Proper welding etiquette isn’t hard to follow | Scratch-built solutions: Part 3

Where do chassis come from? 

It’s easy to have a kind of stork-myth response to this question: Chassis simply come from somewhere else. They’re born on high-tech assembly lines heavily staffed with robots performing strange, pneumatic choreography. They’re delivered into you…

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In #2, you say "use a crisscross pattern for your tack welds."

In the diagrams for #2, it looks like you are talking about diagonally opposite corners of a frame section.

In the pictures and notes for the rest of the article, though, it looks more like you are talking about the corners of one end of a tube.

I can see how there could be reasons for both, so how do you figure out which to do first?

This was a very timely article, since I'm welding patches in to the floor of the 325es this week. Unfortunately I started yesterday....but hey, they say lessons learned firsthand are the ones that stick with you the best...

• welded next to a magnet, which resulted in welding the magnet itself and some real weird arc behavior.
• didn't alternate where I was welding well enough, resulting in some warping
• one patch panel had a bit of a gap, which of course immediately blew through
• didn't quite get all the underbody coating ground back far enough, resulting in contamination

With all the mistakes out of the way, hopefully tonight goes better. Unfortunately these lessons mean I need to re-make at least one patch panel...