I, Welder

Welding was great tonight. Last Wednesday, my welds were crappy. I decided to try my hand at T-joints. I managed to get the pieces of steel together, but they looked like hell. I left on Wednesday night with a sculpture of sorts I made for the Baron and serious doubts that I would ever be good enough to get a job doing this.

But, I got a book on welding. It's clear, concise, and amazingly helpful.

Tonight, I started off just doing some basic stringer welds, making two inch long welds on a plate of steel. Some were okay, but some were excellent. And then I took my efforts to the instructor. He pointed out where I was going wrong (slag infiltration, going too fast or two slow), and I did some more stringers. And got better.

Then I did a few butt joints (two pieces of steel lined up and welded along the seam where they meet). Not too bad at all.

The instructor said that on Wednesday when we meet, he'll start me off using the MIG welder. With the MIG, there's no slag. (Slag is created by the cellulose coating on the electrode used in stick welding; the purpose of the coating, called a flux, is to create a gaseous cloud that protects the weld bead from the atmosphere. With MIG--Metal Inert Gas welding--a gas is blown onto the weld to create that protective cloud. In this case, the gas is Argon. Instructor Guy suggested this, because that will allow me just to focus on the weld pool of molten metal, and not focus on the arc. Then, I'll go back to stick welding.

Cool.

Some of my welds were beautiful. Consistent, even, good penetration, no spatter whatsoever, no porosity, no slag penetration. If I can pull it all together--and get as good at welding as I am at splitting firewood--I'll be a good welder.

Tonight, I'm seeing that as possible.


And there was a cool moment. When I got there for class, all the other students were sitting in silence in the classroom. Instructor Guy wasn't there. Five minutes after class was due to start, we were all still sitting there. Nobody saying a word.

Then, one guy said, "What is this? Are we in Detention?"

I did a riff: "Everybody put your heads down on your desks. I'm going to ask the person who left his booth a mess last week to come up and write his name on the board."

It got a laugh. It broke the ice. We started talking about football. When Instructor Guy showed up (he was making copies and had a paper jam), he found us all chatting amiably.

Cool. We're bonding. Sort of. After all, we all have a lot in common: We're loving welding.

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