So what happens when you bite off more than you can chew?
Suck it up? Gag? Spit it back? I say you just gnaw on that that bastard until it’s a more manageable size. Here’s my step by step approach that will help YOU TOO on that most strange but glorious day when you find a mountain of scrap metal on your driveway.
Step 1: call in the big guns.
This is my buddy Mike. Owner of said big guns. You can take that just about any way you like and it’s still probably true. In this case the big guns I needed were some bad ass tools and a bad ass individual to spend some time gnawing on my sh-t. Wait, no… That came out wrong. Sorry brotha, I love you, man.
Seriously though. The porta-band ripped through this like it was nothing. Not necessarily that straight of cuts but whatever. It’s got ‘er done. This heavy racking combined with that heavy frame/casters was my idea for a way to hold all the sheet metal while all the tube would go on the cart I’d bought.
However, if you need to chop up a ton of metal, what you really want is a high torque 14” chop saw with a carbide blade. This one is “The Slugger” which Mike apparently ran across on Finnegan’s garage (see YouTube if you don’t know it). I’ve borrowed a few abrasive style chop saws and I was always been kinda “m’eh” about them. Wide cuts, too loud, too slow, burning hot results like you just welded on the end… I can do better with an angle grinder most of the time.
This thing though: Sweet tea on Sunday morning with a slice of pie before church! WOW!!
How about a more practical example? I brought home this stupid chunk of unknown something (guessing 4130 based on what else it was with).
Measuring in as an honest 2” x 3” solid; I brought this home intending to let my band saw nibble away for an hour or so and thereby have killer press blocks.
Instead…
Light pressure, maybe a couple heavy fingers worth (I know enough to not overdue it) and 43 seconds later--yes I timed it, hey I was curious!
To quote the always quotable movie Friday… “DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN!!”
I used this thing to rip up all my 20’ tubing into more manageable 10’ sticks (all except the SS hardlines, those went on my garage wall rack to keep ‘em long).
I even managed to jerry rig a way to square off the corners of my cart pieces.
For the record: You know it’s a bad ass tool when you’re like… “I can tiddy up these ends. I’ll just lop of the last hair of a 6” steel channel with 1/4" webbing and 3/8” flanges! Won’t take but a moment…” And IT DOESN’T!
Step 2: Realize you’re screwed and your HOA hates you. Maybe your neighbors too (less sure on that front, but definitely the HOA). Call in the wife to prep metal too.
She’s willing, she’s able. She’s not necessarily having THE MOST fun but she IS generally willing, at least to a point, because she loves you. It’s basically the same logic as when you’re feeling frisky/adventurous and she’s feeling some good ol’ quality missionary lovin’…
but I digress (seriously don’t show this to my wife. I do love the woman.)
Step 3: More big guns. Borrow a 220 V mig running 0.035” wire.
I’d never welded with 0.035 before. The sizzle of the MIG bacon sizzling sounds wrong on the big wire. Instead of a nice high pitch crackle, the frequency is lower. It’s like comparing the sound of a v12 to a v8. Both are right, just takes some getting used to and took me a good while to get dialed in. A good thing too, because I had about a forever of welding to do.
Step 4: Weld forever.
Then you end up with this:
That’s good until you realize the cart needs to live outside since you still only have a 2 car garage. Which means you need to….
Step 5: Clean forever.
Yep that was almost a full roll of paper towels. This rack was covered in OLD grease. You know the stuff that’s kinda gotten hard and picked up up who knows what from where during in its existence since when it was built sometime back in medieval times? Yeah, that stuff. Might have been fine without paint now that I think about it… Nah, gotta keep it tidy. That’s my MOJO. I just live with mess when I can’t help it. Good thing I inherited about 6 (might have been 7?) partial gallon jugs of denatured alcohol.
Step 6: Paint forever.
Seriously, I finished this in the dark under lights so I didn’t grab any pictures. I just went in stages from the inside out so I wouldn’t be reaching through wet paint. It got touched up in the morning on the couple spots I missed.
Step 7: Load metal.
Hahahahaha, no just kidding…
Step 7 is PREP metal. All my tubing got hosed down in fogging oil (I’d make another sex joke but I’m tired and that one’s just too easy). All my plate got excess bits trimmed using the plasma so it’d be a bit more manageable. I burned up my compressor I ran it so hard and so long with the plasma. *Sigh* well sounds like I better wire up the big bastard instead of the portable guy.
Step 8: Load metal…
Silly boy. Nope,
Step 8 is clear space in the 8-12’ width that is the slab at the side of your house since you’d already filled that with randomness and the carts don’t quite fit yet. Convince yourself it’s OK to sell the junk tires and mustang wheels you thought you might go drifting on--but probably won’t--since you made your car too nice. (psssst…. Hey mista… wanna buy some mustang RIMS yo yo!! I got RIMS baby! I’ll hook you up!)
Step 9: Load metal?
Yeah ok, now it’s time. Recruit one more buddy who’s pic you don’t take because you’re so in awe that he managed to take his new driver’s license picture wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. Not that I love Trump but it was trolling on a whole 'nother level (true story I won’t name the perpetrator). Apparently they had to call the state capital to verify if "Make America Great Again" could be claimed as a religion.
Assuming you haven’t shot yourself in the head with all the big guns floating around this place, you tell yourself. “Self, that’s $12k in metal, be thankful you don’t have a job and could spend a week on this! The good Lord knows what he’s doing and smiles on his idiot children”
At some point you actually do load all the metal and you end up here:
Then it makes you giggle and smile every time you walk by. And once again all is well with the world.
By the way, my OCD loved (!!!!) sorting the goods. The tubing is pretty self explanatory. It’s sorted by material first, then shape, then size. The metal rack goes stainless, then steel, then aluminum (lighter when you need to reach deeper), then wood since I don’t much care about the plywood. There’s a bunch of plastic skid plate material tucked in wherever it fits since I’m not OCD enough to give it a dedicated space…. I still need to build a cover for both racks and I’m toying with ideas on how to build that into the rack since hey, they should be plenty strong enough. I think that racking material was 3/8” wall tube. Even with Mike, Anthony AND me (not technically a slouch, I mostly joke around), these things were barely moveable when they were full length with 13 of those legs sticking out.
So that’s the party and step by step plan for what to do when you inherit something north of 5,000 lbs of free metal (and bite off more than you can chew).
Love and humptiness to all.
-Joel
PS It’s late and I’m mostly entertaining myself (feel free to NOT take that any way you see fit.) I’ll upload pics and get this posted tomorrow. Which is now, now. Funny how that works.
