On Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:23:31, stryped wrote:
On Apr 17, 10:43*am, Bruce L. Bergman wrote:

* Oh, and another way to gusset a tubing structure neatly at a 90 or
acute angle (trailer A to chassis) is to cut a "Cheese Wedge" out of
the same size tubing with the outer wall intact. *Then weld it inside
the corner after welding and finish grinding the main joint.

* Paint the 'inside' areas of frame and gusset with red primer before
closing it up, try to keep the rust from starting. *Can be sloppy or
runny, nobody will /ever/ see it. * * *You hope. *;-)

You lost me a little bit. DO you have an example?

By cheese wedge are you just talkign about using tubing instead of a
solid plate gusset?

Yes - you take the same square tubing and set the compound angle on
your saw to match the inside of the join, and you take off the ends of
the tubing to look like a wedge sliced from a square pizza. Or a
slice of cake. You leave the top and bottom (triangular) and one
side. Then you weld that wedge to the inside of the corner.

Should you really grind a weld after you are finished?

Always. If you did it right (even if a bit sloppily) you will clean
off the bumps and slag spatter, and make a surface that can be painted
easily. If you went for good penetration of the parent metal you can
also grind the joint down totally flat and it will look like one piece
that curves.

And if the weld is bad, you'll see it right away and can fix it. If
the weld metal didn't penetrate and stick to the parent metal, the
wheel will peel it right off. Or you'll see big bubbles and holes
that were hiding under the surface...

It takes a LOT of practice to get beautiful tightly whorled weld
beads where it won't need at least a little grinder clean-up.

When you get that good where you want people to see the stitching,
you just hit it with the knotted wire wheel (used for surface prep
before welding) to knock off the spatter dingleberries and call it
done.

-- Bruce --