Fabrication, round one

I finally got my building feet wet today. And, just as I suspected, there's more to this than meets the eye. When you look at the design and directions and the simple line drawings of the tools, all look straightforward. Then, you actually have to get the tools out and go to work. Or, in my case, create some tools to do the work.

Because the sheet of 14 ga. mild steel is much taller than my vice, I needed to create a sort of jig to make the sawing stable. I cut two lengths of scrap bead board and used them to stabilize the metal.

As I reviewed my materials and the plans, I realized that I would need to use slightly different measurements for the metal parts if I wanted to have them "wrap" around the 2 x 2 lumber, which finishes at 1.5" x 1.5." Simple enough. The metal pieces that will form the towing brackets would be 4.5" x 1.5." Since one side of the sheet metal was 13," I decided to "cheat" the overall size a bit and just cut out one piece at 1.5" x 13," then cut that into thirds to create the three bracket parts. All was going well until I realized that my somewhat dull hacksaw would only allow me to cut about 4" in depth. Anyone reading this will know immediately why since inexpensive hacksaws all have long, U-Shaped frames.

Once I realized that, I decided to cut the first bracket part completely, make a vertical cut in the remaining section, flip the whole sheet and cut out another bracket and finally, with much twisting and turning, cut the final bracket.
It was at this point that I thought about taking the sheet of metal back to The Steel Yard and asking them to use their nice power tools to cut all of the major pieces. I would save my hacksaw work for the small cuts required for fabricating.
Since I was inspired by my visit with Andy Newlands at Strawberry Bicycleand Ben Farver or Argonaut Cycles, I brought out my files and began to make the rough edges smooth. I always intended to do this, but I was reflecting on the hundreds of files in their shop and the care they take to make their frames beautiful. Carry Freedom's words were echoing here, too. "Make something beautiful." I cannot say that my brackets, not yet drilled and not all bent are beautiful, but I think they will make a trailer where the parts look as if they were custom fitted. They were.