[TheForge] Brooms and Welding Cast

[John Husvar]

On Dec 9, 2005, at 8:04 PM, Jerry Frost wrote:

> Lousy welder eh Aubry?

Hmmph, me too at times, lots of times.

>
> Kind of reminds me of what the horse trainer said about  
> straightening out a problem horse. His cure, "Wet saddle blankets."

Or sweaty leathers in welders' case. Oooooh, baby, sweaty leathers!  
Or is that Eeeeew, Baby? :)

>
> In your case, there's nothing wrong with your welding skills  
> burning rod won't cure. It's just like anything; given the basic  
> eye hand coordination to hold the tools properly, everything else  
> is knowledge and practice.

Ayup! The more rod, gas, electricity, and O2 you burn, the better you  
get. And it uses up some of the what-the-heck-is-this-stuff? in the  
scrap pile too; a learning experience in itself!

I used to do everything I could with MIG or Flux-core wire feed. It  
was just overall easier, and still is, a lot of the time.

Then I got into a couple of jobs where Oxy-Acetylene was the only  
good way. Even TIG wouldn't have worked because of the confined  
spaces where the welds were needed. (Well, and because I don't _have_  
a TIG welder.) Fell in love with it all over again, for small  
material especially! I've started using it for almost all the small,  
light-gage material, jobs that come my way.

So far the smallest I've done was the decorative stamped shield from  
a refrigerator door. Material was way thinner than anything I'd ever  
tried. With a very small flame and a lot more patience than I usually  
have, I got the thing welded and had to do almost no grinding. Damn  
near jumped for joy, once I got the kinks out of my arms -- and head*  
-- from concentrating so hard on it. ;-)

Point is: I practiced a lot on small pieces of scrap sheet until I  
could depend on getting just the right amount of filler into each  
weld or, in one place, none at all, just fusing the parts back together.

Not only should you wet a few blankets just generally practicing,  
it's also good to practice for a specific job. It can tell you  
whether you can do it or not and save you the embarrassment of  
telling a customer: "Sorry, it just didn't work. Here are the  
(ruined*) pieces of your item." :)

* Think about holding a flame precisely on the break in a piece of  
steel less than 1/32- inch thick and only 1/16-inch wide, then  
putting filler in it. Or just ask any jewelry maker.:)

** Ruined enough that they couldn't take it somebody else to try.