Welding Equipment

I learned welding at shop in high school and I still have some of the things that I made in class. There was a lopsided letterbox, that was my first project, and while it wasn’t very practical and things wouldn’t stay in it and it was my first attempt at welding and I was pretty proud of it – I mean it didn’t fall apart!

There were a number of other welding pieces that I completed in the two years in the class. There was the bookshelf that holds all of my tools in the shed, my go-kart that we had to retire after a rather nasty incident on a steep hill and my favorite pieces of welding from my school days were the garden chairs that still sit in my mother’s garden and are a talking point amongst the family.

So when my wife asked me if I could do some welding for her of course I replied yes and wondered if in deed welding was like a bike and once you knew how to do it the skills always stayed with you.

Now the welding job that my wife Susie wanted done was quite a big job and I had a month to finish it. She wanted me to make a decorative front welded fence for our garden especially for a local neighborhood garden competition that was coming up, judging was in a month which is why that was my deadline for the welding.

First stop was to get the equipment I needed. I researched online exactly what I would need for the welding and write myself a list:

1. Welding hood/helmet to protect my eyes and my head;
2. Oxy Acetylene Welding Tips – a couple of different sizes as some of the work is more delicate and requires a smaller head to do the welding properly;
3. A good size welder – one on a trailer may be the go to give me the flexibility I need;
4. The actual welding materials.

Once that I knew what I wanted I searched for them online, I knew that this would not be my only welding task now that I was getting back into it and after a few days I easily found the welding equipment I needed for a very good price and I was ready to start the fence for Susie.

I had all of the welding equipment set up in the garage and Susie joined me to share her design for the front fence. Her front garden theme for this year (every year she likes to have a theme) was merry old England. She was in the process of creating an English cottage garden with pretty lavenders and roses and lots of other flowers I had never seen before but it did look pretty.

Now her idea for the front fence was to have it look like a castle wall. Not solid no but and outline with turrets and things and people looking over would see the garden inside. I smiled at Susie and nodded telling her it would be a piece of cake. But the truth is I was scared, this was a much bigger welding job than I had ever done and a month didn’t seem like much time to complete it.

I didn’t want to let Susie down so I rang Dave a good friend of mine who is a welder at his work and asked him if he could help me with the job and being the good friend that he is he said that he would be around at my house in an hour.

Dave arrived at the house a little while later, looked at Susie’s welding plan shook his head and laughed and said that it was a pretty big job. I put my saddest face on and pleaded with him to help me we couldn’t let Susie down this competition was too important to her. He looked at me and laughed again and said we had better get started then.

We worked all of that afternoon on the welding and everyday after work and on weekends for two weeks. By the end of that time we had a whole heap of welded panels that needed welding together to make the fence and we would need to do that in the front yard to the posts that we now had to install.

The posts took a couple of days digging and installing and finally we were ready to add the panels, welding them together to make the front fence. The day before the judging we had all of the welding finished and we were just about to celebrate and admire our work with a beer or two when Susie came outside with paint and paintbrushes, took the beer and said we needed to paint the fence before the next day. Dave and I tried to protest but knew that it would do no good when we saw the look on Susie’s face.

So we painted half of that night and we had only just finished adding the second coat to the welding when the judges strolled up to assess Susie’s (and our) handiwork. Just in time we were relieved and this time Susie didn’t take the beer from us when we wanted to celebrate our achievement.

She didn’t win but came second in the competition and the welding of the fence won an award for the most unusual addition to any garden that year. We were all pretty pleased and already planning the welding for next year.