Three weeks into the welding course, and I am starting to feel good about it! I bought myself a self darkening helmet last weekend, it was on special for $100 and I couldn't resist it. I also bought an antique arcwelder (from the lady who thought she had a mig welder!), which I paid $90 for, a bit over the top, but she was quite attached to it sentimentally. It has no knobs or dials, just two terminals marked 10g and 12g. The 12g is a 90 amp output, and the 10g 140 amp output. The big one will be good for heavy plate that MIG and TIG won't do, and the light one will be good for tacking up 2ml tubing before I weld it some other way. I had a good play with it at the weekend, I found a 4ml plate used as a timing chain back plate on an 1100, and burned about 20 rods away practicing! I might try welding some 2ml tubing to see how good it is at that thickness.

The extra practice and the new mask meant that the last night of MIG welding at the poly went quite well. We were joining pieces of metal together, which I find quite hard having no sense of balance and poor eyesight. Following a line is quite difficult. But we did spend 3 hours on our own instead of in pairs, so I spent an hour or so just practicing butting a bead of weld down, at the right speed, with the correct angles etc and managed a couple of perfect runs!

Next time we do TIG welding, which I am really looking forward to. In the meantime, I think I will buy some steel and start making up some practice versions of the main joins on the car. After doing TIG, some stick welding and some cutting practice, we can revist some of the areas we have covered and try some of our own projects.