My Prior "Shop" Experience

First I should say that I do have some welding and fabricating skills. My first attempt to weld involved a car battery, some jumper cables and coat hanger wire "electrodes". I was 19 and trying to fix something on one of my cars. I don't remember much at this late date, but I don't think it turned out too well. I didn't know what a real electrode should look like, or anything about electrode diameter or flux, but hey, a guy's got to start out somewhere.

When I was 22 I got a job as a laborer on a steel building "erection" crew. I was an enthusiastic worker who liked climbing around on girders and bar joists and so it wasn't long before someone said to me "hey kid you think you could weld this corrugated sheet metal flooring down to these joists?". They didn't have to ask twice. Just the thought of being allowed to wear a welding helmet and to handle the stinger of a Lincoln engine driven welder was exciting as hell to me. The welding I did really didn't require much skill. It was a lot like making spot welds to hold sheet metal decking to the building's floor framing. After a couple of weeks of that I was allowed to graduate to running beads to weld floor joists to girders. This wasn't structurally critical. It was really just another kind of tacking operation, but it let me get practice watching the puddle (of molten metal) at the end of my arcing "stick" electrode. If you do this stuff day after day you begin to learn something. I also got to do quite a bit of oxy-fuel torch cutting and I learned how to rig loads to be lifted by a crane. I only worked for that company for about four months. They were from out of town and only there for the length of the project. They moved on and I stayed put.

Soon after, I got a job with a small, boiler and pipe fitting company. I got a few chances to try my hand at MIG welding. I also got to practice a little bit of oxy-fuel welding. The company used oxy-fuel welding to weld small diameter schedule 40 natural gas pipe for residential gas service. I mainly watched that operation.

Another three years passed until I was working in a shop where I needed to make a custom hydraulic shear. I looked in the Trader Classified Paper and found a Lincoln "beehive" welding machine. It was and industrial motor-generator welder that featured a three-phase electric motor that turned generator that made the current for welding. I liked that machine. Again I was burning rod! I built a guillotine shear with a heavy duty "H" frame made from salvaged steel I-beams. I also modified a two axle trailer and made a frame hitch for thr truck that was to tow it. I had all the time I wanted to make mistakes and try again. It was a good learning experience. I later sold the welder to some aerospace mechanic in Silicon Valley that said he was working on a private space launch project!

Not much welding for a long time after that (10 years). In about 1999 or 2000 I was driving semi-trucks all over North America and I had developed the habit of buying cool tools on eBay and picking them up myself in the big truck. This was how I got my 255 Lincoln MIG welder. I saw the deal on some classified add on the web. I saw that my schedule would be taking me near the seller's location within two weeks so I asked if he'd hold it for me until I could get there. About 14 days later I was picking up my lightly used welder. It's great to have a semi-truck to pick up stuff and fuel paid for by the business! Since then I've worked on stuff like trailer hitches, trailers, scaffold frames and some residential stuff like metal fencing and support columns for floor framing. Best of all, I've done repairs and modifications to my classic 4x4 Toyota 4runners and pickup trucks.

Some good experience all in all, but I still have no clue about welding on vertical and overhead surfaces and my experience is all with mild steel, no aluminum and no stainless steel. Since one of my goals is to do some more serious automotive work I need to improve and I need experience on different metals.

Hence I have enrolled in welding school at the local community college.

Depending on how good the instruction is, and how good a student I am, I plan to put in at least two semesters (Fall 2009 & Spring 2010). If I feel I need it I can continue in the Summer 2010 semester. I'm hoping by Fall 2010 I'll be free to start machining classes (lathe and vertical mill). Although, I am also looking into the idea that I might buy a lathe to try teaching myself with the video courses from The American Gunsmithing Institute and others like Rudy Kouhoupt.

So long for now. I'll report soon on my welding class experience. -- Mit