Making good welds can't be taught in a class room or on a forum, skill comes with experience and a lot of practice not only in the welding technique but with the preparation of the metal and equipment, if you don't do proper preperation then the welds will reflect this, even for a skilled welder.
If you are Jeff I`d get yourself a good lawyer,it ain`t worth it mate.
Are you saying I'll need a good lawyer because I'm a window cleaner?? I've been welding for 20 years so I'll go up against any experienced welder any day of the week, Don't be fooled by thinking Just because I'm a wc I can't weld, I wouldn't put my daughters life at risk If I never had the experience and skill to create good welds Just to save few quid.
Cages don't really need to be stainless steel or even galvanized you can give a couple of coats of red oxide,
I thought that red oxide got banned years ago??
I would highly recommend if you do weld your own cage without experience you have it checked by a fabricator the welds needs to be correct to be a good weld, its not enough that the pieces welded together are stuck to each other, the two parts need to be fused together correctly, that would be fine for a little project that does not need safety standards but a cage does, so take care.
I would say that someone with no experience will never make a proper weld. It's like cleaning windows with wfp, you can teach a monkey to do it but to do it properly takes a bit of knowledge and experience.
PS
You gonna be selling these then Jeff?
Or even selling different frame size templates that could be bought and then taken to a local fabricator?
Like Neil Williams did by posting his template on here once.
Go into Halfords and you can buy red oxide in there.
We'll have to see how things go before I make any decision on selling cages, I know I'm handing my wc business over to my daughter but I'm keeping on some of them and building up the guttering and conservatory roof side of it.
If I don't sell them, Then I will do a future project of making drawings of all size tank frames and I'll post them free of charge for any one to take to a fabricator.
I have almost finished a project I started tonight and that was I converted a swivel chair into a hose reel swivel and I don't have enough chairs to make everyone one
Half way through welding the tank cage up and my old swivel chair in the workshop kept catching my eye. I stopped the welding and began to strip this chair down, I cut it up a little, reattached bits here and there and its almost there and it works Lol.
Jeff... you got that metal cheap..
When i was in that trade 4 years ago you would of had to pay £25 just for the 5 bar ally and thats without the 2 folds on it unless you done them yourself...
Dont forget to chamfer them edges for welding... but i dont need to tell you that
Bazz...
All the metal was bought from a good friend, I buy all my metal from him, When I had the lid made for my trailer he and I spent 4 hours one night cutting bending and welding it to what I have today, that was about 12 months ago but it still cost me £100
The ally you see was a piece I bought off him last year, for a trolley I was going to make, he made a balls up of the cutting size so I took it back to him and got another piece cut, that piece in the pic has been in his unit all this time so I bought it back at next to nothing with the bends already in it.
He was telling me that the price of metal has doubled over the past couple of months and a sheet of the ally would have cost me £40 now its around £80 for a full sheet.
All the edges have been chamfered Lol the weld has to have somewhere to go.