Elevators Tack Welded

 The elevators are tack welded.  The finish welding will be done after the stabilizer is tacked together.  There are some fittings, which hold wooden blocks for attaching fabric around the hinges, that still need to be added.  I'd rather wait until I have the hinge attachments are on the stabilizer before before welding these fittings on the elevators.

Before I started welding these I took some time to review what information I could find on welding to see if there was something I should know.  The things I found that I are useful are:

There is an online engineering course "Fundamentals of Gas Cutting & Welding" D06-002 for which you can download the course materials (pdf).  It has some excellent explanations of the oxy-acetylene chemical reaction and other bits not covered in more how-to articles.

EAA Welding video  While your there also get the EAA Welding Manual.  It's mostly a reprint of the 1950 Navy Training Course NAVPERS 10322-A "Aircraft Welding", with some other interesting articles. My copy is almost as old as my copy of 10322-A.

Next is a great article by Budd Davisson "ZEN and the Art of the Weld Puddle" from EAA Experimenter, October 1993

The next is a series of 10 articles by Budd Davisson which started with the August 1987 issue of EAA Experimenter titled "Aircraft Welding and Steel Tube Fabrication". The last article was in the June 1988 issue.  Reprints of articles can usually be gotten from EAA.

Bob Whittier had a good article on heat treating welds titled "the Welding's Done! Now What?" It was in the July 1999 issue of EAA Experimenter.

I have more when we get to gas welding aluminum.