Managed to get the bench finished off this week. I topped it off with some 28mm MDF, which makes a nice sturdy worksurface. I plan on covering one part with stainless steel to make a clean area for engine / gearbox assembly, but this will have to wait until I find some.
The underneath is one long shelf, again made from MDF, this has given me plenty of storage space. As you can see the bench is quite wide, and has given me somewhere to store all of my power tools safely out of the way, where they are easy to get to should I need them.
I also finished off setting up my new TIG welder. I had to make an adaptor for the argon bottle, as the new welder uses a larger hose size than my MIG. Also had to go get some filler rods and tungsten electrodes, as these were not supplied with the unit.
With everything finally assembled, i had a bit of a practice on some scrap steel. Setting it up was much much easier than on my old MIG, and the level of control is excellent. The resolution is so fine, I could wind the power down so that I was only creating the tiniest of weld pools on the surface of the steel, Perfect for really thin metal.
So with a bit of practice under my belt, I decided to use it in earnest and make up a frame for the guillotine / press brake. Using the TIG seems to take a bit longer than the MIG, but this might simply be that I am still getting used to it and need to hone my technique. Remarkably, it is very similar to gas welding, which is what I had hoped, as this is something that I am not too bad at.
A few hours later, I had managed to knock this together.
I also managed to have a bit of a tidy up and consolodated a few piles of parts. Now that I have moved all of my tools under my new bench, i need to get rid of the old one. For this I'm going to need to hire a trailer and have a dump run. With the old bench out of the way, my next task is to strip and paint the front a rear beams for the Type 34, I need to start getting it back together. September is not too far away, and I've committed to hosting a 50 year celebration event in South Australia.