I’ve been practicing my welding over the last couple weeks.
Took a short class on it with Dad and James after Christmas. Then, I borrowed Papa’s old arc welder from the farm to practice with.
My plan was to build a little stand with a grate on it that would fit in the smoke box of my smoker and hold the hot charcoal up off the floor. Improves air flow a lot, and lets the ash fall down out of the way. Right now, I’ve got a metal grate propped up on bricks to do the job, which works just fine, but isn’t very elegant. Plus, hey, I needed a project to weld on.
Seemed like a good project. Lots of little straight short weld, lots of joints. Nothing really long, and nothing that would be really hurt if it turned out a little bit ugly, as was entirely likely.
Took four or five nights of plugging away at it after I got home from work. Those nights were spread out over several weeks, though. Stuff kept coming up. I improved rapidly at it, which is nice. About half the work took place the last night, because I had gotten so much faster and better at welding those joints. Didn’t have to re-do every weld three times. Looked a lot nicer, too. Other major factor: I’ve improved my clamping procedures considerably. Both by getting more clamps, and by being smarter in how I use them. Mostly, I’ve switched to using cheap sets of vice grips and bars of scrap steel for my clamps, instead of C-clamps. Much faster. Also, I found cheap vice grips on sale for $2 at Northern Tool and Equipment. So, I have eight sets to work with. Which makes me a lot less concerned about getting them too close to my actual welding and melting them, which makes for better clamping right there.
Only hitch in this whole project is that somehow the finished piece grew larger than my plans accounted for, and it won’t actually fit in my smoke box. So, now, it’s about to become a workbench/clamping table instead. I have a really clever idea for that.