Tools of the Trade and Build Days 1 + 2

I'm preemptively apologizing for the low lighting quality in these pictures. My garage has very little lighting (1 60 watt bulb and two halogen floods). On to the tools!

These are my primary fabrication tools.  The welder is a Hobart Handler 140.  I'm at a rental property and was limited to 120v welders.  So far I haven't had an issue, but I may need to go somewhere else when I start welding thicker than 3/8" plate for roll bar mountings.

The band saw is from Habor Freight.  List cost was $300, was on sale for $230, then I applied a 20% off coupon to drop the price to $180.  After tweaking the blade guides, tension, speed, I have managed to make fantastic cuts down to about half a degree of precision.

Another very important tool in Minnesota winters is the garage heater.  Now, this heater is not very powerful, but it should be able to bring the garage to about 40-50 F, which is plenty good to work in.  Runs on kerosene, was given to me by a co-worker free of change.  I love free things.

Speaking of free things, see that tiny air compressor?  That was also free.  That one (with that nice hose) came from my friend Andy.  The rest of the picture are my tool boxes, chemicals, and general garage tools which will come in handy after the fabrication is mostly complete.

Now onto the build so far.  Here is the picture I took after 1 day of cutting and mocking up:

You can see a pile of cut tubes and a pile of cut tubes in the background.  This first day was mainly spent getting a feel for the band saw and measuring equipment I'm using.  The big white binder is my 120 pages of diagrams and plans.

Here is a picture from build day 2.  This doesn't look like it was a lot of progress, but the entire cab and engine portion of the chassis base is cut, measured, and tack welded together.

  

The vertical tubes you see on the chassis are going to be used to properly position that odd parallelogram for the front suspension mounting points.  precision is critical here so I don't mind making and breaking numerous welds to get it just right.  

This picture also shows my wonderful lighting arrangement.  Those two floods provide 90% of the light in the garage.  It can get a bit troublesome to see sometimes, especially as those lights cause my auto-dimming welding helmet to dim when I look in their direction.

This is all the progress so far.  Progress will be a lot slower this week as I am spending this weekend studying for and taking the Fundamentals of Engineering exam for chemical engineers.  Hopefully I can start down the long path of becoming a Professional Engineer.