And it will be shown that I had not prepared properly.
Yesterday I attempted to begin the process of turning the sections of I-beam that had followed me home from work into bollards for the parking area in the front of my house that I no longer wish the neighborhood to use and was thwarted by bad planning.
I neglected to inspect my oxy-acetylene rig. If I had, I would have noticed that I was down to 30lbs of acetylene, which gets you about this far.
p
Squared the bottom edge freehanded, got one of the top corners cut into the proper shape, and got 9/10ths of the way through another before my fuel gas ran out.
For some reason unknown to me, weld shops are closed on Sundays (and most are also closed on Saturdays). I’m stuffed, schedule-wise, until Wednesday, so next weekend it will have to be.
For those of you who can read between the pixels, you will already know that I bought a circle cutter. For those of you who were not able to, I can cut circles now. As in ” Circular Shooting Plate” circles. Hit the email with any requests. The price will be quite fair, plus delivery if needed. 3/8in plate will handle all but the stoutest pistol rounds, and 1/2in will handle the rest. Rifle requires 1 inch. Freestanding w/a base plate or hanging. I can also build the frames for hanging them if you’d like. I’m also researching springs for self resetting poppers.
But onto other things…..
Like where I got the idea for these bollards!
This is a set of sawhorses we built at work for handling large structural beams. The piece in the above pic was “scrap” from this build. It is currently bearing half of the weight of a 24ft long beam that measures 14in x 22in.
But the coolest part of the build was this
The senior welder in the shop put this eight-layer weld on where the foot meets the cross member. This particular foot was two inches shorter than the one on the other side, so below this weld are two pieces of 1 inch plate.
Anyway, more updates on the bollard project next week, after I get more fuel gas and work a full day with my torch.
Hey, it’s Brian from Redmond, we went shooting once down in Renton, how much do you charge for a couple of 8″ shooting plates?
Well Brian, once I get enough orders that’ll eat up a half or full sheet of AR500, I’ll order the sheet. I can get 32 plates out of a full sheet, and if that sheet costs $450, then your plates would be around $25 each. If you just wanted some chain links welded on, there’d be no extra charge, otherwise, stands would probably be another $10-15.
I’ve no real idea what the price is for AR500 of any thickness is these days though. A year ago was where I got the $450 price for a sheet of 3/8″. If you want rifle plates (aka: 1″) then it’d be more, of course.
Basically, once I get the price for the sheet, I divide that by 32 and add in $10 a cut for simple cuts (squares, circles). Lollipops and the like would get more complicated and more expensive.