2011 at the Hammond Barn

[gjamo]

My dad was in LAME in the RAAF during the war and regularly used tube filling methods to bend hydraulic lines together with a tube bender. There are several methods of doing this ,some that I am aware of are Bismuth (melts in boiling water) Cerrobend I think is its commercial name. Frozen soapy water also works they tell me and I have even heard of packing with sand but not sure how it would work.
Has anyone here tried it I have some bismuth from another project and keen to give it a try.
Graeme

[RHClarke]

Easter Sunday - I should have been in church, but contented myself with Hammond's place of worship - the barn. This morning I had the barn all to myself.
Bob took advantage of the nice weather today to commune with nature. As mentioned above, there is a resident turkey (yes, a real wild one) nesting nearby. While Bob was on his wild turkey hunt, I continued to find new ways of screwing up simple welding tasks. The probleme du jour was "blow through". Some of my tack welds were blowing holes into the metal I was trying to weld. Bob suggested that he wind may have a hand in the problem, so a simple wind block was used - actually a recyling bin with a large chunk of metal in it. That solved that problem.

After a morning of welding and grinding, Brian Francis dropped by. He had some time to kill between trips back to Kenya, so he lent a hand. Brian finished off the welding job for me - a well-appreciated break. We chatted about the dents and dings in the sheet metal and he mentioned that he had a tool designed for just those problems. On his next trip to the barn he will demonstrate its use.

The afternoon was spent finishing off the welding and cleaning up. Bob stopped to see who I was talking to (actually he thought I had gone mad and was talking to myself). After greeting Brian and catching up on his adventures, Bob headed home for Sunday dinner. This was my cue to wrap things up and go home to face the dreaded "honey-do" list. You can't have pleasure without knowing pain...

Photos
1 - Brian cleaning up my welding mess
2 - Driver side weld
3 - Pax side weld
4 - Roof weld - almost finished