There is a cinderblock building on the property where I keep all of my welding gear and tools and weight training equipment and some boxing stuff. There used to be two welding tables out there. The older of the two was my first steel project from years back. I took time making sure that my cuts were straight, and my welds were deep. It wasn’t perfect but I was proud of it. I still am. The second table I made from some plate steel and square tubing that I had laying around a couple winters ago. I was in a hurry, and I didn’t build it with material that was thick enough to do the two things that it was supposed to do; be flat and hold still. I dismantled this table and robbed it for parts. I figured I could combine the materials of the good old table and the bad new table, and make one great table. That’s what I did, and that’s what I have now. The caster wheels roll well, the top is flat, and the whole thing sits a little higher than the last one. I made a small shelf below the main tabletop which supports the welding machine. Beside this shelf, there is a tank holder; just a little steel box with high sides. The tank holder is there to keep the Argon/C02 tank close to the welding machine. Now when something needs to be repaired or created, it will be done where I need it to be. I could roll the whole unit outside for repairs on an old piece of equipment that doesn’t fit in the small building. I could roll the unit over to the corner where I have a squat rack and a pull-up bar. I just added some more piping to the squat rack so that I can do bar-dips. I’m still a little sore from those. The whole thing almost seems too convenient to be true at this point. No more carrying welding machines and tanks around from task to task.
For a long time I used these composite cutoff disks, and I still do from time to time despite having acquired a bandsaw. The cutoff disks are totally carcinogenic, I think. They fall apart the whole time that they are in use and the angle-grinder throws particles everywhere. Ounces of abrasive dust are swept and vacuumed off the floor after a project, and when I am in the shower I can see the water that runs off of my body is darker than the water that runs out of the shower head. My wife hugs me and says that I smell like metal and smoke. Those are two of my favorite things so I smile inside. This work is complicated. Everything is heavy and seems to want to fall over. There are cords and hoses and lines attached to everything else. The welding leads are tangled together, the tank sits precariously no matter how well it is supported. It is tall and made of thick steel. It has a delicate regulator screwed into its main valve body which reduces the tank pressure to the desired line pressure. I cringe at the thought of this thing tipping over and landing funny. It wouldn’t be funny. All that pressure trapped inside such a small area with one central weak point at the top where the plastic valve handle rattles and I can see teflon tape peaking out beneath the threaded male brass fitting. I turn my head when I open the valve. The mixed gas runs through a rubber hose and into the welding machine where it is rerouted down the welding lead and leaked out at low pressure in an invisible field around the contact tip. This mixed gas shields the welding wire in its molten state, preventing it from oxidizing and becoming ugly and ineffective. What remains after the trigger is returned to battery and the mask is lifted is a shiny caterpillar of steel. Like stacking dimes, they say. Others say it is like sewing with fire. Both similes satisfy men when they say it or hear it. I noticed something yesterday though and it troubles me. I am rushing my cutting and my fitting and all I can do is think of stories that I want to write. I don’t know how to get to them. I start to forget the numbers that I am trying to remember when I walk over to make a cut at the bandsaw. I start to knowingly compromise some of the fitting that needs to be precise if this project is going to turn out. A 45 degree cut on a piece of square tubing is cut closer to 43 degrees which is impossible to see until it is put up against a square. I notice the discrepancy and keep cutting. Close enough. These little compromises translate directly to chairs that rock slightly on flat ground, window frames that don’t quite fit the way they were measured to, farm equipment that drags funny, trailer tires that wear unevenly, and welding tables that don’t sit flat or hold still. Precise measuring, cutting, fitting, and weld execution should be ironclad principles of steelwork, but they have taken a lower position in a short list of important things.
I remember learning how to weld in the metal shop of a local junior college. We started off as a class by learning the fundamental parts of the process and the equipment. A welder is just a big electrical inverter that takes excited electrons at a certain voltage and then amplifies them to the point at which they are excited enough to melt small diameter steel into other steel. The standard stick machine can be adjusted for polarity and amperage and I learned on a Lincoln AC/DC arc welder. We sat in old bleacher style aluminum benches while the instructor lectured us about the various types of welding there were in the wide world of metal work. He paced the shop floor with the rhythm of a man who was tired of teaching certain parts of the course material. He maintained enough interest in the potential for his students to become proficient welders, and he carried on. His fire retardant blue shirt was dirty, with too many pockets and too many pens in them. On occasion he would drift into territories of more interesting content. Did you know that LASER is an acronym? Light amplified through a simulated emission of radiation. Do you know what a BLEVE is? Boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion, another acronym. It’s when a liquid reaches the point of boiling within a closed container and explodes due to overwhelming pressure. We watched some videos of train cars full of fuel reaching the point of BLEVE. eventually he drifted back into the actual course material, and started assigning us to the machines and the metal.
This whole attempt to write is similar to learning how to weld. I’m just sticking stuff together and it feels good, like I did something that needed to be done. It is the sensation of creating something out of some other less complex things. This material has just sat its whole life until someone came along and decided to work with it and see what potential it held. What a strange thing indeed it is to watch metal become shaped differently at your own hand. The stuff gets so hot that the metal you are running the electricity through and the metals that you are joining are all the same piece after the welding is done. You can grind down a welded joint so far that it is chemically indistinguishable from the two pieces of joined metal. Right now all of this typing is just like class laboratory time where we took scraps and learned how the steel behaves when it is heated, and in what order to perform certain steps of preparing a joint-to-be-welded, and how to properly clean up a work site after a project. We learned some lazy tricks that we were told not to make habits, and learned the consequences of doing things incorrectly. Our instructor would hold up a small ingot and look at the beads that we were practicing and tell us that we are moving too quickly, or we needed to adjust our amperage. He would tell us to grind it down and start over. He told us to repeat the process until it would pass inspection. He would tell us not to get in a hurry and to recall our notes from the lecture. All of the information was there if we paid close attention and wrote down the important things. Now I’m trying to get back into something like that again, so I have been sticking words together every day. Grinding them down and re-sticking them until they stick correctly. I know when I am moving too fast, and I know that the process is becoming more effective, slowly. But there is some truth that is painful to know. You do everything that you can in an honest effort to get better and the learning process will still take more time than you wished it would. It can’t be rushed, cheated, expedited, or cut short. It won’t hold up, and the words– just like the steel– won’t stick. After it is all done, there will be a result that you may not want to look at, but it is one of your first, and you made it. You worked hard to make it happen and it isn’t very good. Not yet. So slow down, don’t get in a hurry, grind that one down, and try again.
