My Fourth Small Aluminum TIG Welding Project With Everlast 210EXT

Although I’ve done a lot of welding and fabrication years ago, only now have I begun to do some aluminum TIG welding, and this is my fourth small project in about as many months with my Everlast 210EXT.

Man, I dig aluminum as a material, especially in diamond plate with a brushed metal finish.

I usually prefer a mulching shroud/gate for mowing, and I refurbished this unit pretty well having got it cheap, but I didn't initially know if I would keep it and get rid of my other zero-turn. But I'll probably sell this one real soon, as a couple of neighbors have expressed some interest.

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Here's one more photo, as I just relocated the gas tank inside the compartment and deleted the inline fuel pump. This mower has an out-front mounted deck, which makes the zero-turn occur in the middle of the mower, and the back end swings more than a mid-mount style does, which makes the gas tank venerable to getting knocked around, needlessly.

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Nice work, looks like it came that way.

Yes, it looks great. Does the deck aluminum peice act as a mulching part?

Hey, thanks gang, for that nice feedback.

Yeah, it's just a mulching shroud or gate, which I'll often prefer to a side-discharge deflector. You can see the standard deflector pictured there too, but they get knocked around a lot, and kind of prevent cutting in close from the right side of a mower deck. But this particular deck seemed ideal for a curved gate, since it didn't really have a dead stop designed into the discharge area, i.e., the chambers for both blades are almost perfectly matching and circular when the deck is fitted with a curved gate, as I was trying to see if I could make it NOT leave a winnowing line at the right edge of the cut swath while mulching. I've got some Grasshopper specific mulching blades on their way to me, that might help even more with that.

Of course, you can still mulch when side-discharging if you plan and split an area down a centerline and mow in an ever-widening manner and make a redundant travel path around both halves, but it looks a lot better than having the discharge spewed on every other swath.

I kind of covered that cutting strategy stuff on another recent mower project in a video uploaded to my YouTube Channel, but the thing is 77 minutes, so not everyone will want to spend the time seeing it. I'll post it in this thread anyway, though.

Peace to you all,
Christian

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMnimF2-Z_c

Here's this same project uploaded as a video to my YouTube Channel. It includes me using my Everlast 210EXT effectively enough, even though my actual time and experience with aluminum TIG welding is in the single digits, hour-wise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DlxL6lccwQ

Here's the direct YouTube link also, which provides the text description that won't show in the player/viewer window on the forum here, and may be informative enough to entice or dissuade interest. The video is about 33 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DlxL6lccwQ

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Originally Posted by christian

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Not too shabby, sir. It looks really good. The only thing I would have done differently is to not have that sharp notch in it. A smooth radius would set my mind at ease about any chances of a crack starting to form.

Great work.

Hey,

Thanks for that nice feedback.

Yeah, I suppose a "U" rather than a "V" would discourage a fracture better. I forget that aluminum is more prone that way.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dumbwelder

Not too shabby, sir. It looks really good. The only thing I would have done differently is to not have that sharp notch in it. A smooth radius would set my mind at ease about any chances of a crack starting to form.

Great work.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by christian

aluminum is more prone that way.

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It certainly is. The chances of it happening are probably pretty slim, but better safe than sorry. I put a radius on everything.