New Flagpole a Success!

Having a surplus of galvanized steel pipe and a few flags, we decided to hoist up a few of them and show our support for this great country.


US Flag and US Coast Gaurd Flag in a decent breeze...

A view from the road...

Chunky's Golden Raye -(New Yellow Lab)-

August 27th, 2006 - This could almost be Chunky's Puppy.....

Except he isn't...

I wanted a male to breed Chunky to, and I finally found him...

Raye is almost exacty the same color as Chunky is, the only match out of 6 yellow Lab puppies.

Below are pictures of Chunky and Chunky's Golden Raye, followed by pictures of just Raye.

Chunky loves her new playmate.

His nose is black and he likes to pose for the camera.

What's over there?

A healthy Lab appetite.


I will be posting more pictures of my dogs, including Raye, as I have the time.

New welding wire improves weld quality

The welding wire that came with our welder was acceptable but hardly what could be called ideal for welding any type of metal that I tried.

After fighting through the spool, I made a quick trip to Home Depot® and bought a new spool of .035" flux cored welding wire for about $9..... Why didn't I do this before the original spool had run out?

At this point I wonder why myself...

Below are pictures of 2 scraps of steel I welded together to test the wire out.... One is 1/4" and the other is 3/16". Neither one was prepped other than to remove excessive surface rust with a wire wheel.

The fillet weld on the outside of a 90° joint.

Same weld from another angle.

This is the inside of a different 90° joint, but the same scraps.
One of the scraps is angle iron, the other is flat bar to cap the end.
Looks like I should clean it up more and work on better tip speed control....

More later...

DIY Towbar

Having time and materials, I had to build my own towbar, just because...

Below are pictures where I am assuring a propper finished fit.



Looks good from here too...

Left and right sides are welded down the middle...
I would have run it in one bead, but the welder was plugged into a power strip with a weak breaker causing me to have to restart my bead each time it tripped.
(Time for a dedicated outlet for the wire feed welder)
Good enough to pull my little Ford Ranger...

More to come!!!! I need parts after this weekend as well as another spool of wire...