Hello guys I'm new here with a question I hope you can answer. I am building a frame and would like it to look smooth and all one piece. My question is how can I round the corners of the bent 2x3 to match the corners of the straight sections. The corners of the bent pieces are welded. Obviously I could spend 1000 hours grinding to try and match like I did on the second picture but wondering if there are any tips on making it easier. Thanks -Josh
Yea i have flapper disc's. There has to be a better way then literally spending hours grinding/welding/grinding/welding. Maybe get it close and use a body filler to finish it?
Knock the weld beads down close with a hard grinding wheel, typically on a 4-1/2" angle grinder, then switch to the flat flap disc to finish.
You can get it very close, then finish with bondo, but by the time you do that, you could have just kept going with the flap disc until it was just smooth metal.
Sometimes doing high quality work just takes TIME and there are no real shortcuts beyond correct materials, prep, and tools. This is why professional work is so expensive, it is labor intensive.
TIG welding rather than MIG welding leaves a much smaller, smoother bead, so you have less grinding to do.
If you chamfer every weld point, the bead is stronger and sticks up less, so you have less to grind off. This is proper prep for weld joints like you have shown.
Each joint has been beveled. All my welds are pretty flat and require minimal grinding. I am a certified welders so I'm not worried about the welds I worried about the radius being perfectly round without any flat spots. Either I need to stop being so anal or just spend the time and make it perfect.
Those welds and seams are looking DAMN NICE. You are a mouses mustache away from making them "perfect". A little more thought into the finished product as you weld and set up and you are THERE! With a little run of the grinder over the weld you will be at "perfection".
If you don't get there with the weld, and will be painting the frame and not powder coating, then a little body filler here and there to make it "perfect" is the way.
I say "perfect" and "perfection" because there is NO SUCH THING in building a car. You can go deeper and deeper into detail until you are measuring that frame with a micrometer to a thousands of an inch, and even then you would be off the thousands! There is NO SUCH THING as perfection, you need to know just where YOU will stop. Then keep your word with yourself.
Thanks for the reply Brian. I think getting it close then using a good body filler like you mentioned is what I'm going to do. At least that way I'm not trying to shape a corner with a flat disc. Durablock will at least bend a little.
Scotch Brite also makes a pad to fit a 4" grinder that will smooth all of your grinding marks. They come in course, medium & fine. You need to use the backing pad for them. I use them alot to do finish work (they are also great for sharpening lawn mower blades).
The hot tip for making the welds on the edges of the tubing blend in is a piece of equipment commonly called a Dyna-File....it uses basically the same guts as an air powered angle die grinder but has an arm with a small wheel on the end to turn it into a small scale hand held belt sander.
You can get them in a couple different sizes, from 1" wide or so belts down to 1/4" wide belts, along with different wheel profile shapes for using the wheel down in a ledge or crevasse.
You can likely find better pricing on non-industrial models if you search the web for them, these are just to give you an idea, we use these when finishing welds on food-grade stainless steel factory machinery. Works slick using the non supported side of the belt arm to allow the belt to follow the edge radius of the tubing.
In the pics your work looks very good. In the secon pic, it looks like a coat of epoxy, and a couple coats of slick-sand would make it perfect.
But as said before, quality takes time.
I work three ways,
Good,
Fast,
Cheap.
You may pick only two.
I also use flap discs, and 3M Roloc discs too. I love the Roloc discs for getting into small hard to reach areas. I also like that they are 1/4 turn install on the tool, so quick and easy to swap when they're worn out. Your welds and the frame look great! I sometimes fill any small imperfections with Evercoat's Metal on Metal filler. It's designed specifically to do filling on bare metal, and is an aluminum based filler. Much better than any bondo or body filler for the type of work you're doing.
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