Finally making progress

[astjp2]

Well it’s been 2 years since we took Peter’s airplane apart to do some fabric repairs. Suffice to say that the welder guy never touched them in a year and a half. Well I got them back a couple of weeks ago and now we have progress! I am not a great welder myself, and I have tried to get 2 other guys to come practice and one showed and had a lot of tungsten contamination from dipping into the puddle... second guy has been a no show so far. If I can’t get a guy to do the welding, I will have to practice and just make it happen!

[Robert Lees]

Is this the Mesquite Taylorcraft, Tim?

[astjp2]

Yeah, taking way too long. His ailerons have fabric on them but still need tapes. Then get the rest of the tail feathers to the same point and then we can get them finished and back on! I still have to build new cables for the ball bearing pulleys when we get that far. The 2012 restoration was not so good at removing corrosion, that is why we started this project. Tim

[astjp2]

Nevada

[Scott]

If you have access to a Tig Welder, I can walk you through prep and setup, and provide whatever virtual support I can. Torch welding not so much but have done in the past.

[astjp2]

thanks Scott I have a nice Lincoln precision tig 225 and a Meco/victor torch. I just shake so bad that I contaminate the tungsten all the time.

[Scott]

Me too! A lot of my prep time is rigging up clamps etc to rest my hand on! Another tactic is to set up the torch so that you can rest the cup on the work and sort of rock/walk the torch along the weld. I also put tips on a bunch of electrodes to reduce trips to the bench grinder!

Anyway hope you're able to get it done. I've had to do a lot more welding than planned, or more accuratly, hoped, on my super cub... the good news is it does get better with practice.
S

[otrcman]

I'm by no means a TIG maestro, but have been at it for about 40 years and have definitely gained a few insights. People said that if I could gas weld then I could TIG weld. Well, the basics may be similar, but I was in no way prepared for the precision necessary in positioning the torch tip and and filler rod tip. I came to realize that the muscle pathway from eyes to hand needed to be kept as short as possible. Also the need to understand that some muscles are good for gross motions and other muscles are good for precise control. Muscles like biceps and triceps are strong, but they aren't good at precise control. Fingers are good at fine control. Which is all to say, I needed to anchor my wrists on steady rests so that the only muscles in use were in my fingers. My favorite steady rests are pieces of wood clamped to the airplane structure. Sometimes it takes a bit of time to work out some clever arrangement of clamps and pieces of 2X4 to create optimum wrist support, but that time will be more than repaid in the number of times you don't stop to regrind your electrode.

I worked at a place where they had a utility welder who could stand flat footed on the concrete, torch in one hand and rod in the other, and make beautiful welds with no other part of his body anchored to his work. Think about it: the muscular path from the torch hand to travel the full length of one arm, down the length of his body all the way to his toes, and then back up the other leg, across his torso, out the other arm and through the hand to the filler rod. Any slight deviation of any muscle along the path would affect the distance from torch tip to puddle, or rod tip to puddle, or the distance between rod and torch. That, my friends, was control. That guy was a genius.

For me, the greatest improvement came not from skill development but from learning the discipline of good preparation for the weld itself. Good hand supports (both hands), clean materials, clean filler rod, and clean tungsten. Once I learned that, I could go for hours without fouling a tip. By the way, wood really is great for hand supports. Wood doesn't conduct heat.

Dick

[astjp2]

Well another welder bailed, it was too hard for him... must be a millennial thing.