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Don’t let that be a brake on your enjoyment though. I always liked cars and I do have an affinity for tinkering. But I didn’t know anything about fabrication. I got me a welder and many YouTube videos and hours later I was making stainless exhausts. It was a very enjoyable experience. Just stumbling through is most of the fun.



Awesome. I usually have luck with things like this, but seem to have no gift for welding. I could never get a clean bead from my cheap welder, and ended up even taking a community college welding class... the instructor could lay a clean bead with my welder, but I couldn't and eventually decided to just pay professionals to weld for me when my hobbies require it. I still can't tell what I was doing wrong. I even made an exhaust system for my car, but the welds were so bad it leaked a lot.

Nowadays, I'll set everything up, cut/buy the metal, etc. and usually for under $100 have someone come over and do the actual welding for me.


That’s how I felt at first. I got started with a tig. I guess the advantage I had was that I had seen someone really good weld with a tig many times so I kinda knew what it should look like both result and motion wise, but they never taught me any settings, technique or anything at all otherwise.

Keeping the tungsten from touching the bead is harder than it looks.

The thing with welding is that it doesn’t give you any time to figure things out in the moment. Sort of like tennis in that way. You hit it wrong and you gotta go get the ball. Start wrong with welding and gotta get the angle grinder and restart.




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