Welding rigs -- Details

[J hall]

Hey Calweld,
I was looking at your pictures and I noticed that while your LN25 and grinders are laying in that open box, you have padlocks on your ladders

[calweld]

Hey Calweld,
I was looking at your pictures and I noticed that while your LN25 and grinders are laying in that open box, you have padlocks on your ladders

There's just a chain and snap to hold the ladder from bouncing off, it's a handy place to hook the padlock onto when not using it. I try to pass a chain and padlock through any feeders/plasma's I leave on the truck overnight, hooking the lock up there makes it easy to find. There's been kind of a mini-crime wave out here this year, until one of my neighbors or I make an example out of somebody I've got to lock everything up. The sheepherders here hang dead coyotes on the fences, supposed to keep the others away, I wonder if that'll work for thiefs too????

[garybdavis]

That reminds me of my first welding rig....

Harv,
Good to see you here at the welding forum. Your knowledge (and humor) will be right at home here.

[wroughtnharv]

Harv,
Good to see you here at the welding forum. Your knowledge (and humor) will be right at home here.

Gary you going to attend the TBN get together end of October? (if anyone else is a member of TBN you can sign in and get access to "meetings and get togethers". We're having another get together outside of Austin. Gary you'll fit right in, complement meant.

TBN is tractorbynet

[fun4now]

SBerry
thats a real nice air setup.

[garybdavis]

Gary you going to attend the TBN get together end of October? (if anyone else is a member of TBN you can sign in and get access to "meetings and get togethers". We're having another get together outside of Austin. Gary you'll fit right in, complement meant. TBN is tractorbynet

A TBN party in Austin? Are you serious? I'll go the TBN and see if I can find son info on it. You will have to stop by and check out my new 7500 sq ft shop.

[Sberry]

Fun. glad you enjoy the pics. About a day after I reman this old hose reel and cut it down to fit in the boxes I find the right one in a catalog.

[calweld]

I've got another question for all you rig welders who do outside work . . . Every rig I've seen pictures of have no steel inventory on them, how do you work like that? Even around here, I see other rigs going down the road, no steel. Do you look at the job first, run back to the shop and get just what you need for the job? Customer supplies all material? Even on the bigger jobs, I order the steel I need for that job, delivered to the job, I can't count how many times I needed just a little piece of something else I just happened to have on the truck, lopped off six inches, keep on going. Or a repair job, need a fishplate, the material's right there. I know Cary's got the false floor, I'm sure there's certain things he keeps always on the truck, what do the rest of you guys do????

[MAC702]

Every rig I've seen pictures of have no steel inventory on them, ... what do the rest of you guys do????

I keep all my smaller stuff on the truck. Once I use enough that the piece fits in the back of the truck, it usually stays there, and comes in very handy, very often.

Also, I will bring longer pieces of things that I THINK I MAY be ABLE to use on a job where I know what I MIGHT be doing. Even that might be limited to 10-12-footers, though.

Now, I just finally started building the rack for the Dodge. I will also put very common 20-footers on that, things like 1/2" - 2" square tubing, and common angle iron.

Now, plate is something I may need to think about, but it's not nearly as common for me as the rest of the unanticipated field work.

[fun4now]

well put coal, it seems like you would be the guy to hire. i like the draw it out idea to get all the parts back in the mind so you dont forget stuff. no one wants to have there equipment down wile you are driving all over town for stuff you forgot. thats a good way to insure they call some one else the next time.

[Sberry]

I carry some steel, an 8 gallon rubbermaid full of plate and angles, the bottom of one bin is full of misc pcs, anothe bin has steel standing and under the bed is rack for 10 ft pcs and one cubby on each side for pcs up to 30 inches.

[burninbriar]

Depending on where you live, I would think that if you tryed to stock an inventory of steel it would get terribly rusty after a while unless you can park the truck indoors and keep it dry. It would also be an awful lot of extra weight to drag around.

[Sberry]

I do park indoors and before I had this particular storage building I parked in my shop. Its nice to get it out of the way. A lot of times in the winter I wash it off and let it dry overnight before taking it back to cold storage. You can see in the second pic the hodge podge of old stuff I tore down which was never really designed for storage of this nature to start with. It was always a green acres deal, move one thing to get at another.

[burninbriar]

The new building looks like quite an improovment over the old style. The ability to keep things indoors is nice. My dinky shop is only 18x30 and with a little bit of equipment, it gets really crowded inside.

[Sberry]

I still need to finish the inside with a bunch of big shelves, I have been looking for some pallet racking on the cheap. I have some more sorting to do yet, a bunch of stuff is going and I have it rat holed in pallet boxes. I might turn some boxes on side and make shelves, maybe even build some more as I use them to store firewood. I have been keeping about 65 of these in the shop at the start ofr winter, now I can bring in half a dozen as needed and park them in front of the stove. I want to get a hoist to put where they have been staying, getting rid of those and the service truck really opened the place up.