I’ve been really busy lately, so to stay on track I started today with working in one-hour increments on the principle that one hour is better than no hours. We’ve had some exceptionally good weather, so I was able to get together with Dave for some motorcycling and wood cutting. I can build airplanes inside for the rest of the winter I figure. Today has still been productive though, since I’ve pretty much finished the welding on the front seats and have started on the back seat. Here are some pictures of the progress.
Here is one of the front seat backs with all of the welding done. I still need to trim off the top of the receiving tubes, which I left long for the purpose of heat control during welding.
Here I've cut those receiving tubes off. I also chased the inside of the tube with a large drill bit to help remove the welding slag.
Here is a jig that I made to help keep the headrests uniform. To minimize distortion, I also tacked each side on the top and bottom before finish welding in quarters.
When I was cutting out the steel blanks to use as the headrest endcaps, it occurred to me that I didn't really need to have a very accurate cut, since excess material outside of the line would just act as a filler metal.
Here you can see a finished end cap.
I've found that my angle die grinder and a rol-loc scotchbrite pad cut through the avipro primer quite nicely. The sound and smell both remind me of the dentist's office.
That isn't a very ergonomic position to weld in, is it...