Building the Rims
Here's a few shots of the first wheel rim under construction.
This shows about a quarter of the first one tack-welded together:
Next is a closeup of the clamp I made, in action. The base curve is
formed from about 12 pieces of wood I cut with a jigsaw mounted on
a 4.5 foot long pivot and then screwed together. I covered them
with a sheet of stainless steel to prevent them from burning when
I welded above them. The stainless sheet was too thin though, and
I got much better results later when I added a heavy 3/16 inch thick
sheet of steel. The top part of the clamp was a piece of that
same heavy steel sheet with an almost-4.5-foot arc cut in it and
then a piece of angle-iron bent and welded to the edge of it.
The wheel barely fit under the ceiling in the garage when on the
clamp. It was very tippy however, so here you can see the hooks I
rigged in the ceiling to hold it up while I welded below.
I don't have pictures of it, but it turned out that TIG welding
this thing 3 inches from the ground was super-bad for my various
joints and whatnot. My left knee is still suffering. But for the
second rim I realized I could work on top of the welding table if
I only worked in sections. So I welded 3 nice segments in perfect
welding comfort and then only had to weld on the floor for the 3
connections. Oh well, live and learn. If anyone wants some giant
TIG-welded aluminum wheel rims, I am now all set up for production.
Dave Hershberger
Last modified: Sun Feb 13 23:28:28 CET 2005