What a day this has been! I got up way too early, 'visions of welded frames dancing in my head'.
Really, at some point during the night, I awoke thinking, "I should complete my fork bracing before I go to Matt's to weld the frame today." I think it was prompted by reading
@Chad T 's comment about back on Page 1 about leaving the braces unfinished and having the fork with the patina color on it.
So, before I left for my friend's for our welding session, I made a quick run to my local Ace Hardware just a couple miles away. I knew they had what I needed, as I had used this idea incorporated in my BO#11 build , 'One - Liner'. It didn't take long to find the parts, get home, cut , glue, and bolt together.
A 4' length of hollow steel tubing, and 4 battery cable ends, and a few dabs of Goop glue; and viola' !
Matt is a Mopar guy, and has a '69 or '70 Barracuda parked under a tarp in his garage. We worked on the other side, with his MIG welder on a roller stand, a knee pad, and a clamp I brought along to keep the 'effective top tube' distance correct and to put pressure on the head tube and seat tube holding the top tube in place while Matt tacked it in.
I had marked the center of each, top tube and straight bar, at the points where I wanted them , and cleaned the frame of paint and rust in those areas. The rest, I'll leave to the successive photos.....
When I got home, I shot a couple of close-ups of the work, and then got busy putting the MIG-RaT together to get a good look-see at how it all turned out.
And....the money shot.