The first order of business was straightening the backbone, which I accomplished with a little heat and persuasion. Next was to tackle the neck. As you will see in the picture below, someone along the way hacked this thing up pretty good. Oddly though, instead of following the norm and taking a pie slice out of the bottom support and kicking the neck outward to gain the desired rake; this genius took a pie slice out of the top of the neck casting/backbone and pulled the neck back. I have never seen it done this way.
So the choice was made to dive in and get this thing sitting right! I started with a cut right down the back side of the neck itself. After shelling the teeth off of 3 sawzall blades, and burning through a few cutoff wheels, I was ready to add a little heat and start bending this thing back into it's natural resting place. The original welds may not have been pretty, but they were definitely solid!
Next, I had to make a template of the gaping void that I was now left with. Once I had the template then I came up with the 2 pieces you see in the next photo. Combined as one, they filled this void perfectly and gave me some solid support to tie things back together.
Once fitted in place I fired up the Lincoln, and sewed it all back together. After the root pass secured everything for the road, I layed down a few more passes to help with blending and molding later.
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