Weekend = Welding & Painting

This weekend saw some fantastic weather that let me get out and do some things on the BatBerry.  Also, last week I had some people over to take a look at the frame so that I could show them what I have planned.  I should be getting an estimate and some hopeful timing around the middle of this week 🙂

Yesterday saw me crawling under my wife’s Jeep installing a trailer hitch.  This will let me put a car dolly on the back and haul the BatBerry frame to wherever I need to take it.  Of course the hitch instructions said it would take 15min.  Which would have been the case if all six of the threaded nuts on the frame hadn’t been caked in rust.  Instead I spent a bunch of time with a tap & die cleaning out the threads.  But in the end the project was a success.

Today I started cleaning up the decorative exhaust tips and wheel bats.  These both had been gathering rust because they hadn’t been primed and were just sitting in the garage.  I cleaned them all up with the wire brush attachment on the drill and got ready to spray some primer.

After getting them sealed with some primer, I sprayed the exhaust tips with the same bronze paint I used on the wheels.  The wheel bats need a little bit of body filler before I can spray paint them bronze.

After completing the painting in the morning, I started in on my very first welding project.  The project was to build a mount for the 30cal machine guns.  My first welds were pretty crappy, but it was really interesting to see how a little practice goes a long way.

I created the mount with some square tube and then welded a plate on the top for the gun to rest on.  I also drilled through the mounting hole on the gun itself.  I’ll be welding on some angle brackets on the front over this mounting hole so that I can run a bolt through the brackets and the gun.

I’ll also be drilling a hole in the bottom of the plate and then tap the resin gun so that I can thread in a bolt from the bottom near the rear of the gun.  This should hold everything nice and solid.

I still have a TON of practice ahead of me to get even remotely good at welding.  But this was a good first step.  Plus, the grinder can always make me look better than I actually am 🙂