Something that had been on my wish list for some time finally came to light in the form of a small flux core welder this Christmas. I have found that for the last few years there were lots of little projects (like on the trailer, the tractor and otherwise around the house) that required more than carpentry skills. Dad let me play with his old Lincoln arc welder when I was probably 12, but mostly I burned holes in things. Since most of my projects would involve materials less than 1/4″ thick, the easy choice was to go with a flux core welder (similar to mig, but no need for shielding gas).
Apparently, Kris had told mom and dad about my thoughts and they wanted to get this for me. So before they left a few days before Christmas, we had our gift exchange together… I found myself unwrapping a great little Hobart and some starter accessories. What an awesome surprise!
The week following Christmas, I finally had a chance to play with it and I really enjoyed trying something new. I had YouTube trained myself and knew many of the faults I faced going into it, so I didn’t have high expectations of my skills, but it was fun just to get the feel for it.
My first actual project involved so little welding its hardly worth mentioning, but I made a light bracket for the tractor. Next up is to add hinges to the trailer tailgate and a long list of stuff behind that.
As usual, my 4 year old helper wanted to be a part of it and see how it worked. So I bought an extra face shield so he could watch from a short distance. I can’t wait until he’s old enough to actually try some of the things I do as I’m sure he’ll be better at it than I could ever be.
