Welcome to Westwood Metalworks, What is he building in there?

[Dan Dubeau]

This was fun. I've never capped round like this, and wanted to try it before I cut the excess off the bent railing.

Simple folded paper template to mark out the quadrants and length. No math, and a free handed curve.


Some portaband/cutoff work.


Some hammer work. Little by little, closed the gap pretty good. Tried a little heat at the end just because I wanted to see if I could bring edges in a tiny bit more but not really worth the effort to IMO. Diminishing returns



Some welding, and grinding....


I think it came out great, so I sliced the handrails to length, and did this to all four ends.

It's been an interesting week....Nice to be back in the shop.

 

[DavidR8]

Fantastic work Dan!

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Had some help this morning from Jr bending the rail hangers from 5/8" square. Thought I took pics of this....Just a forge pic lol He's getting pretty good at fire management.


I can't remember exactly when I bought these flap wheels, but it was a long time ago, and this is the first time I've used them. I don't usually grind welds, but I wanted to clean up the terrible overhead welds. Especially because hands will be in this area, I want it smooth. I'm not the greatest welder in all positions.......getting better, but a grinder and paint.......



welding and fab all done. Just cleanup and paint, but that'll have to wait until the weekend. Some family stuff came up, so my time on this project has been very fragmented lately, but by early next week it'll be installed, and out of my shop. I. Can't. Wait.....

 

[1018Machine]

Cool project Dan! Looks like you're getting some work done! Should look awesome when they're complete!

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Dragging the railings out to paint today My Son noticed the new wheels on the press. I said "yeah, everything is finally on wheels in here, so I can move everything around", he laughed and sarcastically said "yup, everything except your welding table...." I have no idea where he gets that from....



Finished sanding, and cleaning up the railings and got a coat of primer on them. It's nice to have them out of the shop, and with any luck they should never need to come back in again. Install is penciled in for Tuesday weather permitting.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

All done except for the drying (and a few touch ups after install). Have I mentioned before how much I hate painting? Well, the only thing I hate more than painting is painting white. I'm not at all happy with how this paint turned out. I know the customer will love it, and be happy she has something safe to protect her walkout basement/surrounding deck, and a handrail to help her up the stairs. But If I stumble into more work like this I need to find somebody else to paint it. I'm not that guy.

 

[Susquatch]

View attachment 51042

All done except for the drying (and a few touch ups after install). Have I mentioned before how much I hate painting? Well, the only thing I hate more than painting is painting white. I'm not at all happy with how this paint turned out. I know the customer will love it, and be happy she has something safe to protect her walkout basement/surrounding deck, and a handrail to help her up the stairs. But If I stumble into more work like this I need to find somebody else to paint it. I'm not that guy.

Is this the drywall lady????

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Is this the drywall lady????

View attachment 51051

lol. No, I kinda forgot about that. I need more of those.....

 

[Dan Dubeau]

That's a wrap. Install went great, customer was very happy, same with my Contractor Friend that bid the job (We built the deck a couple months ago too, and he's done a lot more work here also).



I'm my own biggest critic, and seemingly never happy with anything I build sometimes, but I think this came out pretty good for my first one. Learned a lot, and didn't pay too much tuition on this one....Fun project, now back to my own stuff for a while....

 

[Dan Dubeau]

While bbqing burgers for dinner tonight a couple parts from the rainforest showed up. One of the holdups on my sawmill project was the carriage wheels. I bought a big chunk of steel last year to carve them out, but could just never seem to find the time (mostly motivation) to hunch over my lathe for a few hours and liberate them from it. Pretty much the exact same design I was going to make (4"x2" with a pair of 6205 bearings).

Pretty nicely machined, and for a bit more than I could have bought the bearings for made them a no brainer. Been doing the cad work for the carriage design the past couple nights, and might get to start cutting and welding some material this week once the kids are back in school. I do have a couple small projects I want to squeeze in first though.

 

[Susquatch]

While bbqing burgers for dinner tonight a couple parts from the rainforest showed up.

Link?

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Link?

Here

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Sorry, I chuckled too hard at my own joke there lol.

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0D5CNS94Y?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Here's a quick morning project that wasn't on my list until last night.....But apparently I agreed to do it months ago......? After a quick browse of available stock, I came up with a quick 2d cad drawing, but made some revisions on the floor......Tried to use up as many offcuts from the railing job as possible.



See if you can guess what it is? I had some help on this one to bend some stuff, and drill some holes. They're becoming good little elves....



Kinda derailed my plans to wrap up a different project today, but sometimes that's the way she goes.......

 

[Susquatch]

Sorry, I chuckled too hard at my own joke there lol.

I didn't even bat an eye so I'm glad you enjoyed it.

The clutch on my loader tractor has run out of adjustment. These rollers are perfect for splitting my tractors apart to get at clutches and gear boxes.

Lay some angle iron on the floor, make a cradle, split the halves, roll the front or rear half away, and do whatever ya gotta do!

Thank you!

 

[Susquatch]

See if you can guess what it is?

Display rack.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

Display rack.

Close. Maybe tomorrow afternoon I'll install them and reveal.

 

[Dan Dubeau]

I didn't even bat an eye so I'm glad you enjoyed it.

The clutch on my loader tractor has run out of adjustment. These rollers are perfect for splitting my tractors apart to get at clutches and gear boxes.

Lay some angle iron on the floor, make a cradle, split the halves, roll the front or rear half away, and do whatever ya gotta do!

Thank you!

Ya they'd work great for that to keep things in alignment. I'll keep that idea in mind should I ever need to split one.

 

[LenVW]

2500# capacity !!
I used four of these to support an extrusion die for a HDPE forming line in 1998.
You can also lay a vehicle carrier on the ‘inverted angle iron rails’.

Check your Factors of Safety before you crawl under anything !!

 

[Dan Dubeau]

2500# capacity !!
I used four of these to support an extrusion die for a HDPE forming line in 1998.
You can also lay a vehicle carrier on the ‘inverted angle iron rails’.

Check your Factors of Safety before you crawl under anything !!

That's what sold me on these ones. I was very close to pulling the trigger on some 5" cast iron ones, but they only had 800lb with needle bearings. Most likely would have been fine too, but I haven't finished designing the carriage yet, and knowing the way I build things, It'll be pretty chunky. These will roll smoother than the cast ones too I imagine.

If I was designing a cradle to support half a tractor I would incorporate a "jack stand" into it. Maybe have 1/2" clearance on either side of the wheels to the floor so the most it could drop would be that if a bearing failed.