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I have found a treasure. It is a piece of 1 inch plate, measuring 60" x 65", and it has a 20" square cut out of one corner. I intend to use it as part of a ballast box I am going to build for my larger tractor, and I am not going to waste any of it. I got this marvelous piece of steel for $100.
Years ago I bought a 3-point hitch mounted, hydraulically operated boom from a man in his early 80's. He had been a pipefitter and welder all of his life. He had a lot of interesting things in his shop that he had built. All that I saw was reminiscent of a welding class I had taken many years ago, when the instructor, a man named Willard Anderson, said there were two kinds of torch cuts, the junk yard cut and the welding shop cut. The hydraulic boom was fabricated in this way, as was a huge iron sawhorse that I bought from him. It is a nice thing to look at, seeing his cutting skills and his welding skills.
Willard taught us how to make beautiful cuts, smooth and slag free. It was his idea that you should be able to do heavy plate fabrication very nicely if you have an acetylene torch and of course a welder. Willard also taught us how to make round holes with a torch, and that is with no sort of pilot hole. The method does not work for small holes, but larger ones are great. To do smaller holes it is best to drill a pilot hole to start the cut.
Years ago, my grandfather worked in and ultimately ran the steel shop at an Allis Chalmers plant in Cedar Rapids. All of their burning, as he called it, was done with hand torches and templates.
Over the years I have done a lot of cutting with straight edges of angle iron, what a former employer called a coffee can radius. Using the curve of a coffee can to make nicely radiused corners. I always would save various pieces of plate and pipe to maintain an assortment of radii for possible use, and remarkably, the end products were impressive to folks who did not know how the cuts were accomplished.
I am considering making a template for round holes, to cheat a bit, using a piece of heavy plate with a hole in it, keeping in mind that you have to increase the template size by 1/2 of the torch kerf's width. I am curious if anyone here has made such templates, and what you may have learned in the process.
Years ago I bought a 3-point hitch mounted, hydraulically operated boom from a man in his early 80's. He had been a pipefitter and welder all of his life. He had a lot of interesting things in his shop that he had built. All that I saw was reminiscent of a welding class I had taken many years ago, when the instructor, a man named Willard Anderson, said there were two kinds of torch cuts, the junk yard cut and the welding shop cut. The hydraulic boom was fabricated in this way, as was a huge iron sawhorse that I bought from him. It is a nice thing to look at, seeing his cutting skills and his welding skills.
Willard taught us how to make beautiful cuts, smooth and slag free. It was his idea that you should be able to do heavy plate fabrication very nicely if you have an acetylene torch and of course a welder. Willard also taught us how to make round holes with a torch, and that is with no sort of pilot hole. The method does not work for small holes, but larger ones are great. To do smaller holes it is best to drill a pilot hole to start the cut.
Years ago, my grandfather worked in and ultimately ran the steel shop at an Allis Chalmers plant in Cedar Rapids. All of their burning, as he called it, was done with hand torches and templates.
Over the years I have done a lot of cutting with straight edges of angle iron, what a former employer called a coffee can radius. Using the curve of a coffee can to make nicely radiused corners. I always would save various pieces of plate and pipe to maintain an assortment of radii for possible use, and remarkably, the end products were impressive to folks who did not know how the cuts were accomplished.
I am considering making a template for round holes, to cheat a bit, using a piece of heavy plate with a hole in it, keeping in mind that you have to increase the template size by 1/2 of the torch kerf's width. I am curious if anyone here has made such templates, and what you may have learned in the process.
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