[TheForge] Learning to weld

[John Husvar]

On 12/8/06 1:32 PM, "Ries Niemi" <rniemi at fidalgo.net> wrote:


> 
> Anyway, every one of them, from 1986 to Tim who is working out there
> right now and is still going to Bellingham Trade Tech til May- they all
> spent 3 or 4 months doing nothing but gas welding- its the very first
> thing they make em do, and they dont move on til they are competent at
> it. They dont even get to tig welding til the last half of the second
> year.
> So if my experience in welding education is any example, based on at
> least 4 schools in 2 states, teaching gas welding is still considered
> the bedrock skill of a welder.
> 

IMNSHO, you're absolutely correct. It _is_ the bedrock on which all other
welding is built, especially TIG.

Gas welding teaches one: What a "puddle" is, what penetration is in relation
to the puddle, what a "good" weld is and what it looks like, why it's
important to make _certain_ both sides of a joint fuse, especially with MIG,
(There's a reason they call MIG "The Lawyers' Favorite Process) what alloy
rods work with what materials, and good two-hand coordination -- among other
things like: patience, how to determine the correct travel speed, how to get
full penetration without blowing through the base material, and a few dozen
others. In addition, if a person can't tolerate months of practicing with
gas, one might question if he's* going to be patient enough to get good
results with any other process. There are many techniques and processes that
make welding easier and faster, but only a practiced and patient welder can
make them better.

Many moons ago, the best thing I ever did with my self-taught welding
skills, (Read the book, look at the pictures, try to make my welds look like
the pictures.) was to pay an irascible, profane, foul-tempered old
sonofabitch, who could weld up the crack of dawn or a broken heart, to teach
me and repair all my partly learned, only adequate, techniques. Before him I
could weld: After him I was a welder, well, almost.

A couple of years ago paid him again for a refresher. What'd he make me do
first? OA welds of course.

I still don't know everything and probably never will. But he taught me what
I needed to learn to learn whatever else I needed to learn.

I got so damned sick of OA welding it was years before I'd do anything with
a torch but cut. (And I was pretty sick of that, too. He made me cut all my
practice pieces with a torch. :)

But afterward, I could confidently cut, bend and reweld .060 wall steel
tubing to modify a wheelchair in about 15 minutes. Now that they build so
much adjustability into chairs, I don't do as much of that as I once did,
but it still comes in handy now and then.

Old SOB was a better welder drunk on his ass, retired, than many I've seen
working every day stone cold sober.

* or she's -- lately a lot of the better welders I've met are women, just
like a lot of the better shooters.