+ psi and weigh 60-80 lbs. You really don’t want them to fall over. They need to be supported at both the top and bottom to make sure they don’t fall over or get out of control. The bottom is easy – just weld in another brace about 2″ off the base.

The top support, on the other hand, can’t be solid. The tanks are too heavy and awkward – not to mention slippery! – to lift five or six feet into the air to clear a top brace. The usual solution is to have a chain that is hooked around the gas tank three or four feet up. Effective but not elegant….

So I designed a removable T brace that would bolt into place using the welded flange nut approach:

At this point the welding cart was done and ready for paint. Or was it…. Painting makes it difficult to change – I’ve run into this with the drill press where I wanted to change a few things but it is just too much work to remove paint, weld in new pieces, and try to repaint and blend. I decided to use the welding cart for a while and make sure no further changes were needed before painting. This has already proved to be a wise approach!

I tried several approaches before coming up with cable hangers I was happy with. The final design is overkill – each hanger is made of six pieces welded together and bolts to the cart frame using the flange nut approach. This final design is sturdy, doesn’t stick out more than necessary, and can be changed later on if needed – for example, a second welder would add more cables that need to be managed.

The final bracket supports the quad electrical outlet. As previously mentioned an extension cord is now part of the welding cart allowing the welder to be plugged into it full time. This also provides power for other tools such as lights or grinders. The orange object is a magnetic holder for the MIG gun – it is easy to grab it and stick it on the welding table or whatever I’m working on to provide a handy place to secure the MIG gun.

At this point the welding cart is “done”. I’ve used it a few times and it is a definite improvement over the previous cart – it is much stronger, better organized, has the storage I need, and is (hopefully) future resistant. I really like being able to easily drag it where needed and grab the welding helmet, gloves, and jacket directly out of the cart – and then put everything back up when the job is done! It is also nice being able to find the various tools, accessories, and supplies.

Some big fabrication projects are coming up in the near future – it will be interesting to discover if any further changes or modifications are needed! The cart will ultimately be painted – probably when it is time to paint the next project.

Update:

After using the cart I decided no changes were needed so I went ahead and painted it. It is working out well – I especially like being able to plug it in (with the included extension cord) and grab the welding helmet and gloves out of the top drawer.

Next: keep the building trend going with a Workbench.

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How Much Does A “Free” Drill Press Cost?

Posted on November 27, 2021 by RussD

Searching Craigs List for a welding table a couple of years ago I stumbled across a triple drill press mounted on a heavy machine tool base. This machine tool base was 30″ x 60″, made of heavy steel (4″ thick at the ends), with a machined flat top surface – perfect for a heavy duty welding and fabrication table! I negotiated what I thought was a reasonable price and was told that for that price I could only have one of the drill presses. I hadn’t planned on taking any of the drill presses, but I checked them out and decided to take the best one.

Drill Press mounted on welding/fabrication table

This drill press is an older Walker Turner industrial 1hp drill press which was designed to be run all day every day making large holes in heavy steel parts. Readily available consumer grade drill presses are designed for wood and run at high rpm and low torque. Metal drill presses like this Walker Turner run at low speed and high torque. It weighs around 300 lbs and requires three phase power.

First concern: does it work and is it worth saving? Everything moved smoothly without strange grinding noises, so it wasn’t rusted up. I put a dial indicator on the spindle and observed less than 0.003″ of runout – not great, but entirely usable. The motor requires 3 phase power, which is used in factories for high power electric motors. Homes only have single phase power, which is a problem. Fortunately there is a solution for this – a VFD, or Variable Frequency Drive, which converts single phase power into 3 phase power and also provides speed control.

A VFD was ordered and temporarily installed:

Fingers crossed it was plugged in and turned on… And worked perfectly! A bit of noise, but not bad. Incredible torque at low rpm – I couldn’t stall with anything I tried. This monster still has years of use left in it.

It couldn’t stay on the welding/fabrication table – not while using it as a table. So it came off and was temporarily mounted on a wooden cart while I started searching for parts to build a proper stand for it. The engine hoist was invaluable for handling the pieces – even broken down into three major subassemblies the parts were too heavy for me to lift!

The first thing needed was a base to bolt the drill press to. I was looking for a 12″x18″ or 18″x24″ plate of 1/2″ steel. As mentioned other places steel is extremely expensive at the moment so I wanted a cheap used piece. After several months of searching an 18″x30″ piece of 1″ steel plate showed up on Craigs List. Complete overkill, so $140 later it was mine.

Next need was steel tubing for the frame. Perhaps something like what was described in the previous post…

Three elements drove the design of the drill press stand: the drill press itself, the base plate, and an existing tool box that I wanted to incorporate into the stand for storage. With all raw materials in place and a design roughed out it was time to start building!

Since multiple projects are planned a better way to cut the steel tubing to length was needed. Harbor Freight put their horizontal bandsaw on sale – the perfect tool for this task – so another power tool was added to the workshop.

The frame was fairly simple – a box with casters on the bottom and the 1″ steel plate on the top. Measure, cut, tack weld, test fit, adjust, full weld, grind, and the frame was ready to go.

The base plate needed many large holes which were measured and marked for drilling. The ~200 lb plate was wrestled onto the temporary cart and the Walker Turner fired up for its first real job. How did it work? Like the proverbial hot knife through butter. Not only did the drill press not strain when drilling 1/2″ holes through 1″ steel plate, it didn’t seem to even notice!

Well, not exactly 1/2″ holes… To be precise, 27/64″ holes which were then threaded with a 1/2″ – 11 tap for 1/2″ bolts. Half a dozen 3/8″ holes were drilled and tapped to secure a vise – planning ahead.

Steel Plate with holes drilled and tapped

After painting the base plate was turned face down on the floor, the stand was placed on top, and the stand secured to the base plate with four 1/2″ bolts, The trusty engine hoist was then used to flip the drill press stand up on its casters.

With heavy drilling over for the time being, the drill press was removed from the temporary cart. It was cleaned and painted before being installed on its final home. A bracket was added for the VFD and final wiring was done. Two years after buying it the Walker Turner is ready for “production” use!

Those with sharp eyes may notice that the base of the drill press is empty… The tool boxes will be moved in as part of an upcoming workshop cleanup and re-organization. Those same sharp eyes may also notice that the casters look different. The original casters were too tall and were replaced with smaller casters.

Update: Here is the drill press with the tool chests installed and loaded up with drilling accessories:

How Much Did It Cost?

There are several ways to answer this question:

For The Finance Office

It was free!

Hollywood Accounting

Charge everything against the drill press:

$450 Drill Press (includes welding/fabrication table)
$85 VFD
$140 Steel Plate
$220 Steel Tubing
$350 Horizontal Band Saw (purchased for this project)
$150 Drill Bits and Taps
$60 Drill Chuck and accessories
$45 Paint and supplies
$60 Electrical Wiring
$50 Consumables (grinding, etc.)
$296 Mileage @ $0.52/mile

Total: $1906

Out of Pocket

Only count the out of pocket expenses directly used on the drill press. Tools that are used on other projects are considered part of general shop overhead.

$0 Drill Press (included at no charge with welding/fabrication table)
$85 VFD
$140 Steel plate
$40 Steel tubing (amount actually used for drill press stand)
$60 Drill Chuck and accessories
$30 Paint and supplies (amount actually used for drill press stand)
$20 Electrical wiring (amount actually used for drill press stand)

Total: $375

Looking at what was actually spent on the drill press I’m going to say that this “free” drill press cost about $400 to get to a finished and ready to use state. Very reasonable for the capabilities of this machine!

Next project: a new Welding Cart.

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Steel This!

Posted on November 4, 2021 by RussD

Several workshop projects have been on hold due to the high price of steel. In late 2019 a 24′ piece of 1″ x 2″ 11 gauge steel tubing was $65. In early 2020 prices started climbing – today that same piece of steel tubing is $156! A 5′ x 10′ sheet of 1/4″ steel plate has gone from $413 to $1240. Ouch.

Even worse, steel prices show no sign of declining. Steel is in short supply and prices continue to go up, with corrections not predicted until 2022 or 2023.

I’ve been keeping an eye on CraigsList for the last year but haven’t seen anything. Then a listing appeared for some 7′ long pieces of 14 gauge 1″ x 2″ tubing for $8 each. Hmm, this is about half of 2019 prices and one eighth of today’s prices – worth checking out! A little bit lighter than originally planned, but still plenty strong enough for my needs. I believe I’ve mentioned my propensity for overkill? 7′ long pieces will work for my applications and are much easier to handle than 24′. Running some quick math said that 26 pieces would cover all of the projects I have planned.

The seller was in New Hampshire, so I arranged a time and hopped into the pickup. The material was as advertised so I took it. The deal was for 26 pieces for $220. He had a pile of 40 pieces – mostly the full 7′ lengths but a number of shorter pieces. While we were loading the tubing he decided “oh, just take the whole pile”. Score!

I now have 250’+ of steel tubing which should cover all planned projects. Stay tuned for details!

Those fingers sticking up from the ends of the tubing? Those are a bonus – they are 2″ wide pieces of 5/8″ thick steel. I’ve got plans for how to use them in various projects…

Next: using some of this steel tubing in How Much Does A “Free” Drill Press Cost?

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ProShaper

Posted on October 5, 2021 by RussD

After fixing the latest electrical gremlin in Electrical 12: Dash It All! it was time for something completely different.

I attended a four day intensive course on coachbuilding taught by Wray Schelin of ProShaper. What is coachbuilding, you ask? Good question! Coachbuilders build custom bodies for cars – think of custom Bugattis from the 1930’s or the handbuilt Ferraris and Jaguars from the 1940’s and 1950’s. These cars were handbuilt and either unique or low volume production.

Wray Schelin forming a custom body panel on an english wheel

Coachbuilding is the process – actually, the art – of transforming flat sheets of metal into complex and beautiful shapes. Also precise and functional shapes – the end result is a vehicle that has doors, windows, hoods, bonnets, boots, chassis, drivetrain, and fuel. It must go down the road while carrying people while also being art.

Metal Shaping uses a variety of tools and techniques to form metal. Surprisingly, very complex shapes can be created with a few simple tools. The starting point is often simply beating the metal with a variety of hammers. Next the parts are smoothed and refined on an english wheel. Edges are formed with a tipping wheel. Parts are cut to size with hand snips and precision fit with a hand grinder. Finally the parts are welded into place with a TIG welder.

All the tools needed to customize a car – or even build a complete body from scratch! – can be purchased for less than $2,000. Of course you can spend much more, but you don’t have to. Final results depend more on the skill of the coachbuilder than the size of the shop. Some Italian coachbuilders produced beautiful results with nothing more than a shed, a tree stump to beat on, an assortment of hammers, and a gas welder!

Demystifying Metal Shaping provides an excellent overview of the class and the process.

There were seven people in the class I took: a husband and wife from Florida, two people from California, one from Tennesee, and one from New Jersey. I was the only person from Massachussetts in the class. Everyone was interested in everyone else’s projects, so I was compelled to bring my Imperial to class on the second day.

I didn’t work on the Imperial in class but did get some expert advice on how to proceed with rust repairs. I will tackle the rust and dent repairs this winter – will provide updates as I abuse the metal.

The class itself was almost brutal – 9:00am to 10:00pm for four days straight. After the first day everything was hands on working on projects. Since I am an out of shape slug I was completely wiped out at the end of each day…

I worked on two projects in class. One was to help a classmate make a replacement aluminum skin for the trunk lid of a 1964 Alfa Romeo GTV. He had shipped in a mangled trunk lid from an aluminum racing car and wanted to repair the damaged frame and replace the skin. The other class project was to restore the front fender from a Jaguar E-type. It had rust damage and a dent, two of the most common problems in restoration.

The Alfa trunk skin required making a flexible shape pattern from the original trunk lid and creating the compound contours on an english wheel. The trunk lid curves both side to side and front to back – ideal for the english wheel. We were able to shape the skin in class but ran out of time working on repairing the frame – someone had cut large chunks out of the frame that had to be recreated from scratch.

Rust repair involves creating a patch panel that matches the curves of the car, cutting out the damaged area, fitting the patch panel to the newly created hole, welding the patch panel into place, and finishing off the welds.

After instructions on how to create and fit a patch panel I had the tightest fit of any patch panel I have ever made. Wray looked at it and said “it needs to be tighter but we can fix it up in finishing”. Ouch. The next one will be better!

Welding was done with TIG, rather than the MIG welder I’m used to using. The weld beads were much smaller that those produced by MIG, reducing the need for grinding. The TIG welds also grind easier than MIG, further reducing the need for grinding.

Welding causes the metal to shrink which introduces deformations in the rest of the panel – commonly bends or waves. Planishing is a process of pounding on the weld with a hammer and dolly to slightly stretch the metal and return it to its original shape. This is the first time someone has taught me how to planish. After working on the Jaguar panel I tried making a simple patch panel from two pieces of scrap. After TIG welding it together it was bowed across the weld. Planishing with hammer and dolly quickly straightened it back out – this technique actually works!

Jaguar Fender showing rust along with patch panel

Rust cut out, patch panel fitted, clamped, ready for welding

Welded, planished, and finished. Cut-out rusted piece for comparison.

Dent repair is a four step process. First you identify high and low spots by darkening the surface with marker fluid and sanding with a flat block – this leaves the high spots shiny and the low spots dark. Then you bring up the low areas using a dolly and a slapper or slapping spoon. Third you bring down the high areas by heating, either with a torch or by using a shrinking disc. Wray recommends using the shrinking disc since it selectively heats the high areas and reduces them. Fourth is to repeat the first three steps until you have a perfect surface.

This is a lot of work but the results are beautiful.

I learned a lot in the class. As usual, the challenge will be to apply these lessons before I forget them. Now to see if I can get a TIG welder for Christmas…

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AfterCoolin’

Door Three “Delights”

Electrical 13: Relay That Window!

What’s Behind Door Number One?

Bandsaw Stand

Workbench

Welding Cart

Update:

How Much Does A “Free” Drill Press Cost?

How Much Did It Cost?

Steel This!

ProShaper

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