The Cube

Had to share this. I had a strip of 3mm plate, about 33mm wide at one end, 350mm long, about 45mm wide at the other, and I wanted to maximise the welding practice I got out of it.
So, I trimmed it up0 into a 33mm wide strip along its length, using my scorpion electric saw, and my Ryobi bench grinder to clean it up.
I then cut it into 3 67mm lengths, and the remainder into three practice pieces. Each of the three 67mm pieces I cut half through at exactly half way, marking two exact 33mm squares with a 'score' line between them. I then folded each one to a right angle bracket. Thanks to Greg at Weltec for showing me this technique. What this gives you is an L shaped bracket with a very neat bend at the half cut, with no bending on the rest of the metal.
I then tacked the three L shaped pieces together into a cube, where each L shape makes up two of the sides. This took a bit of doing, as there is nothing to clamp together when putting the last piece in, and my cutting and folding was not perfect, so making it look good was quite hard. I had to file out a couple of tacks and try again to get it right.
When it was all tacked up with the arc welder (2.5mm rods on 90 amp), I 'corner' welded each of the 12 outside corner edges, including the ones which were cut and folded. I drilled a small hole in one of the sides before I started welding, to make sure it didn't explode with the heat, or implode when it cooled!
I then used a disc sander in my angle grinder to clean off the excess weld and splatter! The result, one cube, very shiny, with some very good welds and some less than very good welds! I am still proud of it though!



I also bought a copy of the Haynes Welding manual (#4176) which was excellent value and a really good read, at $35 from Super Cheap Autos!