Headache With a Side of Swastika

Cuzzin Rickie picked up a headache rack for his work truck. The tubes to mount it into the stake pockets on the truck were of the wrong size and in the wrong location so I cut them off yesterday since it was such a nice day out.

If you closely at the photo you can see the outline of the old tube. It looks like I gouged into the plate a bit but it looks worse than it actually is - only maybe 1/32" deep on the lower right corner after grinding down the remnant of the old weld. However, the real issue here is that along the shadow line the weld never stuck to the plate at all. The tube was welded on with a MIG welder and on both sides of the rack the side closest to the flange had a cold lap along that side of the tube. Makes it real easy to scarf off but not real comforting to know that even though the weld looked OK, it wasn't holding a thing on that spot. This is fairly common with the MIG process if the operator isn't aware of the  machine parameters and his angle of attack. Often it's possible to judge how the weld is penetrating by watching the color of the weld as it cools. If the weld is an even color of red on both parts, you probably have good penetration. If, however, one side of the weld is red and the other is black, the weld is just laying on the metal rather than having penetrated. You always need to be aware of this with the MIG short arc process.

Cuzzin Ricky is going to get some tubing of the proper size and then I'll weld it on so the headache rack can be mounted . He also is planning a light bar on top of it which will require a mounting plate and maybe some reinforcement or gusseting. As soon as he gathers his material and we get another nice day we can get this taken care of. He also has a little job on a trailer that needs a bit of attention. Maybe get them both on the same day.

Inspection mark on my oxygen cylinder. First time was October, 1923, so it's almost 100 years old. The swastika is a nice touch, don't you think? Many of the cylinders were German made but it's rare that you see one this old anymore or one with the swastika still intact. Many of the swastikas had the sides connected so they ended up looking like four small boxes inside a larger box. The last inspection date on the cylinder is from 1990, so this one will have to be tested before going back into service when I send it in, but more probably it will be taken out of service due to its age. I may just get a new smaller "S" cylinder. I don't use the torch much and now that I bought myself a plasma I'll probably use it even less. An S cylinder is much easier to handle for an old guy than a K or T cylinder also.