1st welds with my 1st welder

[pontiac428]

This wouldn't surprise anyone who reads my posts here to learn, but I write each letter differently depending on where my pencil lands after forming the letter before it. I have a couple of versions of each letter, so they don't look the same from one word to the next. Part of it is my study of foreign languages corrupting my English, like I mentioned earlier. I call my font "prescription sans". Hey, I can read my own writing, at least!

 

[homebrewed]

When I was younger my sister and I played around with writing cursive backwards and upside down. Just because. Now, THAT makes you think about what form the letters have to be.

 

[pontiac428]

When I was younger my sister and I played around with writing cursive backwards and upside down. Just because. Now, THAT makes you think about what form the letters have to be.

In high school, I onced turned in an in-class essay written in mirror image. I was nice enough to only use one side of the page, so my teacher could hold it up to the light and read it. He accused me of rubbing it in. If I would have known then what I know now, I could have blamed it on ADHD!

 

[G-ManBart]

For starters: avoid joints (no butt, lap, tee, etc...) for now. I'd start with clean, flat steel plate; I'd shoot for 1/8-3/16" thick. Scribe some heavy lines; no hand-scribing here - use a 4" angle grinder with a cut-off wheel to cut some straight lines on the plate that you're able to actually see. Plenty of light. Get in a comfortable position, use a prop if you can, and make sure you can move the torch 4-6" in a straight line (before you start). You might want to think about moving your whole arm mostly from your shoulder instead of trying to articulate your wrist and elbow (for now). Now run some 4-6" long beads and report back with pictures, settings, etc...

This is almost exactly what I was going to write. No sense welding joints until you can get a single bead down reasonably well. I've also used soapstone to make a line to follow.

Something I haven't seen mentioned (or I missed it) is the old-school running a pad of beads. Get a piece of plate...something rectangular and maybe 1/4" thick. I think 4-6" wide and maybe 8-12" long is pretty common. You run a bead along the short end, using the end as a guide. After that you simply run beads paralleling, and partially overlapping (1/3+) the previous bead. Ideally you dunk it in water every couple of beads...even better, is to dunk it in water and have two or three pads so you can rotate from one to the next. You'll find they will curve inwards towards the beads, so some folks will run a few beads on one side, dunk it, flip to the other side and run a couple of beads there. Wash, rinse, repeat. The big thing is there's almost no prep time...have a few minutes extra, run a few beads.

I would suggest something along the lines of 20-30 minutes a day, every day, for a while rather than marathon sessions all at once. I did that when I was learning TIG aluminum and it really made a difference. It lets you practice and gives you time to think about things, and research any issues you run into along the way.

 

[paynerd]

I try to do a cursive e or an o that overlaps itself halfway through it. Not sure if that's right or not but it seems to make good lines.