Heavy Metal: Inspect Your Welding Material, Things to look for in welding material selection - Part 3

Heavy Metal...Things to look for in the welding materials section.

Recently with a current welding project, being in a hurry to complete a bandsaw sawmill trailer project which employed angle iron to create a track for the bandsaw carriage wheels to travel down, I quickly cut the rails and the supporting cross members to form a “ladder” type frame, with the cross members being the “log bunks” where the log, and eventually the cant rests while it is being sawed. My helper helped me line up the frame and square the cross members with the leg edge up and we tacked everything together quickly but well. Once everything was tacked up, we proceeded to weld it to the trailer frame itself. It was not until we were almost finished with the welding to the frame that we noticed that one leg of the angle iron looked a little different than the other. At first it appeared that one edge of the angle seemed more tapered on one leg than the other. Indeed, it was…but from what I could tell it would not significantly affect the rolling of the carriage wheels down the track as it the inside part of the groove on the wheels was machined flat. But it still seemed that something was not exactly right. Everything checked square. I sighted down the track and thought “uh oh”. I pulled out the Vernier calipers and quickly discovered that not only was one leg edge tapered (rounded) differently, it was also 1/8” shorter than the other leg. Instead of the log bunks being 2 ½” inches high, about half actually measured 2 3/8” high and that the we had a mix and match of the angles heights with some of the edges being 2 ½” high!

When buying welding materials, be selective and inspect your product before purchasing.

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