Filling gaps

[houser52]

My dad's tractor loader bucket is worn thin on the bottom rear and is rusted/pitted pretty bad. He picked up two pieces of 1/4" X 6" steel that I welded to the inside of the bottom of the bucket. The scrap yard cut the pieces of steel 1/2" too short and there's a 1/4" gap on both ends from the sides of the bucket.

To fill in those gaps I had thought about laying a piece of 1/4" round rod in the gaps and welding it to the steel plate and to the sides of the bucket. I think that would tie everything together making everything stronger.

Am I going about this the right way?

 

[Shield Arc]

That is called slugging the weld. People do it all the time.

 

[houser52]

Thanks for the good info and I also learned a new word today, slugging.:thumbsup:
Now I just have to get it finished.

Thanks again

 

[Arc weld]

We call it the western gap rod up here. Sometimes you take another rod and knock the flux off and use it like a TIG filler rod while burning a rod in the stinger. Maybe that should be called STIG welding?

 

[Shield Arc]

Sometimes you take another rod and knock the flux off and use it like a TIG filler rod while burning a rod in the stinger.

Man I haven't done that in years!

 

[dstig1]

We call it the western gap rod up here. Sometimes you take another rod and knock the flux off and use it like a TIG filler rod while burning a rod in the stinger. Maybe that should be called STIG welding?

Oooooo. I like the sound of that!

 

[Arc weld]

Filling gaps is still a pain though.

 

[LD1]

1/4" gap welding 1/4" plate should be doable without anything extra, unless the bucket sides are real thin or something. If so, I'd just turn the heat down, lay a pass on the bucket side on each side, knock the slag off. You should now be down to ~1/8" gap. Perfect.....weld it up with a second pass

 

[houser52]

1/4" gap welding 1/4" plate should be doable without anything extra, unless the bucket sides are real thin or something. If so, I'd just turn the heat down, lay a pass on the bucket side on each side, knock the slag off. You should now be down to ~1/8" gap. Perfect.....weld it up with a second pass

Yeah, I'd looked at doing that but wasn't sure about it. Some places on the bucket are really thin. The more I studied it the better using a rod for filler looked.

 

[flyerdan]

I've used 7 ga. tension wire for filler when welding some serious gaps on diagonal braces on cantilever gates. Fed it in like tig rod. It's difficult to get a good fit up on those without spending an inordinate amount of time on each one.