Practical welding?

"Cy Galley" wrote:

Shouldn't be much nitrate anymore unless you have cotton.

Join your local EAA chapter and find out who has or is building a tube and
fabric plane. They should be able to assist you.

Cy - the point I was making was the welder is faced not with a bare
fuselage on a turning jig, but if he were faced with a covered a/c
with engine and landing gear. How does he handle that? - Mike

Practical welding can involve welding in all kinds of awkward positions,
like upside down, head first, under a pipe in a ditch and lots of other
strange positions depending on what you are doing. You can learn how to
weld in a class or at the bench. You learn how to be a welder by
applying that knowledge in the field. You learn how to tackle new
situations by asking knowledgeable folks, watching them, or using your
head, trying something and seeing how it works. As far as welding a
fabric covered airframe, you remove nearby flammable materials and/or
cover them with fire resistant material, and then have a firewatch
standing by with an extingiusher. Heck, plumbers sweat pipes in walls
with wood studs all the time. It is pretty much the same concept.

footy wrote:
Practical welding can involve welding in all kinds of awkward positions,
like upside down, head first, under a pipe in a ditch and lots of other
strange positions depending on what you are doing.

So there I was trying to finish up welding on the last engine mount
flange to my Delta's fuselage. By the time you get to the engine mount
flange, the Delta has grown to a considerable size and I had it up on
sawhorses. All the tubes coming back from the firewall to form a closed
box. The only way to get inside the box in through a lot of longerons
and diagonals.

Well, I had managed to get my head wedge up between a couple of the
bottom diagonals. My right hand snaked the torch around the longerons,
and my left hand wrapped around the front bottom crossbrace to bring in
the filler rod. The metal was hot and flowing and the bead was running
smooth. Then my filler rod got short. Not the whole rod, just the part
on the weld side of my hand. It had taken several minutes to get wedged
into this position, and I didn't want to kill the weld bead just to feed
more filler rod. Thinking quickly, I grabbed the back end of the rod in
my mouth, pulled my hand up further and continued the weld. "Smart", I
thought to myself, as the bead rolled on.

Most of you have already guessed what happened.

Melt. Fill. Melt. Fill. Advance. All in a steady staccato beat. More a
habit than thought. And then, as I reached the end of the filler rod,
for some indiscernable reason, I decided that I could slide my hand all
the way to the rear of the rod if I grabbed the other end in my mouth.

I'm not sure if the burn mark is still discernible across my tongue, but
I do know that there isn't much worse that having your head caught in
your airplane when you need to scream.

Later, I learned the proper way to advance your filler rod without the
aid of gravity is to dip it in the weld pool and let the pool cool just
slightly. It'll solidify just enough to allow you to slide your hand
back. Bring the heat right back in and keep going.



--
This is by far the hardest lesson about freedom. It goes against
instinct, and morality, to just sit back and watch people make
mistakes. We want to help them, which means control them and their
decisions, but in doing so we actually hurt them (and ourselves)."

On Mon, 22 Aug 2005 00:25:40 GMT, Ernest Christley
wrote:


I'm not sure if the burn mark is still discernible across my tongue, but
I do know that there isn't much worse that having your head caught in
your airplane when you need to scream.


the other trick of the trade is to put a quarter inch kink in the cold
end so that you can immediately see which end is cold on the bench.
brother in law welder told me that one after the second bandage
appeared on the left hand one day.
they dont hurt immediately but by god they do hurt a moment later.

a weld lump that goes down your shirt and ends up in your socks gets
exciting as well :-)
Stealth Pilot

"Stealth Pilot" wrote

a weld lump that goes down your shirt and ends up in your socks gets
exciting as well :-)

Almost like my one experience. I had a piece of slag go between by jeans
waistband and my tucked in shirt.

I am pretty sure the shirt burned through very quickly, without a
significant temperature loss to the lima bean sized piece of red hot metal.
My skin did start to cool it, and I decided that this was a *bad thing.*

Even though I was standing out in my back yard, in full view of neighbors, I
very quickly unbuckled my pants and dropped them. Modesty was not high on
my list of concerns, at that moment. Only then was I able to release my
lima bean piece of pain, to continue it's journey to terra firma.

I still proudly wear my momento of that day. My lesson of the day, is to
weld or cut with your shirt hanging out, or wear a leather apron. At least
most of the stuff will be shed like water. g
--
Jim in NC