61 Silver said:
Hi! Barry
I have just been working steady on the 63. I would like to have it completed by the end of this year. I am at the mercy of the frame builder. I plan on installing the body on the frame prior to straitening all bodylines and gaps. The person in the pictures that is welding is my friend Don; we are both very busy at this time and learning how to weld with this quality will have to wait for another day. I pre-made all the metal parts and had them fitted using a body dolly hammer, vice and an old anvil.
Don is restoring an old 32-stake body truck. I rebuilt or replaced the wood structure for him last year. One of the greatest things about our hobby is how people help each other.
Ray
Ray
Good luck with the project.
Welding gets easeyer with time. The most important part to Mig welding is setting your heat and your wire feed proper and having clean metal to work with.
Also when your working with 2 different size metals you kinda add more heat to the larger metal so you dont blow thru the lighter metal.Always make sure its biting in to the metal and your just not piling material on. Once I get the welder set I let my son weld brackets for me as he goes real slow and makes a strong deep beutifull weld.
If I was welding a bird gage I would stitch it so not to add to much heat and warp things
Stitching means your just spot welding every 3/4's of and inch and then going back and restitching in the center of your weld and then going back and restitching again in the center. Some times if I working on real light stuff I will add some vise grips soaked in cold water to act as a heat sink to protect the metal. A law of nature I always use is that heat always has to move to to an absence of heat so the cold vice grips soak up the heat.
Lastley I try to always work with a spotter to watch for sparks causing a fire.
Now my saftey tip
Never weld in cut off shorts,or a flannel shirt as the frills from the shorts catch fire real easy (just ask my wife) I am wearing alot of battle scars from the building of the 62
PS its great to see people working smart, Gloves,face mask .I cant tell from the picture but your compressed gas should be strapped to something because if it falls over and the head snaps off it becomes a missle.
Keep up the good work
