Note the Fine Paint Job

I just welded up my saw blade racks, and I painted them with truck bed paint, and I’m waiting for them to dry so I can screw them to the garage wall.

Here’s a tip from a tool expert. If you don’t have a shade tree and some fishing line, it is perfectly acceptable to suspend parts on professional stands while you paint them. But it is not the favored method. Also, try to get all the paint on in one coat so you’ll get that nice bubbly dribbly effect.

I did try to paint these things correctly, but I guess I didn’t hold the can far enough away, because there was considerable bubbling. It’s not a major crisis. The paint is to discourage rust and cover the welds and grinder marks and brush marks. It really doesn’t matter. If I get tired of the bubbles I can toss the racks in a fire, clean them off, and brush Rustoleum on them.

The welds are only somewhat ugly this time. I feel quite a sense of accomplishment.

I was somewhat confused. If you have ever watched a welding DVD or read a welder manual, you know welder wire feed and gas flow are based on metal thickness. So what do you do when you weld the base of a half-inch dowel, cut at a 30-degree angle, to a 1/8″ piece of plate, with the dowel base over a 3/16″ hole?

I didn’t know, either. So I set it for 1/8″ and let fly. It was too much for the skinny side of the dowel and too little for the fat side, so I figure it averaged out. Let’s be real; if I did not achieve full penetration, it doesn’t matter. The dowels only have to be strong enough to hold maybe twenty pounds of blade, each.

I got serious spatter at one point. Not sure why. Maybe something got on the metal. I had to grind off two tiny spatter warts.

In keeping with my fine tradition of exemplary workshop safety, I welded in shorts again. Man, it makes you feel alive when a drop of spatter falls into the opening of your tennis shoes.

I have been told that welding bed rails is a bad idea, because they’re too hard, and the welds crack. I used a couple of surplus HTC mobile base rail extensions for these racks, and I wondered if they were made from the same stuff as bed rails. Ultimately, I don’t care. They were free, so if the blades break the dowels off, I can chalk it up to welding practice. I have plenty of scrap steel; I can make new racks.

Incidentally, some welders say bed rails are fine scrap. You just have to heat them properly before welding. Here’s how you do it. You get on Google, and you find the guys who said that, and you follow their instructions. I don’t know if it works, but I thought I’d mention it.

Guess I better get to work on my table saw guard.

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How come none of you anal-retentives have noticed the tiny discrepancy between the two racks? I didn’t see it until I tried to hang them. Fortunately it didn’t affect their usefulness.

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