Monsoons the last two days in Atlanta, rain stopped a few hours ago, everything is soaking wet, and it’s supposed to go up from 45 now to 65 later, but overcast all day.
My desire was to finish up the carpet and put the cab back together, and do the remaining wiring back to the hitch. But that involves kneeling and laying on my brick driveway, so I may give that a rest for today. I think somebody was just talking about upside down and backwards, and the PhD version is to do it on bricks with bad knees when the ground is soaking wet. I still might tackle a little bit.
If you get in the way-back machine, when I was throwing the trailer together, literally working till 5pm the evening the day before the Truck Nationals started. The frame, axles, goose neck and the lower deck are all fine, just needed a little cleaning up. On the other hand, the upper deck ended up crooked with some temp pressure treated supports.
I’ve been thinking about the ‘Raith trailer and the converter dolly a lot, doing the sketches and measurements and such, and realized I have plenty of those 4 x 6 x 22’ channel beams to do all that, with probably half to spare. So today, I’m going to use some of that, and redo the deck over the gooseneck. So here’s something I’d like some input on. Here are two of the beams
They are 4” x 2” channel, open sides facing outward, with several things spacing them 2 inches apart for a total cross-section of 4” x 6”. My plan is to cut the channels off and use them for the trailer frames, and use the spacer things for corner brackets and such.
Yellow circle: On each end, there are aluminum blocks top and bottom that are about 1” x 2” x 4”. Those aluminum blocks are welded to both channels on one end, and welded to only one channel on the other end, which I suspect had something to do with expansion and contraction.
The item in the blue circle is about a 2 inch piece of a 6 x 6 x 1/2“ angle iron. There are three or four in between the channels on each beam, and they are welded in at different angles. I suspect that, in addition to supporting the channels, these served as some kind of anchor point for threaded rods or turnbuckles holes in the bigger assembly together.
Again, my plan would be to cut these items out of the middle, and end up with a clean 4 inch channel, but also preserving these heavy duty pieces for my erector set build
Here’s my question: how do I cut these off straight so I don’t damage the 4 inch channel, and I preserve as much of the blocks and angles as possible.
The beams are too long to put on my tablesaw without some help. I was thinking of firmly clamping a piece of half-inch plywood on the face, and then using a Skil saw with carbide teeth to cut through the welds. If I screw a guide onto the piece of plywood, I’m thinking I could do it and stay a 16th of an inch off the face of the channel, to be ground down afterwards. I could do it on one side, and then flip it over and do the other side to cut all the way through.
Another option is to use my saws all, but I don’t know how I would brace it to get a straight cut. And again, I want to save as much of the small pieces as possible.
AnyWho, that’s what I’m going to tackle today. Since I decided to put a light duty winch on the nose of that upper deck, it need to have a little more strength. And the plan all along was to get rid of the pressure treated anyway.
As always, all comments and criticism totally welcome.
Afterthought, this not only gives me the aluminum I need to fix the Road Ranger trailer, it also ends up being the guinea pig for the other two trailer projects. Everything on the Road Ranger will be covered, but almost everything on the other two will be exposed.
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