Alternate title: I’m a hottie!
Welding class is going swimmingly. An hour of class time in the morning and two and a half hours of welding. A break for lunch and then another hour of class time and then another one and a half to two hours of welding. Then we shut down and clean up and get out the door.
It’s almost like work. In fact, I have called it “at work” more than once when talking about my day to The Wife.
There are 15 of us in the main body of 1st Quarter students and another 15-20 of students remaining from previous classes. One of the problems of this course as told by the instructor is that as students raise up their skill levels, employers stop in and waive money under their noses and pull them from the course.
I think I made a good choice. So now I have to get my skills up.
Yesterday was day five and I’ve been doing oxy/acetylene welding for three and a half days. We went from creating quarter inch diameter pools of molten steel on a 4in x 4in square of 16 gauge steel and moving them in straight lines to laying down basic beads and now to corner and edge joints.
I have pieced together my own home oxy/acetylene rig and will be practicing over the weekends. Sadly, Buddy the Jeep had a major brake caliper failure (RF seized) and I had to limp him home last Thursday. So I will be rebuilding the front brake assemblies on both sides this weekend and not practicing. But that is life.
Here is a video that shows some of what I’m doing.
This one is good, but whatever you do, DO NOT try to learn welding from internet videos. That shit will get you killed. I would rather sit near one of Joe’s Boomers as someone was firing at it than be in the vicinity of most of the guys shooting welding vids for the intarwebs.
Have a good day.
When you get to electric(arc) welding, remember two things:
1. The arc produces something enough like sunburn to merit covering exposed skin and most especially protecting the eyes.
2. The sparks are actually tiny pieces of white-hot metal, and do not play well with most any synthetic fiber. It melts to your skin. Cotton and wool are your friends in this.
Other than that, have fun with it.
I took arc and oxy ace classes many years ago. Wait ’til you get to TIG welding, it’s the best. I always thought experience in oxy/ace is helpful when learning TIG, motions are similar. I taught myself to TIG, can weld stainless and aluminum too.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Lerg, in class I am dressed in leather from neck to tow. Tight knit cotton on the scalp and my full face hood. The Wife says that at my height, the get up is rather intimidating looking.
Darrell, I’ll be getting into stick welding next week and then MIG and TIG in the coming months. Within a year from this Christmas I am planning on having four or five certifications including pipe and pressure vessel welding.
Are you taking the class at Lake Washington? I took both a welding and the intro to Maching class there- if you can both weld and machine, you can build anything. I’m over in Redmond, built my own airplane and am restoring a 65 T-bird. You can also learn how to machine the receiver for an AR from a forging.