So today I had the amazing opportunity to go over to a friend's house with a group of boys and learn how to weld on their welders. When we got there, they briefed us on general safety and how to operate the machines. They had: - a flux core welder, which is a welder with the flux and the actual weld in one wire. You can use that one for rusty pieces of metal, in the wind, and stuff. - MIG, it just pushes through a regular wire, and it uses a tank of argon as the flux, so it's a gas welder. - Stick welding, which is different because instead of pushing a wire through the nozzle of the welder, it just has one big stick that you attach to the welder. As you weld, the stick gets shorter, and it's just a metal rod wrapped in flux. You have to move the welder closer in as it burns because it burns away the wire. Stick is way harder to learn and use than any of the other two, so I personally never tried this deck welder. I use the flux core and the MIG welder. The flux core was relatively easy to use, but it was hard for me to get consistently good welds on it, just because it doesn't burn as hot or as clearly as the MIG welder, which is the one that I got all of my good welds on. Apparently, I'm pretty naturally good at welding because,e compared to all of my friends and even one of them who has been doing it for a while, my welds are very good. I spent most of my time on the MIG welder. What we were welding were coupons, which are pieces of metal with another piece stacked in the middle at a 90-degree angle, so you have two flat pieces of metal to weld. Some of the other boys also welded horseshoes that they had there into various shapes, like cup holders, bowls, and stuff. We also had a guest, one of their friends, who came down, who was a teacher and the founder of a workshop in a trade school. He came down and talked about jobs in the trades and how, even with all the new technology around, we're still going to need construction workers and craftsmen and tradesmen. That was really cool. Anyways, it was incredibly fun to weld, and I had a great time. I think I'm going to be pretty good at it and be able to do a lot of stuff with it.
