I grab an hour here and there to chip away at the rear cage for Murderous Overkill, but there's always something that hampers progress. 

This time it was the death of the chop saw (see other blog).  I was able to get rough cuts in on some of the triagulating bars for the cage before the electric motor went poof, though.  Most people thing the really tough part of cagework is bending the tubing, but it's really getting a good, tight notch.  Escpecially where more than 2 or 3 bars come together.

Alright, make fun of the sloppy weld (my hand hit the bedside while burning it in and got me so disgusted that I wound up cutting the bed apart so it wouldn't be in my way again) but this shows some of the intricacies in notching.  This particular bar called for a 23-degree cut and a 20-degree cut to the front and rear of the bar, as well as a 90-degree cut on the inside to clear the cross bar that ties the two downbars together.  It takes a lot of patience, but I've been able to do all my tubework so far without making any scrap tubing.

I need the chop saw to finish up the cut on the bar seen to the left before burning it in, but this also works as a good example of why you only clamp or tack until you're finished fabricating.  In this case, I built the bar on the right first, but knew that it would need to share frame space with the bar on the left.  I left it unwelded.  Ultimately the bar on the left will be welded to the frame and I'll cut a notch in the bar on the right so it slightly overlaps it.  A little hard to explain, but a future blog will have a nice photo for you to see what the *** I'm talking about.