What a day!

Two entries - would you even believe it? Yes - today has been exceedingly eventful. What with no electricity in the morning followed by intermittant electricity, I am much more inclined toward gas as well as my 120v plugin.

After breakfast/lunch/whatevertheheckitwas, I left to go to work. Arriving, I found the normal rooms locked up and the lights out. Then I found the boss. Apparently he'd tried to let me know that work had been cancelled for today but his letting me know had been to ring my phone and leave no message. That wasn't particularly helpful but anyway as nothing could be achieved at work, I turned around and headed back home, stopping off at the barbers on my way. It had been a couple of months since my last haircut!

Arriving home, after checking out the microwave I set to, working on welding the final patch over the hillbilly cable compartment disaster area. It took a while to trim the steel to shape and I deliberately undercut it this time in order to avoid the warping problems I had last time. 

Welding with 6011E 1/16th rods used a lot of rods and I had major problems - as before with burn through. In the end and because I ran out of 1/16th rods I turned to 3/32 rods. What a difference - these were and this is extremely counter-intuitive much easier to weld with. I began to fill the gaps where I'd undercut the steel but before I had quite finished, the daylight escaped on me. Had I had another couple of hours of daylight, I'm sure I would have finished the task.

Using the 1/16th rods I never had a problem with the welder shutting down to cool down. With the 3/32, rods I'd manage about two rods before the welder would overheat and need to cool. It has a 20% duty cycle. If I'd spent more on the welder I would not have the problem. On the other hand, I am happy that I didn't pay for more than I need.

By the time I had to stop due to darkness, I'd welded about 75% of the edges. I applied some black bumper spray since my Rustoleum anti-rust spray and my Rustoleum self-etching primer sprays didn't want to work and since I didn't want to use a paintbrush. 

As can be seen, I haven't finished welding the bottom left now the lower left side. My welds aren't pretty but they do work. I'll be glad when this operation is completed!

As mentioned before, I looked at the microwave. I pulled it out and wire-brushed the rusty parts inside. The more rust I removed, the more I found. The paint just peeled up and revealed yet more rust. It really wasn't very impressive for a microwave that I purchased in November of 2011 and used until May of 2014 then stored in a dry location! I don't think 30 months is a good life for a microwave!

Anyway, I kept working on the rust with steel brush and scraped the paint away with a plastic paint scraper. After a while I noticed that the rust wasn't surface rust. It was rusted through in places. How on earth is this possible? There was so much rust that repairing the microwave just seems pointless. Certainly I can deal with rust. Looking at the holes in the bottom of the roller recess, it just seems to me that the microwave is beyond repair.

Sadly, I took the microwave out of the bus. I'll have to replace it with something else. So, for the moment it's sitting on the ground awaiting disposal or recycling.

I had hoped at least to get the electrical inlet hole made but still, I have made progress. Indeed maybe I might have made faster progress had I used 3/32 rods from the start. I didn't know that at the time for I am but a self-taught amateur welder.

 

Gloopy blobs

Today being Saturday I rushed off into Red Bank to get some welding gauntlets and a welding helmet. Lowe's (hiss, spit) wanted $80 for welding helmets. Walmart wanted $30. No prizes for guessing who got my money!

Arriving home, I set up with the welder, put in a 6013 welding rod, attached the power cable to my newly installed power socket, attached the earth clamp to a piece of steel conduit and tried welding. There was a loud pop and a spark and that was that. Nothing I could do would make it work. I changed rods. There was a pop and that was that.

Feeling disheartened and wondering whether I would have to return to Harbor Freight with the words "it doesn't work", I slipped a 6011 welding rod in and tried again. This time it worked. I managed to tack the two pieces of conduit together although I did burn a hole in the conduit in the process.

Next I started welding the battery cage. My welding improved slowly though there's quite a way left to go! My welds all stood up to bashing with a hammer so I'm assuming that they're vaguely OK as welds. Of course I still have to weld the other side of the steel too.

Some of my first welds were quite gloopy blobs. Some were better though.

Perhaps my biggest problems were the rod sticking to the steel and my helmet visor dropping down when I was trying to do things that didn't need eye protection. The visor was pretty dark so the only place I could actually see the work was in bright sunlight. I also found the burning zinc fumes rather hard on my lungs but at least zinc is non toxic. I did look for a respirator but Walmarts shelves were empty. Although I did my best, covering up against sparks and UV from the welder, I did briefly see the arc a few times before dropping the visor but not long enough to cause damage.

Trying to free a stuck rod often led to charred tracks on surfaces I didn't want to weld. I'm thinking I should perhaps have the rod at a much more severe angle.

Thinking about the 6013 rods and a couple of the 6011 rods that also didn't work, I tapped the very ends with a hammer. The coating flaked off and voila, they worked well.

Meanwhile, I had a letter from the no hopers at Dish Network sent me a letter. Apparently they seem to think I can put a satellite dish on my bus. Then there's all the power that a dish and a TV would guzzle!

Now who in their right mind would want TV in a motorhome? Most with motorhomes are using them to get away from it all, not to remain hooked up and servile!

Now one of the interesting things is that I read a lot online about people failing to get an arc with this welder. I've also read stories of people failing to get rods to work. Clearly I've experienced all these but I persevered and achieved success. It goes back to what I've been saying for a while - too many people give up at the first sign of a problem and don't persevere at anything.