Milling weld bead

A little over 10 years ago we had a new deck put on the family cottage. When we got the price for the railings I almost had the big one. I decided it would be a good project to build it from scratch. Not being a great welder I cut all the parts to spec and took them over to a friends shop to have him do the welding.

I was pretty happy with the results and loaded the sections into the trailer to transport them to the cottage. I thought it would be a good idea to show them to the wife before painting them. That's when I got a rude awakening. She thought the raw welds looked terrible and suggested I dress them up on the mill.

Two weeks later they were nearly ready for paint. I beveled all 4 surfaces where each stile is connected to the top and bottom rail. The majority of the work was done with a 3/8" ball end mill with the finishing touches completed with a die grinder and deburring disks. In all there was a little over 1,000" of surface to be milled and finished. It only took 2 end mills, but close to 40 deburring disks.DCP00775A.jpg

Raw welds

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Milling complete, next step polishing

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Project complete
 
Looks great!, and bet a ton of work but totally worth it
 
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