Brian left his welding rig in the garage last week, and it’s been out there calling to me since Sunday. It’s a beautiful new Hobart MIG setup with a gas hookup, built to switch between 230 and 115, so it can run off the wiring in my garage and still burn 3/16″ steel.
I had some box steel scrap laying around from my bumper project, so Wednesday night I covered myself in bug spray and busted out the angle grinder to clean surface rust off everything. Then I gloved up and started laying simple lines down. It took some time to get the rig dialed in, but once I’d sorted that out, I took some deep breaths and just focused on getting some good lines across the tube.
After I covered all four sides I cleaned of some smaller scrap and welded them to the side and the bottom of the tube, with the goal of not burning through everything.
I was able to get things dialed in well enough that I started thinking about a bottle jack mount and how easy it would be to put one together with some steel and the welder.
After working on Finn’s fort Saturday morning through to the afternoon, I stopped at 3:30 and turned my attention to the garage. I began forming elements with cardboard and then moved to cutting down some steel we’d picked up at Lowe’s. I started with a piece going down the front of the inner fender and attached an L-shaped section to that, curving back around to the side of the fender to keep the jack in place. After tacking it in to see if it worked right, I welded each side in and cleaned the section up.
Then after dinner I cut two sections of galvanized electrical conduit down and welded them to the tail of the L for both of the jack levers to sit in. This was tricky, as the steel bar was 1/8″ and the conduit was much thinner. I hit it with short burns to avoid blowing through the thinner steel, and after some practice with scrap steel I figured it out.
When that was done, I ground everything smooth, wiped it all with acetone, and shot it with some black paint. When I went to install it for the last time, the threads in the hole I’d been using gave out completely and the bolt spun freely. Disgusted, I moved it to a second hole about 1″ outboard and tightened everything down for the night.
Tomorrow I’ll see if my tap and die kit has a tap for the next bolt size up, and hopefully I can get the whole thing permanently installed. I’ve got some toolbox shelf padding in the basement that will go under the jack and keep everything from banging around.
Neal in Boston says:
Nice work.
I like the wrap-around design.
I had Two thoughts for doing something similar.
One is to screw on a rigid piece of steel across the top from the front support to the side, maybe shaped like a thick L. Then I thought about pumping the jack up to use pressure to hold it in place from the bast to that new piece. I also thought of just zip-tie engineering to hold the handle pieces against the inner fender Or against the front support. Thinking that the jack will be used infrequently, I figure one could easily just cut the zip-tie to get access to the tool(s), and then recipe with new ones to re-secure.
I like your design, especially. Conduit loops to hold the handle pieces. Maybe drill holes through the conduit and handle to secure with a zip tie?
Keep on Scoutin’. I’m still dreaming!
bill says:
Thanks Neil. I hadn’t thought of using pressure to hold the jack in place, but that’s an intriguing idea. The bottle jack in my first Scout came to me bungee-corded to the fender holes. Given that lots of other things are zip-tied on this Scout I’m trying to find more permanent solutions to some of these problems!