It's been an interesting few days at my shop. Had a bracket to repair (cracked) that I was told was steel that they had cleaned up... turns out it was stainless, welded up nice with ER70 till I saw the back side AAAAACCKKKK. Ground it all back out and hit it with some 309l, came out nice in the end.

Had a starter come in, day of troubleshooting and a long story short later, the contacts the solenoid bridges when triggered were worn to a point it wouldn't make reliable contact. Needs to be done by Tues to leave for bike week (it's on a Boss Hoss, so a compact 350 starter). Welded the worn one up with some 14ga Romex as filler, pulsed it with the pedal hard, since it was only .095 thick, it wanted to blow out really easily. Got that done, re-shaped and saved the nice lady a couple hundred for a replacement starter.

So now with a few odd ones done, I decided to make a special fitting to allow a petcock to fit into the end of a hose, basically welding an extra end onto the fitting to make the threads twice as long. Beveled the edge a little, cleaned the hell out of it, got out some silicon bronze and set down to work. Well, it wouldn't puddle, finally did a little, brought the rod in once it started and it beaded up and sat on one side of the weld, then it acted like a glob of silver solder, flattened and wetted out entirely, then sparked and flashed in a big pop, sizzled a second and set. What the hell?