Guess what? I just rolled over onto page 100. Watch out, JD, I gainin' on ya!
I did get the passenger side "gusset" fitted into place and decided to try and implement my coaming idea on the driver's side. I used some cut strips of Bristol Board to determine how long a strip of metal I'd need to do it. It's about as stiff as 22 gauge steel, I'd say. Anyway, I let the end of it overlap about 3/4" onto the start, thinking I'd mark and trim the free end as I fed it around and tacked it in place. Tacking be be a little challenging if it causes the steel strip to twist, but I'll just have to try it and see what happens.
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It turned out I needed about 27" of material. By eyeballing, if figured a strip just over 1" wide would do it. Cutting a strip like that (27"x1") by hand would be very tough to do. I do have a 3-in-1 machine that I bought on a super sale at Harbor Freight some time back. I'd made a nice stand for it, but hadn't used it yet as I wasn't really doing any sheet metal work. Well, necessity being the Mother and all, it looked like a good day to start.
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Most of the day was spent cleaning all the red, "chicken fat" grease off the sheer components of it, and aligning the blade, adjusting the work holder setup, and so on. The user manual is very brief, but better than most Harbor Freight manuals, so I go the job done. With some test cuts on cardboard and then metal, I could see that the workholding component was not working like it should. The cut was not square.
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OK, I know, Harbor Frieght units are really a kit and you need to fiddle with them to get them to work. The first cut was not good enough because the workholding setup was not adequate. I put some washers above the springs on the unit, and that helped, but I was worried that at 27" of material, I needed even more help. I ended up using some strips of wood and some quick adjusting clamps to hold the end of the sheets down. It was the best thing I could come up with at the time.
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There is a back gauge with the unit. I went to mount it on the 3-in1 only to find the screw-in knobs used to secure it onto two metal rods you screw into the back side of the unit did not actually fit. Argggh! There's that "kit" factor again. So I just had to use a cut piece of cardboard and my eyes to line it up as square as I could, and add in my temporary work holding setup. The cut ended up being off slightly, about 1/64" over the length of 27", and that's acceptable for this application.
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I figured that was about enough excitement for the day, and I didn't want to set up a temporary fixture and then break out the welder today. So, I'll get back on it tomorrow afternoon when I have more time.
Cheers,