Here's a bit more on that aluminum chain guard fabbin'.
I believe these aluminum collars are a cast variety, not billet.
Welding the first one wasn't as easy as the second, which I was able to do in a single pass. Nothing too pretty, but better than the first collar.
With the first one I tended to burn-in a coating of filler onto the collar before joining it to the sheet diamond plate, in an effort to kind of insulate the final puddle from the impurities in the cast. That made for a wider bead, though. And I like them narrower, even on a fillet, if possible.
On the second collar I turned up the Argon and AC balance a bit, then just ignored any peppering I saw coming out of the cast portion and just crammed the filler in the puddle, which seemed to make the puddle clean up well enough.
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