A quick foray into welding
P and I took a three hour intro welding workshop at the School of Visual Philosophy in San Jose. P is interested in metal sculpture and I tagged along to try something new.
I've seen welds but had no idea how they were formed. I didn't realize the process would involve so many sparks! After the first demo, I knew it wasn't for me...
First, we cut the metal into smaller pieces so we'd have material to practice with. P went with the angle grinder — and I stuck with the saw since the sparks were directed away from my body. My arm is stretched out as far as it will go!
Afterwards, I had massive burrs on my pieces that I had to sand down. They're on my glove because they were hot super hot and took a long time to cool down.
This is me doing a terrible job with flux core welding. Apparently MIG was a lot easier and TIG was a lot harder, but I didn't try either of those. The helmet was pretty cool — the viewing area automatically darkened whenever it sensed bright light.
Our finished projects. Mine looks like a pop rocks explosion. P's has the nice MIG weld on the left side.
