2 Attachment(s)
Harbor Freight Tool Chest = Welding Cart
For a while, people have been turning tool chests into welding carts. You add some things to a chest to hold tanks and maybe rods and so on. It's a fantastic idea, because ordinary carts have little or no storage space.
A company called All-a-Cart sells "ZTFab" kits to make it easier. A kit consists mainly of a couple of pieces of bent steel. One supports tanks from the bottom, and another confines them higher up. It would be a great kit to have, but it costs over $300 with shipping. I thought that was nuts, since a Harbor Freight tool chest costs $300 plus tax.
I did a little welding and turned a chest into a cart. It was simple. You don't need to make a frame for the chest to sit in. It already has a strong frame. I welded a plate to two long rectangular tubes, and I mounted the casters on the tubes. Then I screwed the whole thing to the cart, using M8 x 60mm bolts. I made a retaining bracket for the tops of the tanks, and I screwed it into the existing handle holes. Finally, I added two upright tubes between the upper and lower parts of the project, to add rigidity.
I put in brackets and holes to hold TIG tubes, and I painted the whole thing with truck bed coating. The steel cost something like $40. The real difficulty was finding enough metric bolts.
Anyway, it works very well. I may add some tubing to lengthen the distance between the wheels under the tanks, but it's great as it is. It will keep junk off my welding table.
The last photo is a mock-up, as you can tell by the presence of the oxygen tank. I now have the welders lined up parallel to the sides of the chest, and I have a C25 tank where the oxygen tank was.
The casters under the tanks are welded to the tubes in order to avoid having nuts on the upper side of the plate.
Attachment 37225
Attachment 37226
