The guy who sits next to me at work said, “You’ve got a welder haven’t you ? Could you fix a bracket on my bicycle lights ?”. I said I had (can’t hide it, I’d talked about the welding classes I took ages ago to the people in the office) and would be happy to look at the bit of bike to see what I could do. I pointed out that there were no promises, as I’d not actually used the machine yet.
What I got was a bent bracket with two cracks in the metal on the corner nearest you in the photograph. It looks like someone has tried to grab the light and twisted and split the metal. I fancied my chances so took the job on.
This morning I unearthed the welder from the depths of the garage and had a go.
My first mistake was setting the temperature too low. This resulted is hissing and spitting with lumpy weld left behind. It would probably do though so I cleaned the job up with a grinder. I wasn’t really happy with the result so I had another go. This was better but my lack of finesse with that most delicate of tools, the angle grinder had removed some good metal.
This time I upped the amperage a bit to the lowest medium setting and managed a much better result. Quite a good weld pool formed and the resulting lump was pretty smooth. I ground it down and then finished with hand tools to get the final result. Not perfect but definitely stronger than it was.
What I re-discovered was the joy of welding. I’d forgotten how much fun I had when I did my course. I also reminded myself how annoying welding masks are. Mine gradually lowers itself while you are getting ready to work and of course the window is so dark you can’t see where the torch is until you are welding. Them’s the breaks though – and if they are breaks in steel I can probably fix them !
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