I've joined the club !

[davidimurray]

Thanks for all your kind comments everyone. I must admit it did surprise me how quickly it went together.

The armoto kit makes an enormous difference to how quickly things go together - I can't imagine how long it would take to cut all your own steel! The armoto kit needs a little fettling where there are burrs etc as they come straight off the machine, I quickly run around the inside with a file, then across the end and round the outside with a sanding disc on the grinder.

I also found having lots of g-clamps, magnetic clamps etc made things a lot easier. For most parts I found the best way was to put a couple of small 'control' tack welds in to hold the pieces in the right place, then get the square out and check all the alignments, levels etc, before finsihing off with bigger tacks. This seems to have worked really well and got any distortion problems under control. Before I knew it I just fell into the rhythym!

Yup, i'm tigging the chassis together. To be honest the main reason behind this is because it is something that I had not really done before apart from the odd 'play' at work. I've done plenty of other types of welding/soldering/brazing so I thought why not! I must admit that I'm loving it - it's all very calm and relaxed and you have so much control over the weld.

Can't wait to get going again - will have to wait until next weekend though to get some welding gas - in the meantime must order some platework!

Cheers

Dave