Making excuses to use a welder.

[Highpower]

This is a little project that I originally had no intention of doing.

I have a couple of small chain saws at home that I use for occasional trimming duties. One of them needed a bit of work and some discontinued parts, so I turned to ebay to search for some used parts for the saw. I found an identical saw that was missing the chain and the bar and was listed as "for parts only". So I though I would take a chance. To my surprise, no one else bid on the saw - and I got it for $15.

When I got it, it had all the parts I needed so I was happy. As I was looking it over I discovered why it was listed for parts only. Evidently the bolts that secure the motor to the frame had worked loose and the saw was vibrating badly. Unfortunately the owner kept running the saw that way for quite some time, because it wound up destroying the bosses on the engine that held it in place. Half of one was broken off completely, and another was battered, mushroomed and cracked all around. The bolt holes were stripped of any threads and wallowed out.

And then I started thinking..... HEY! You have a welder dummy!

So I fired up the tig welder and started laying down bead on top of bead, in order to build up a new boss where it had been broken off of the crankcase, and added some more metal to the top of the mushroomed boss on the cylinder head. Later I noticed that one of the cooling fins was broken off of the flywheel as well. So I started stacking more beads there too!

After re-drilling the holes in the bosses I installed some heli-coil inserts to provide some stronger threads, and then shaped a new cooling fin with some files. It's not real pretty, but everything is held together solidly now and it actually runs.

So having a welder around can come in real handy even when you least expect it, and you might just find yourself looking for excuses to weld something.