Ugh! Had one of those days Friday. I volunteer on Friday afternoons to teach a drawing class at my kids' elementary school so I have the leave the shop at my school by 12. I really wanted to have the roll cage in the car by Christmas break so because of running out of days and the Friday short day I was in somewhat of a hurry-up mood. Seems like when you try to rush, things go wrong and that's just what happened. Looking back I have to laugh but it was pretty frustrating at the time.
I checked out the hole saw from the school's tool room to use in the milling machine to notch my tubes. When I put it in the mill I found the arbor had been "studentized" and was slightly bent making the hole saw slightly wobbly. I used it anyway and it did an acceptable job on the main hoop cross bar. When I tried to notch the first of 4 short tubes I'm using to connect and triangulate the newly bent rear bars, the blade caught on the tube while cutting and the shaft on the arbor shattered sending the hole saw flying and it gouged my bar. I wanted it done so taking the advice of another professor here I set it up in the chop saw to cut it on an angle. Part way through cutting the blade caught the bar funny, shattering it and sending blade shrapnel around the shop. "Good grief!" I thought, "what else can go wrong?!!" I ended up using a 4" grinder to shape the notch, lined it up and started welding it in. I think because I forgot to sand the surface rust off I was getting a lot of spatter from the welder. That was frustrating because I'm trying to make pretty welds, not to mention that when I finished I tipped my helmet up looked over my shoulder and saw a rag on the table a couple feet away had caught on fire from welding spatter. Yep, I was cursed Friday.
After the rag fire I realized that rushing through this was not the answer so I took a second and looked up tubing notchers online in the computer lab. I found that Speedway motors has one for $100. It has a 40-90 deg range and it comes with a 1 3/4" blade. I've decided that I'll just buy one of those and take my time to do this right when school starts up again in January. I do get 2 more days in the shop before the break so I'll get some little things on my list knocked out.
I guess the moral of Friday's story is another reminder to not rush through things and learn to laugh at the irony of things that go wrong. I always try to do that and enjoy later telling my wife my funny "fail" stories as we both have a good laugh together.
Anybody else have days like this?
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