Welding Cart Project Begins

My latest metalworking project is well underway. I’m turning a tool chest into a welding cart.

I went to Harbor Freight today and got me a 26″ tool chest in blazing green to match my Titanium welder. I also went to my metal dealer and bought steel. I always buy things I don’t need when I’m there, so I can’t say exactly how much of what I spent will go into the project, but it was somewhere around $32. I went to Tractor Supply and picked up some bolts and washers, too. That was under $8. I will eventually have to buy a can of truck bed paint, so add another $13. I discovered I’ll have to add some aluminum spacers, and I estimate they may cost as much as $15.

Add it up, and you get $68. I’m pretty sure. I may put another $10 in it before I’m done. I’m making a cart which will duplicate the features of the ZTFab prefab kit. The kit would have cost me $310, delivered.

I’m using the plan I described in an earlier blog post. I’ll put the chest on two long pieces of rectangular tubing, and they’ll extend past it. I’ll put a piece of plate on the exposed tubing, to make a shelf. The cylinder will sit on it. I’ll make a bracket from bent plate and attach it to the side of the cart to hold the cylinder in place. Very simple, especially if you have a finger brake and a plasma cutter.

Here, you can see the box the chest came in, with the tubing and plate on top of it.

Today I did some cosmetic work. I welded the ends of the tubing shut so they’ll look nice. This will keep bugs from living inside them, too. It’s totally unnecessary, but it gives a finished look you can’t get with open tubes.

I cut short pieces of 1″ by 1/8″ flat bar and welded them over the ends of the tubes, and then I used a Walter flap disk to grind the weld beads and make them invisible. Now the tubes are airtight, which is a little weird. They’re completely sealed.

It probably took me 40 minutes to do this job. I was going to drill holes in the tubing to attach it to the cart, but I discovered I needed to make spacers first. There is a rim around the bottom of the cart, so if I put it on the tubing, the cart would rest on the flimsy rim. Tomorrow I’ll buy a piece of flat aluminum and make 4 spacers with holes drilled in them.

I have said this was a one-day job, but that’s only true if you start in the morning and you have all the parts you need. I can’t get the spacer metal today, so that stopped me. I could have made cylindrical spacers out of round bar, but I would have had to make 16 of them, it would have been a drag, and they wouldn’t have been as nice as rectangular spacers.

Tomorrow I plan to get the needed metal and the truck bed paint, plus a short piece of chain and a snap clip to restrain the tank. After that, things should fall into place. As Jeremy Clarkson says, “How hard can it be?”

Once this thing is done, I’m going to move my Harbor Freight welder and my AlphaTIG welder to the top of it, and I’ll fill it with welding tools and paraphernalia. Then I can put my Lincold welder on the cart I used to have the Harbor Freight welder on, and I can move the big cart the Lincoln was on out of the shop. This will save me a little space, and I will finally have most of my welding stuff off my table and in places where I can actually find it.

I plan to build a second cart and move the Lincoln and my plasma cutter to it.

Moving the tool chest around was not too hard, because I have a Harbor Freight hydraulic cart. I bought the small one. It lifts 500 pounds. The big one lifts twice as much, but moving it in and out of a vehicle by yourself pretty much requires a second hydraulic cart, so I didn’t want it.

At Harbor Freight, I went to to an employee and asked them if they could shove the chest into a Ford Explorer, expecting the answer, “yes, obviously,” but she expressed strong doubt. She hollered at a more energetic employee who gave the answer I wanted. They put it in the car without damaging anything, so I didn’t have to drive the pickup, which has a broken stereo.

When I got home, I slid the box out onto my hydraulic cart, lowered it, and rolled the box off, onto its bottom. No problems at all.

Material handling is a big part of enjoying tools and getting things done. If you don’t spend money on material handling, you will always be limited.

I really look forward to finishing this thing and getting the old one out of my workshop. Things will come together if I just keep pushing.