Back at it once again! I finished up my other commitments, so I'm now able to start picking away at the "to-do's" left on the truck. Good thing I have a long list to keep me from getting bored.
I've got the bed in my garage now, the plan is to get it roughed in to the point where all it'll need is some filler and primer, and then bring the truck back home and start putting it together. Today, both before and after taking the kids to the pool I was able to get some garage time in. It was a much appreciated father's day present from my wife. So I turned on some Cross Canadian Ragweed...loud...and got to work.
First up was welding up some cracks that had been earned over 60ish years of using the bed. I drilled the ends of the cracks, vee'd them out and welded them up with the TIG. Next up was fixing the stake pockets. Yeah I could have saved like 5+ hours of work and just ordered new ones from Mar-K, but I'm still learning this stuff. I figured it would also provide me some good practice with the TIG, which until now I haven't forced myself to use enough to get good with it.
The original design of how the rear cross sill allows anything that goes down the stake pocket hole to collect on top of it, and to rust out the pocket. My re-design of this, while it's still not finalized, will not have this problem.
I plan to beat on the bedsides a while longer, and then break out my shrinking disc and see what I can do towards getting them straighter. I really don't care how straight the bedsides end up being because of my intended use of the truck. But, since I have a new shrinking disc and no experience using it...this is how I'll learn.
