The whole time I was away I kept daydreaming about the next step.

The reality did not match the fantasy - it was a cold wet day today and my left hand and right knee were still hurting after falling over in France.

I'm starting to see why it took Ross so much time to weld those pieces of steel together.

I worked very slowly and carefully today because of my injuries

Today's project was to construct one of the diagonal members for the veranda.

I have sufficient steel in PFC 150 but each piece needs a small extension welded on.

I could just go out and buy some SHS steel but it would cost me over $1000.

It seems a bit silly to do this when I already have some suitable material but a bit of work is required.

The first job was to markup the two pieces of steel with the best lengths possible.

One piece had suffered a large blow so it had a deformity.

The other piece already had a weld 2/3 along its length.

I managed to chop off the deformity and the welded sections to achieve the best possible result.

In order to protect my hand, my knee and my back - I moved the pieces of steel around very cautiously by rolling them on some short lengths of storm water pipe.

I then stacked up a few besser bricks in order to create a working surface and then lifted them up carefully.

The whole measuring and cutting process took 2 or 3 hours.

This was followed by some careful bracing and clamping before the first weld.

Welding took another few hours.

The main problem I encountered was the steel bending as it was welded.

From previous experience I overcame this by clamping on a very heavy piece of angle iron to apply a correcting force.

This fixed up the first bend I encountered but then I noticed another bend at right angles to this.

I will need to drag in a second piece of heavy angle iron and apply this also to make a correction.