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Oxy-Acetylene Storage Cage

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awemawson:
Clearing out the Foundry building to re-commission my Induction Furnace has prompted me to start a job that I should have done DECADES ago.

I have two trolley mounted Oxy-Acetylene sets - a full size and a 'Portapak' . For safety they should both be kept securely in a  well ventilated outside facility, but they weren't - added to which they take up floor space.

So the intention is to create a cage 1.5 metres wide, 1.0 metres deep and 1.8 metres high, using 50 mm box section for the frame, 1.2 mm galvanised m/s sheet for the side and back, and 2" square 2.5 mm wire mesh to two front hinged doors.

Pete. some time ago kindly gave me a pile of 50 mm box - very heavy section at 4 mm wall, and galvanised, so that's the frame sorted. I ordered five 1 metre x 2 metre 1.2 mm galvanised m/s sheets and two 3 foot x 6 foot 2.5 mm wire mesh sheets from F H Brundle, and amazingly in these virus affected days they were able to deliver yesterday  :thumbup:

So yesterday I dug a hole for a concrete slab for it's base - it's over deep as I had some rubble to lose !

A jumbo bag of ballast and five bags of cement are on order from Wickes - delivery scheduled for 3rd April but in these difficult times that may or may not happen.

awemawson:
Meanwhile I needed to extract the over long pallet of 50 mm square box section from the Tractor Shed. Where was it - yes you've guessed - right at the back  :bang:

So this morning was taken up with extraction of the sheds contents, and a bit of re-deployment of 'stuff', but even before THAT could happen I had had to sort the brakes on my Forklift. For some strange reason both the hand brake AND the foot brake had ceased to function simultaneously  :bugeye: Believe me this was alarming discovering it coming down a slope ! It turned out to be a simple adjustment of brake shoe clearance but involved jacking up 4 tons of fork lift to remove the front wheels. Why the sudden failure? I have NO idea !

Still, pallet of box section duly extracted, rest of the gubbins put away, and after lunch I was able to cut to length all the bits of box section needed  :thumbup:

. . . welding tomorrow hopefully !

awemawson:
Welding time!

Too big to weld inside the workshop and too blowy to MIG weld outside, so stick welding it was by default.

It didn't go too badly but as bits were added it got very heavy to keep turning over to get at the reverse of things. I had hoped just to paint over the pre-existing green paint on the box sections but it became obvious that it was peeling so badly it would have to come off.

Now of course it would have been SO much easier to do this before I welded it together . . . but I didn't  :bang:

Most is now off courtesy of a 36 grit disk on an angle grinder, but there are two uprights still to do - however I lost the will to live and came in for a shower and cup of tea  :thumbup:

Depending if my back ever straightens up then tomorrow I can finish the paint stripping, cut some hold down tabs to bolt into the concrete base, and make a start on the doors.

John Rudd:
Looking good Andrew  👍👍

As a fellow sufferer of backpain, I sympathise....hope you recover...

awemawson:
Thanks John, yes getting my back off the bed this morning was 'interesting' so work didn't start until about 09:30 when the Ibuprofen kicked in!

Two objectives today : cut the hold down quadrants that I will be welding in the bottom four corners, and make the doors.

I'd drawn up the quadrants last night so theoretically it was just a case of cutting them on the plasma table. I'd measured how close my SDS hammer drill would comfortably drill next to a wall (60 mm) so that dictated the shape.  First one went spiffingly,  but the controller started to lock up - Mach3 counting up co-ordinates on the screen but not moving the steppers. Cable wriggling eventually got me the four I needed but investigation is called for at some time in the future.

Then I carefully measured the opening for the doors using a 'Gunter's Pole' , as single handed measurements across an opening are quite difficult with a tape measure - also I wanted to know how much discrepancy there was between the width at the top, and the bottom - the top being fixed by a welded tube, whereas the bottom has a bit of flexibility until bolted to the concrete. Turns out that it was remarkably close.

My idea was to have generous clearance at the hinge edges of the door (12 mm) and the closing centre rails, top and bottom (25 mm) to avoid any problems if it's a bit 'out of square'.

This let me calculate sizes for the door components, which I then cut and this time I remembered to sand off the old paint BEFORE I welded them  :thumbup:

Having them on the edge of my 'loading dock' avoided too much bending over and I was able to weld them up, leading to the trial fit that you see in the pictures.

Cleaning up the rest of the frame involves too much bending over so that will have to wait for another truck load of Ibuprofen  :bugeye:

All together quite a bit done considering . . . so I'm reasonably satisfied with progress.

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