Almost There…

After the apocalypse started, I lost interest in tools and my other secular pastimes. Now I am feeling more motivated, so I have completed a bunch of projects that needed to be done. I am almost done building my second Harbor Freight U.S. General tool chest welding cart conversion.

Last night I finished most of the welding on the lower part of the project, which is the foundation and the hard part. After this, everything should flow pretty quickly.

Here are some photos. In one, I have the project mocked up with the chest turned on its side. This shows how the parts that form the base go together.

The other photos were taken after the welding was done.

I made a mistake and made one of the rails half an inch too short, in spite of measuring repeatedly. This is a problem highly creative people have. There is nothing that can be done about it. We get distracted and make mistakes.

I was annoyed, and I thought I was going to drive all the way back to the metal place to buy a new tube so I could start over. I felt torn, though. One of the great things about steel is that you can add as well as subtract. Wood is less forgiving. There are some mistakes you can’t fix. If you’re good with steel, you can make things look like they never had to be repaired.

I finally decided to add more steel to the tube. The desire to have perfection was overcome by the desire to overcome. When I was done adding the new metal, I mocked the cart up, and for a minute, I had a hard time remembering which tube had been repaired. From several feet away, I couldn’t tell right away. I call that success.

I had to roll the box on its top to get the rails located and tightened down so I could locate and weld the member that would hold the casters. I couldn’t have gravity pulling the rails down and making it hard to figure out when they were loose on the mounting bolts.

I had a hard time figuring out how to roll the box over without risking bending the metal that protruded from the top. I eventually remembered that I had the styrofoam the chest came in. It was made to fit the top. I attached it and solved the problem.

I didn’t put a ton of weld on the base. It’s always tempting to close things up with weld and make them pretty and as strong as possible, but it’s a stupid thing to do. It causes warpage, it makes things impossible to take apart when you want to change them, and it wastes a great deal of gas and wire.

I still have to close up the ends of the tube the casters sit on. It’s not necessary, but I want the cart to look finished, and I don’t want bugs moving into the tubes.

I should be able to finish all the fabrication today, since the rest of it is simple. I need to make sure the upper platform is the right height for an 80-cubic-foot bottle, and I have to invent a support for my plasma cutter’s filter. After that, nothing remains but paint and gloating.