New Welder

I've been researching welders for a couple years now, I currently have a Lincoln Weldpak 100 that I bought used in the early 90's. I upgraded it to use gas and it works very well within its limitations. I started looking harder when the frame rails on my low hour Gravely ZT42 broke in half. The gussets I used to repair it were at the limits of what the welder could handle and made the whole repair more painful than it needed to be.

I had what I wanted narrowed down to three welders, and decided that I would buy whichever was the best deal over Black Friday. None of them went on sale so I just bought the one I wanted the most  :)

I ended up buying the ESAB Rebel 205ic and I doubt I will ever be able to weld to anywhere near its capabilities.

Most of my experience is with MIG or Oxy Acetylene, I have only stick welded a couple times and have never used a TIG before today. But before I start spending any time pretending to learn that skill, I need to build a welding cart. Having two 255cf bottles strapped to my work bench isn't the most effective way to use my work space, I need them on a cart.

Yesterday I picked up a fab table that was on sale, its nothing fancy but really makes welding square easy. I have some existing material and decided to use as much of it as possible, to this point the only thing I have bought are the wheels and casters.

The frame of the welding cart I'm making from a commercial clothing rack that has 1" x 1" square tubing. The body of the cart is a three drawer file cabinet, which will sit on a fiberglass honeycomb panel screwed to the frame. The bottles will also sit on this panel and be held in place with aircraft seat belt extensions. The top will be another honeycomb panel and will extend past the welder, I will scallop it to fit around the bottles.

At least that's how it all works out in my head, I like reusing old materials but it is always more work than just cutting new materials to the correct size.

Today consisted of some mental design and me playing around with the multitude of settings on the welder. I did get the base cut to size and nearly welded together. The next four days are with the family and Ill try to pick back up on it this weekend.