Bends and parts from Burns Stainless...their biggest selection is in 303.
A long time ago I left home on my BSA A-65 with a remington revolver, a down filled paratrooper sleeping bag, some tool and other junk, and a few hundred bucks. A couple of years filled with drugs, dope, booze, wemon of all types, wemon who were actually men, and all sorts of mayhem followed. Circumstances led to me having to take a job high in the Sierra Nevada as a professional welder. It was at a gold mine with this foreman with one and a half legs. Just him and me. The mine owner was this rich doctor in the San Francisco Bay area who had this gold mine as a tax write-off. The old guy scrounged scrap from all sorts of abandoned mines and it was piled all over the place. It had to be made into a working mine by a certain date or the doc would get in trouble with the tax guys.
Nobody stayed at this job very long. I lived in a mine shack all alone except when the old guy was there I was fabricating or operating heavy equipment. Life sucked big time. It was cold and lonely. I faked being a serious drug addict on the mend to justify my lack of talent and inability to recall my past and it was not far from the truth.
I knew how to gas weld. The welders were stick arcs powered by flathead V-8's. They would rev on and off of their speed governors when I struck and broke arcs. Since I never touched a arc welder and knew nothing about it, some quick learning happened quickly. The electrodes were bundled in little boxes with paper describing the welding procedures for them. I took them home and read them in my little shack by lantern light. Most of the carp on them was in some sort of egyptian that a welder could understand. I got enough info to melt the scrap together into a mine. There were times where the old guy was holding onto my feet while I hung upside down and welded. A lot of the electrodes were sorta laying around and I just picked them up and used them. That would be my eventual downfall.
The mine was ready to go. It was a Monday morning. The doc showed up at the mine. I was in town doing something to my BSA. I showed up late. It was like the groom being late for the wedding. We had a dump truck full of rock. I backed it up the ramp and dumped it into the tipple. The old guy turned on the water and it flowed through the flumes and sluices. Proudly I yanked open the gate and the rock poured in. The sluices were jiggling and everything was primo. Then, my flippin' welds started to break. Critical ones. The non important ones worked great. The setup fell apart right in front of us. Inappropriate rod selection was the culprit.
My final paycheck was written on the spot. It was a big one. I could't spend much money on the side of that mountain and the doc was not around often so I had a bunch of pay due. A rich hippie with a down filled sleeping bag, remington revolver, and A-65 headed out. In town I got one of my friends drunk, sold him my bus, and moved back to the low country where I met Rose. Our first date was on the A-65.
That is why I never got a welder and would not get one now, except I need that horsepower. The memories. It will not be a stick welder, for sure.