More steel

Today I got on with cutting more steel. The actual cutting was pretty fast and straightforward. Everything has been cut over-sized. There will be a lot of trimming needed before I can actually use any of the steel I cut. The point was though to grab the steel I need before it all vanishes.

Last night I'd been thinking about the upper window of the back door. It's not really needed, to be honest. In fact I could easily install a much smaller window. That, like the two windows each side of the door, is not an immediate priority. The bottom back window is more of a priority but even that is not as much of a priority as installing the 3rd battery.

So, having cut my two pieces of steel, I set to and removed the chunks of insulation that were on them. As yesterday I vanished in a cloud of insulation dust and my clothes and my drill were covered in white dust. I was glad of my googles though a respirator would have been nice. One day I might get one.

After cutting and cleaning the steel came the painting. The cold galvanizing compound spray gave up spraying before the can was actually empty. This is why largely I prefer paint pots and a paint brush. The second sheet (shown) I started on the left with cold galvanizing compound but that ran out after about 6 inches of spraying. I switched to bumper spray and did another foot or so before that ran out. Then I moved on to white which ran out after a few seconds. Then I pulled out some silver spray that I'd bought in error and used that. That just about did the last foot or so before that finally ran out too. At least I got to use my odd ends of paint. All it has to do is to prevent rust.

The cold galvanizing spray won't burn when I weld so I don't have to worry about it. The white enamel paint on a fridge (the other side) won't burn when I weld either. All other paints seem to burn and catch fire when I weld. That's not great.

I would have cut steel to make the battery holder today but what with taking a truckload of trash to the dump, cutting the steel, cleaning and painting it and making a two piece sheet of aluminium to block a rat hole in the house, I just ran out of day. Mind, cutting and cleaning the steel was pretty exhausting work and my arms are sore from that.

Getting steel

One of my projects is to replace the windows on each side of the back door and the lower window of the back door of the bus with steel. This is purely because they are not actually used for anything. They already have internal panels over them.

As my friend was throwing out an old cooker, I asked if I could have some of the steel sheet that it was made from. As I was given the OK, I cut one of the sides off and found that it was very rusty. That precluded my using it for anything whatsoever since I don't want to have to clean up rust if I don't have to.

Now that cooker has a very interesting history. It was purchased secondhand from a local secondhand appliance dealer. The cooktop was used a little over the year it had been owned by my friend but the oven was used only once because that's when the cooker would give electric shocks to the chef. As the secondhand dealer had a policy of repairing defective appliances only if they are brought into the store, that meant she had a duff cooker that was to all intents and purposes unreturnable and a complete waste of the $100 she spent on it.

Taking the side off revealed a lot of pine straw inside and a lot of rust, heavy at the bottom and lighter at the top. This would lead me to believe it had been left outside with a tarp over it and that it had been outside for quite some time before the secondhand dealer happened across it. I believe I went through two complete Harbor Freight discs cutting that side off! As it was, the steel was unusable.

The cooker door should not have had rust inside it but it did. Thus, it is my theory that cooker had been made of bits of old cookers, was definitely not safe when it was sold and was in fact quite the lemon. It would not surprise me for the "dealer" to have a long and illustrious criminal record.

I am very fortunate in that my friend bought several appliances from that rascal. Some are fridges and because the insulation is glued to the inside of the metal surfaces of a fridge, there was little likelihood of there being any serious rust involved.  I thus decided to use the top freezer door from an upright fridge-freezer as an experiment.

From previous experience, the foam insulation has to be scraped away slowly. Previous experience also showed that cutting thin steel really eats up Harbor Freight cutting disks. So, I started work and cut the steel from the front of the door. Interestingly, I used a Walmart cutting disk and it didn't eat away the disk at all quickly. It seems thus that Walmart cutting disks are better value - pretty much like Walmart angle grinders.

Having cut the steel out, I had to lever it up slowly. It was well stuck to the insulation. Eventually The steel came free but with a very thin film of insulation adhering to it. That took quite a few minutes to remove using an abrasive disk in my battery pistol drill. It also took the complete charge of one Harbor Freight pistol drill battery.

Having cut and cleaned the portion of the freezer door that I need for one of the back windows, it was bare, bright steel. Thus I whipped out a can of Rustoleum cold galvanizing spray and sprayed all the bare steel.

There is more steel available, obviously. I just didn't feel like working on it today. Once I have it cut and painted then I shall have a steel sheets that can be put over both sides and the bottom window. Having said that, I'm wondering whether a smaller back window would be more appropriate. That's easily doable using the steel available.