Getting Ahead by Copying Other People’s Work

I think I have the answer to my latest welding puzzle.

To complete my Offroad Swag finger brake kit, I have to weld a big angle iron into a channel. The angle iron will open upward, and the outer edges will be welded to the upper edges of the channel. Other people who have done this have gotten warped projects.

I now have a copy of Design of Weldments, which is a useful book a Youtuber recommended. You don’t have to be a welder to find it useful. I don’t think the Youtuber welds. It’s useful for anyone who builds stuff. This morning I checked the book to see if it could help me, and I found the answer in chapter 6.

The correct procedure for my welds is to preset. This means I need to clamp the work down so it can’t bend during or after welding. I can clamp it down as it is, or I can put a slight bend in it, away from the anticipated warp. Presetting is what the pros do.

I thought about peening the welds. This means beating them with a hammer to flatten and lengthen them while they’re still hot. The book says this is a waste of time.

It says I should do the welds in small segments, and I should wait for each set of segments to cool before welding the next set. I say “set” because I plan to do one segment on each side of the project at a time, so they will balance each other. The project can warp back-to-front as well as vertically, so you can’t just weld the front and then turn it around and weld the back. Funny how no one on Youtube has checked to see if he has warpage in the horizontal plane! It’s surprising that I figured that out and they didn’t.

I can clamp the project to my table saw, with sheet metal on the saw table to keep spatter off, or I can put it in the press and weld it. The press would be better, but it may be hard to do, because I’ll need something longer than arbor plates to support the project.

I can use the table saw easily because I now have a 25-foot extension cord for my welders and plasma cutter. I won’t have to shove the 700-pound saw across the shop.

Incidentally, Harbor Freight provides good arbor plates with its presses. They used to use cast iron, which is brittle and snaps suddenly. Now they’re steel. Good thing to know. If you have cast iron, you should get new plates. It’s dangerous when a plate snaps.

Right now, I have two jobs on my mind. One is to practice MIG until I feel good about doing the welding, and the other is to rearrange the workshop so I can make a final decision about where to put my machine tools. Right now, I’m leaning toward putting them out there instead of in the garage. I would need some serious electrical work.

If you think your shop is too small, spend a whole day rearranging it. It will expand by at least a third. Trust me.

I should be able to finish my tractor front end loader brace today, except for the paint, which takes a while to cure. Then I have to decide what to do with the tractor. I intended to park it inside with the loader up, but maybe it’s okay to park it outside with a sturdy cover over the seat. It is, after all, a tractor, and I will probably have another solution in a year or so, so it would not be out there long.

I’ll bet someone sells tractor seat covers. I’ll check.

I can’t find temporary covers, like grill covers, for tractor seats. There are a lot of permanent covers which would probably be a hassle to take off when I mow. You can’t sit in a wet seat cover.

A small tarp will work fine. That’s what I should get.

I’m still making the brace. I want to be able to walk under the loader and work on the tractor.

God told me three great things the other day.

1. All strength comes from inheritance.

2. There is no strength without inheritance.

3. Satan hates inheritance.

When you inherit, you don’t earn. You just receive. Other people do the work for you. This works with knowledge as well as wealth. When you inherit knowledge, other people make the mistakes and suffer the resulting problems. You come along later and get the knowledge that works, so you don’t suffer or waste time.

When you get knowledge from other people by any method, it’s like inheriting. They do the work, and you get the benefit.

I could sit around and theorize about how to weld things, and that would be my natural inclination, but it’s a lot better to open a book and get the truth–BAM–like that.

Think how rich and informed you would be if your all of your ancestors had understood and applied the principles of inheritance. Every generation would have made the next one stronger. You would have been born into a life of privilege and power. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work this way. People forget and waste, and their kids have to start with little or nothing.

Fred Trump was rich. Donald Trump is rich. Eric Trump is rich. His kids are too young to have jobs, but they’re rich, too. This is how life is supposed to be. The Trump patriarchs pass on wealth and knowledge so their kids hit the ground running. Making your children grovel and toil like mules in order to get where you are is stupid and often based in a sick desire to see them fail.

I could never figure out all the things in the book on my own. I like coming up with my own solutions to problems, but it’s smarter to find out what other people have done.

You can see why physicists are so useless compared to engineers. When a physicist has a problem involving building something, his skills will only help him to write equations and work from scratch. An engineer will pick up a book, look at a table, and copy the answer. Or he’ll stand up and ask the guy in the next cubicle. Some engineers complain that they never get to do math or design anything at work. Everything is laid out for them. That’s a good problem to have.

Engineers inherit things physicists have to build.

Interesting stuff.