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January 21, 2004

Welding School, Day 1

I had my first day of welding school today at lunch with my buddy James. We placed my welder on his bench and did some setup. He adjusted the gas regulator, we put on our helmets and fired it up. I practiced on some scrap steel for a while, and James showed me how wire speed affects the weld. My first welds were pretty lousy--I was moving the gun too fast, so the wire was melting on top of the steel, not creating a "weld puddle" that would bond the two pieces together. My pieces stuck together just fine, as James demonstrated by hitting them with a big hammer, but they would not be suitable for anything that would need to be structurally sound.

James gave me a bunch of scrap pieces to take home and practice on, which is exactly what I did this evening. I'll show you what I did in each picture below:

No question about whose metal this is... Thanks, James!

Here's one of my first welds. I'm getting better, but my penetration
still isn't great. There's no question the metal is sticking together
and will probably never come apart, but I want to achieve as much
strength in each weld as possible.

And just to keep with the restoration, while I was practicing, I decided to try
something that I picked up from John Henry at The Bug Shop. You
may recall that I broke off one of the mounting studs when I removed
the water neck and have been unsuccessful in getting it out.

Using John's trick, I welded a nut to the end of the broken stud and
removed it with a wrench. Easy! (Well, not so easy--it took me four
tries to get the nut welded to the stud). A pain in my neck turned into an
easy fix. I wish I'd done this on the other side, which had some of its
threads ground out when I drilled out the stud.

The stud just unscrewed easily, leaving the threads intact. You can see
the broken stud with the nut welded to it lying in the background. A great
trick--thanks, John!

I have another lesson with James tomorrow at lunch, and we'll talk about doing some sheet metal, which is really why I bought the welder. I'll take my practice pieces with me and show him my welds and get his advice. I also picked up some gift certificates to Outback Steak House to thank him for his help--he's really doing me a big favor. Tomorrow I'm going to try to score some sheet metal to practice on. That's one of the nice things about working at Mustang: all the free scrap steel. I may also try building my buffing stand tomorrow night now that I have a basic understanding of what I'm doing...

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E-mail me at toolman8@sbcgobal.net

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Last modified on 02/06/2005

Thanks, Fidget!