Trying new things

In my quest in trying to find something that I am passionate about, I decided to take my sisters boyfriend, Zack,  up on his offer to teach me about welding.  I've always been fascinated with metal work.  I love shows like Monster Garage and American Chopper, well back when American Chopper was about building bikes and not family drama. 

My father is a pretty good handyman.  He has all sorts of power tools, but most of those are for wood working.  He's okay at it, can build something functional and it looks nice enough.  It won't win any awards for style, but it'll be solid and usefull.  Over the years I've helped him and think I have a decent understanding of how to build stuff with wood.  Again, nothing fancy, I'm not looking to build something that could be a piece of art, just a set of shelves.  But I've never really worked with metal. 

My future mother in law asked me last night why I loved metal working.  I couldn't come up with a really good answer and just replied "because it's cool."  While she stared at me blankly, I think most guys, and some women, would understand.  There is just something about taking a hunk of metal and turning it into something useful, beautiful, loud, or dangerous.  The same can be said of wood, but I just get more excited with metal.

So this takes me back to Zacks invitation.  He was installing some metal doors on his garage and asked me for help.  He said he would show me how to weld and we could hang the doors.  I was actually giddy that morning thinking about what I would learn.  So I threw the Fiance into the car and off we went.  I got her to come along under the pretense that my sister would take her with her to a kickboxing class.  Little did she know that it was taught by a uber militaristic neo nazi.  I think she would have hit me had she been able to lift her arms afterwards.  But I digress.

I learned that there are three major types of welding.  TIG, MIG, and ARC.  Tungsten Inert Gas, Metal Inert Gas, and... well ARC.  I'm not sure if that stands for anything or just the arc of the electricity, Zack didn't know either.  I also learned that the guys you see on these shows who do it for a living are REALLY REALLY good.  They make it look sooooo easy.  It seems the trick is getting the tungsten electrode close enough to the metal to make it hot without touching the metal.  Sound easy?  It isn't.  First of all, depth perception is pretty hard when you are wearing one of the masks, secondly it really is a fine line between too close and too far.  After a few tries with the TIG welder I felt this might be an skill I just didn't have in me.  I know, I know I gave up to easily.  But, then Zack suggested I try the ARC welder because it's a little easier, just not as neat.   So I gave it a go.  I was horrible at it....and loved every minute.  Sparks were flying everywhere, there were hissing and bubbling sounds as the metal heated up, it was freaking awesome.  I resisted the urge to whip off my mask and grunt like Tim Allen.  Again the trick is the distance between the rod thingy and the metal.  To far and you get no spark, to close and they stick together.  But towards the end there I got my "roll of quarters".  Which is how a weld is supposed to look.  This gave me new confidence to try the TIG welder again.  This time I bent my head more and got closer to the metal.  It was infinitely easier to see the metal pooling and where I needed to add the other metal stick thingy.  Yes I know these technical terms amaze you.  I still sucked at it, but I felt much better about my sucking and knew it was something I could improve on with practice.

In the end I successfully welded two pieces of scrap metal together and couldn't have been more pleased with myself.  I took the Slag Hammer, and knocked off the...well...slag.  After that I grabbed a steel brush and got all the gunk off of my scrap.  I was proud of my little piece of junk and decided it'll be a paper weight. 

In the end it looks like two pieces of metal stuck together with shiny glue of which I used way too much.  But I love it.  One might even say I've become passionate about it.