657

Many, many years ago, during my university sculpture class, I spent a few weeks welding a lot.

There were a lot of options, but quite a few people in my class decided that they wanted to sculpt with metal. I made a couple of metal sculptures too, but I spent a lot of those few weeks welding up other peoples projects.

I am no expert welder. Far from it. But the studio had a stick welder, and I was one of the few student who had experience stick welding. I was sort of deputized by the professors and grad students to assist anyone who wanted to learn to weld. The result was that I did a lot of basic welding for a while. One evening there was even a line of people waiting for me to tack something up for them so that they could attempt to run a bead. At least a few of those ended in the student burning through the metal and asking me if I could fill it back in for them so the could grind it smooth again.

The end result of that time was that I got at least a little better at welding.

Then I spent literal decades not welding at all.

A few days ago, I broke one of our exercise machines. I knew it might break. In fact it had broken in that exact place before and I had roughly tacked it together with a cheap mig welder that I got at Canadian Tire.

Before this, I had never used a mig welder. I did a very poor job of it, so, of course the weld didn’t hold.

This time I was determined to actually get it right, so instead of just sort of winging it, I looked up some videos on mig welding and learned the proper techniques. Turns out it isn’t super complicated and my new welds are hundreds of times better than the old one.

I did run out of wire partway through the job, but I finally feel like I got the hang of it again.

Welding and grinding this part reminded me of something else. I really love the smell of burning metal. It’s probably horrifically toxic, but it’s a good smell.