Following on from the previous discussion about bending a handrail in the "hard" direction, I thought you might want to see how it turned out:
Typos etc all mine, however feel free to fix!
Very nice! Disappointed you didn?t use a charcoal fire and leaf blower to heat and then bend the bars.
;-)
Tim
While charcoal forging has a certain romantic charm, they way I did it turned out to be depressingly easy!
(must admit I needed to go get a refill of Mig gas, and though at the time, shall I get a set of oxy acetylene bottles while I am here?)
Good Job!
That's worked well. Although the curvature seems somewhat less than I recall seeing on your original sketch.
It would not have looked so good if I had welded it :-(
Yup there is less curve... that is partly because I could not stick the bottom post as far into the plinth as I wanted (due to it being "empty"), and also the realisation that I did not want it to get too far away from the person on the steps at the bottom. So the bottom run of posts is pretty much a straight line. (it almost recurves on the left one in fact).
I deliberately went for techniques that did not put much welding actully on display.
(also never underestimate how much better your welding can look with the aid of some good flap discs!)
:-)
A very interesting exercise. Your "trial" showed that kerfing works for a tighter curve than I would originally have thought possible. Most of my welding seems to involve corners and angles where a flap wheel won't fit. I need more practice!
and possibly a die grinder to get into the corners :-)
I expect you can kerf bend a relatively tight bend just by changing to a thicker cutting disk (or doing as I did for a couple, and re-cutting the kerf after bending the first time). I suppose there comes a point where the steps in the bend become visible...
That's a lovely job! Congratulations.
Tempting to invite you to come and finish off this place:-)
Well done!
Nice job. Nice walk through. All way beyond my capabilities. Welding is a skill I have never acquired and often regret not having
When I have had to drill a large 'sds' hole I usually start with a small diameter bit.
And finally, did SWMBO appreciate it and like it ?
Tad personal there, old chap.
Thanks.
Welding is not something I have done a huge amount of[1].
Last year I needed to buy a decent welder since daughter had a college project to finish that was interrupted by lockdown 1.0, so that was a good enough excuse for me to get a decent inverter based MiG setup. That has been a revelation as it is *so* much easier to get decent results with - even using it for stick welding.
Because its so much easier to use, I have done more with it, and found I am beginning to get adequate results with it. (I have just started my second 20L cylinder of gas with it)
But again - an AG and decent set of abrasives hide all kinds of sins!
I did that on the first side, and found it actually made it harder in this case. The main problem was going through the engineering bricks at an angle, plus mortar, plus tile, meant that it was even more prone to snagging and slipping on the clutch because you are half in a brick and half in something else at some points, then a third in two different ones etc. So I tried the next side without a pilot, and it was slightly more comfortable.
(in reality I would have probably found it much easier if I had bought a SDS Max bit for my large machine - but the cheapest I could see one of those for was north of £70, and that seemed excessive for a bit I might not ever need again!)
Yup I think so... I did clear design approval before starting, and the end result is not too far off the pretty picture if you squint a bit!
[1] I bought a crappy SIP merlin "AC buzz box" decades ago, and could get some useful work out of it, but it was not pretty, and using the machine was a right PITA. The duty cycle was pitiful - you could at best get 10 mins of run time out of it - and it overheated and tripped out even from just being turned on - not actually welding. Then it needed 30 mins to cool off. So every time you were just getting into the task it gave up. Adding some big fans inside the box helped a bit, but not much. However it was "ok" for some quick repair and very basic fabrication jobs.
She has not complained about an undersized bit in the past, but perhaps she is just being kind :-)
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