[entity-unknown]

Alright so I've done every Amp range +/- 10 and I absolutely can not get a shiny piece IF I'm running a straight bead on this Home Depot steel I bought. My range is 80-160 but around 110 seemed to be the closest for shiny.... Now if I run 140 Amps on this 1/8ga steel for a lap joint, I get an amazing beautiful color. Catch is I'm not using rod. I'm really starting to think my "Blue Demon ER70S2" rod is screwing me on those beautiful colors. That's cool honestly.

So I've done three lap joints now and with each one I can bend the piece all the way to the opposite side without a break. Before I get there though, I've got this very beautiful blue hue to my laps without filler. Without the filler yes I can bend the parts in a 180 degree bend and I have no complete break but it's about to give. With 3 attempts I had consistent blue giant star blue coloring across my welds without ever using filler.

Once I used the Blue Demon filler using the same 140 Amps I had used for every lap joint, I got immediate dull grey. Now granted I could kick it up but when I tried to break the joint, I seriously bent the crap out of the metal using my heavy vice grips and a Home Depot pipe wrench with multi-set angle adjustment (VERY heavy duty). I was able to break the two welds with these tools but it took a full 180 degree bend (no filler) and then a back bend which finally broke the weld.

Using the filler rod with the dull finish, I can't really break this thing. Sure I can with heavy manipulation and back/forwards force but I've got a series of pics that corroborates my whole story. I'll do my digi-dude process and put all that together but before I even go that route, should I really just expect this Blue Demon filler to give me dull, but exceptionally strong results? I bent the shit out of this plate (I've got a whole series of pix) and without some serious pull, I will not break this filler lap joint no matter the machine, vice, brake press, etc.

[exnailpounder]

You are overthinking it again. Now is not the time to be worrying about shiny bright welds. Now is the time to get your technique down. Myself and others have been showing you our welds so you can compare end results, not get obsessed about getting cool colors or shiny beads. You're putting the cart in front of the horse again. Rest assured, not all of your beads will be shiny or even pretty for that matter. It's easy to get great results when you are working at a bench and are in a perfect position and you are all comfy but wait until you have to climb into a piece of machinery or reach way into something while kneeling and using your knee to control the pedal or squeezing the pedal like a ThighMaster. All of your welds will not be pretty nor are anyone elses. Striving for perfection is commendable but often not possible. I am sure the other guys will agree with me on that. Learn how to tig weld first and you will make the same welds everyone else does...good, bad and ugly...it's the way it is.

[MinnesotaDave]

You are overthinking it again. Now is not the time to be worrying about shiny bright welds. Now is the time to get your technique down. Myself and others have been showing you our welds so you can compare end results, not get obsessed about getting cool colors or shiny beads. You're putting the cart in front of the horse again. Rest assured, not all of your beads will be shiny or even pretty for that matter. It's easy to get great results when you are working at a bench and are in a perfect position and you are all comfy but wait until you have to climb into a piece of machinery or reach way into something while kneeling and using your knee to control the pedal or squeezing the pedal like a ThighMaster. All of your welds will not be pretty nor are anyone elses. Striving for perfection is commendable but often not possible. I am sure the other guys will agree with me on that. Learn how to tig weld first and you will make the same welds everyone else does...good, bad and ugly...it's the way it is.

^^^^^this^^^^^

[entity-unknown]

Thanks man! I'm not too worried about the color at all now honestly. The comments about no one makes all perfect welds is very inspiring actually. I suppose I should consider the fact that most welds shown in videos and training are so fancy is because they're showing their best ones.... After those 3 lap joints I actually gained confidence and said F' the color for those basic beads. What's a bead on a plate ever going to do for me anyways? Unless I'm building up something
As far as I'm concerned, if I can make a decent lap joint especially without filler, and not to mention I got some beautiful blues out of it, I have now taken my first real step to becoming a TIG'ger. The one lap joint with filler which was the same joint I broke apart twice, looked very nice, very even and only the stop/restart I made was apparent. I'm definitely very happy with how last night went even if I was drinking
My girl is with her dad in CA doing a Jeep trail and I'm not a bar guy so I'm using all this time to learn as much and as fast as I can. She likes me welding but we still enjoy as much time together as possible

So fear not, I've got this! I'll do some more practice and then I'll post some pix again. Thanks guys for all your awesome support and commitment to pushing/beating me into the right mind set
P.S. 130 Amps seems to be working the best for me on my beads and my travel speed and the 140 worked great for the lap joints. I can't cope with the slow 120 Amp speed on this 1/8. A pretty sharp not so blunt electrode seems to be the ticket too.

[entity-unknown]

Well I figured out how to get color at least more often than never. It was the filler rod too! I used a scotchbrite pad lightly on the filler rods before I used them and it made a fairly noticeable difference. I also went back to pulsing the pedal on the steel and my beads are looking ripply again too.

I did a few lap joints still pulsing the pedal which seems to be very helpful all around. Turned out good enough for me since they're my first. Had a few inside/outside corner joints as well which were generally satisfactory to me as well. There really is a comforting difference between running beads and joining metal as you called it nailer! I'm still liking my 130 to 140 Amps especially with pulsing the pedal. 120 does the job, but I'll stick with what I'm feelin.

Poland's suggestion on breaking the welds was a fun step too. Basically do one lap, not both sides, snap, look, and re-weld! That only worked with autogenous though. When using the filler, the weld wasn't breakable with a heavy wrench and vice grips. Bent the crap out of it, then flattened it mostly out on the shop press for more laps! The weld was strong enough that I'd need real force like a chisel and a 4+lbs hammer to separate or perhaps a shop press and chisel. It was a real weld!

Did an aluminum outside corner joint which turned out good enough for my first minus the lovely hole I burned at the end. I also learned what happens when you forget to switch back to AC from DC. More holes! I did fill those in with the AC pass at least minus that last hole. There wasnpenetration on the other side but it wasn't pretty but eh, I think it was a great start!

Now I'm having real fun and that's all that matters

So these are a few pix from the recent endeavors. I took more but these will be good enough for here. I'm really looking forward to reading this thread in like a year to see the then vs. now. I'm sure I'll have a few laughs and who knows maybe I'll re-learn something too! I think I'm generally good for now to figure out the rest but when I reach some more significant mile stones I'll probably post an update.

Thank you Jody for making this site available, I wouldn't be "this far" without it nor without all the awesome advice I've gotten from videos and members! Don't worry I'll be buyin more stuff

[exnailpounder]

They are starting to look like welds! Your travel speed will have a lot to do with the color that you get but remember....you are working on technique and not color right? When you get into higher amperages, you won't get any color for the simple fact that lower amps and faster travel speeds introduce less heat into the base metal and higher amps introduce much more heat so don't chase your tail too much on this. The ultimate result you are looking for is simply NOT cooking your base metal. The number one reason (among others)for cooking base metal is too low of amperage and waiting for a puddle which, in turn, heat soaks your piece. I bet you can see this getting simpler, can't you? Mild steel is very forgiving of mistakes and is the best thing to practice with so that when you turn to other metals that aren't as tolerant of mistakes you won't fall apart. There is a reason that welding schools all start students out on mild steel.
I am glad you said you are having fun because you should be. Some people get the notion that they need to get really good at tig...especially tig aluminum...and the world will beat a path to their door..you will be disappointed. I am pretty decent at aluminum and get very little work coome in for it. I do alot of stainless work on kegs and such for homebrewers so you need to find niches like that to be able to make a few bucks to support you new addiction..lol. You will find that in every day work, you will most likely NOT use tig and use a simpler process. Day to day I mostly mig but when word gets out to a specialty group like homebrewers that there is a guy that can weld on their kegs...you get the point right? So in order to pick up a few bucks, and the self-satisfaction of being able to do specialty work, you need to have the ability and knowledge to do it so thats why I am riding your ass on pedal control and amperage and travel speed. When you get those things you will be able to light up on anything with confidence. Even if something comes along that is a first time for you, you at least have the skills to not destroy a workpiece because you can control your foot. There is much more to tig welding that what we discuss here but you need to start at the right place. I still go back and watch Jodys videos and I have been at it for awhile and I STILL see things in his videos that I missed the first time because I was overlooking them in the quest to get to "tig welder" status. You will look back at all this one day and laugh and a year from now you will be here giving tips and advice to other noobs and wonder why they don't listen sometimes

[entity-unknown]

Yeah don't worry I'm not stuck on color Considering it's a point of heat measurement I knew I should at least see something at least ONCE rather than the very dull, baked look or the random debris n crap I see without dipping/stabbing I still had to control that all as well but if I'm swapping between basically every Amp up and below the range and I get nothing I'm thinkin there's gotta be something else.

So it was the light scotchbrite to the filler rod that did the trick for the color. There's more to it such as travel speed, pulsing the pedal, dinkin with the Amps, and just generally improving nor do I get any color or neat colors each time. It was just also discouraging seeing what looks like crap being deposited into a lot of my beads yet I've got a fresh shiny plate to work with and I never dipped/stabbed the tungsten.

I'm still on my 1lb cases of my ER70S2 and ER4043 Blue Demons which came in their own plastic cylinder case that unscrews. Well when it was delivered the shipping box was crushed all over, with a huge hole in the bottom of the box. The 4043 case just fell out when I was handed the box and some of the filler fell out too. The plastic cases were all broken and yeah, just a really bad moment in shipping. This introduced some of the packaging/paper dust into the containers and while they look all shiny when I use them, I think it's clear that I should have been cleaning them before. I also see some guys do this hear with stainless mostly, but after a bunch more watching videos, it sounds like a common thing people do in general.

I never thought about it till now but perhaps some of my peppering on the aluminum was related to this as well so maybe I should be lighting sanding the 4043 too.... TBD but I think going forward just like the rest of the process, you need to clean your filler too so this wasn't chasing my tail, I think it was a worthy side road

Now I'll really be working with 100% clean everything, then there will be nothing left for me to question or improve upon except the actual skills i.e. WTF does it look like I dipped/stabbed my tungsten or have a dirty part when I did none of those!!!!????? Well, it's the Three C Rules of TIG, clean, Clean, CLEAN!

[exnailpounder]

You can weld mild steel with 309l and it will give you some nice colors. I only clean 4043 aluminum filler wire, might have to try cleaning my wire but I have never noticed any problem.

[GreinTime]

Question. How long is it taking you to run the beads in post 37?

The only reason I bring it up is that while your heat affected zone is even, it is huge. If you compare it to the stringer on post 38, it is multiple times larger on the same material.

Bumping the amps up, which everyone is suggesting, allows you to move faster because you have more heat on tap to get the process started, and then keep it flowing smoothly. If you weld at the same speed, you're just pouring more and more heat into it.

You can run stringers on a piece of 0.125 steel at 50A. Making a puddle on a single piece where you're not worried about penetration takes little amperage. You won't see someone welding a joint with a piece of 0.750 wall Boiler tube or plate in one pass at 750a. They'll do multiple passes at 110-150 amps, or whatever they feel comfortable with, and more importantly, whatever they can get away with.

Moral of the story: Move as fast as you can maintain good control of the puddle. If you find yourself smashing the pedal down to remelt the puddle, you moved too far, and didn't let the puddle do the work. Some of your later posts show some ripples in the bead that are pointy, and look like <<< . This is what I'm talking about with moving too fast. If the puddle becomes too watery, and doesn't want to "stay" where you're pointing, back off the amps a little bit.

Also, I see you had mentioned 2T with no slope at some point. Using a foot pedal, the machine disregards input from the microswitch after the arc is established, and goes by feedback from the potentiometer in the foot pedal. If memory serves correct, Everlast recommends turning it down to 0 on their machines, but i could be wrong on that, I haven't read my manual in a while.

Keep asking questions and more importantly, keep practicing. My welds have improved 10 fold since TIG welding full time at the beginning of July.






Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[entity-unknown]

Hey Nailer! The 309LSi just came in. I thought I got 309L but guess I got the Silicon one. Box says it's a better look? I'll give it a shot and see what happens

Hey GreinTime! Very nice consistent patterns! Definitely some quality work! Is that aluminum for the 1st and 3rd then steel for the 2nd? I figure in time I'll be doing something reasonably similar, maybe...

I don't see post numbers but there's only one post with pix in the 30s so I think I see the posts you're asking about. I'd guess I was running at about 1" @ 5-8seconds. I definitely was not doing well for those. Those were all pedal to the floor too.
As for 2T, That's what I have with a pedal for everything I've done. I've never messed with any slope or pulse yet and have all the 2T/4T settings at zero per the manual which you are correct about because if you have them set, you'll get some very weird behavior and I think I observed that when I first tried alumimnum because I forgot to change those till later in the day.

Since then I've stuck with 1/8 vs. the 16ga sheet you're referencing and have been having more decent results playing between 120-140. I think for basic beads I was finding about 130 with pulsing the pedal to work pretty well for me. For the lap joints I've used 140 Amps for all of the steel.

I did a few more beads on the same 16ga steel plate as well I believe at 110-120 Amps with pulsing the pedal and have ripply beads and a couple with nice color. The pattern is not completely consistent but that's due to inconsistent travel speed/pedal control mostly. The heat pattern goes out only about 3-4 inches now so definitely more improved and the pulse seems to be the biggest helper since everything else was run with pedal to the floor just to learn what to expect with that which is an ever expanding heat pattern vs. a nice one that's even the whole run. Cranking to 160 and doing the same pedal to the floor was the cause for the boomerangs.

I did 2 inside and outside corner joints with aluminum yesterday which went alright. These are my first aluminums and they were good pieces vs. the 1 steel corner joint I did which were from my bead plates so there was no way they were getting a good fit and had a bunch of crap to work around. Trying to act as if I'm in the real world I wanted to see what a bad fit up would turn out like as is and I didn't want to grind/cut 'em for a nicer fit.

I was at 140 then 130 Amps which seems too much because of the grainy patterns. I wasn't doing very good at the pedal either so this was most of the issue. Not doin so well with that puddle/pedal control but it is welded! Need to drop the pedal mashin habit and ramp up rather than ramp down..... I also have a 2nd pass on each inside joint, and you can see where I tried to build up around the keyholes I popped thru at the ends. The 2nd passes were done more like a weave so I could joint both sides in a single pass. There's several stops/starts in all of the runs too mostly because I felt I was losing control of the puddle so might as well stop and two tungsten dips.

[maker of things]

I might have missed something jumping in so late, but your amps seem high for the material. When I was getting started I tended to really crank the heat as I expected to be moving along like a mig weld. Tig can afford you the time to move slower and really watch the puddle. Keep going at it, the more you weld the easier it gets.

On that aluminum it looks like your profanity might be set too low. If your machine does not have that feature, you may need to add it manually.

[Drunken Moose]

I'm a little late and didn't read the in-between pages. Still a noob, but my best suggestion is just keep practicing and playing with settings and technique. Some before and after pics of my stuff show what practice does, check here:

http://forum.weldingtipsandtricks.com/v ... 628#p78628

Good luck!

[entity-unknown]

I've been dropping the Amps and practicing different things. I'm basing my "goal Amps" to be a near instant puddle with steel and about a 2-3 second puddle for aluminum.
I've continued doing joints rather than beads and the results are significantly more pleasing to me. I've been more consistent with the bead/weld profiles than just beads alone. I do find with aluminum things can go south very quickly if you keep the same Amps using the same pulse all the way through. This is just manual though so I would not put it past user error i.e. if I setup some pulse params on the unit and let it do pulse automatically, it might handle it much better than I am.
I'm thinking some auto pulse is in my near future just to see the difference between what a 100% consistent process looks like for me vs. 100% manual process. Should help dial me in

Either way yes this is still all fun and I'm learning a lot! I'm making true welds now but quality, consistency, and the capability of the operator are all questionable i.e. I am not a welder, just a guy who made some practice welds after a crap load of bird turds and a bumpy road of stringers

Moose! That first pic is exactly where I just was a few days ago! I've gotten better with the stringers but my joints are not where you're at. In time, I know

[maker of things]

I would expect to end on lower amps than start with aluminum. Usually it takes way more amps than you would think to make the puddle quickly, then almost immediately you will be able to back off the pedal, and probably even more as the bead progresses and the aluminum warms up. Usually when I had the problem of starting a bead on aluminum where the whole puddle suddenly liquefied and fell out it was due to not enough amps.

I like Jody's idea of setting the pulse to 1 per second to help train timing on adding filler to the puddle. Kind of works like a metronome to help you maintain an even pace and reduce one variable to keep track of. Alternately you could actually use a metronome or app of a metronome to give you audible cues as well. fieldres on youtube demonstrates doing a weave to metronome.

[Drunken Moose]

Entity, you will probably find that all of a sudden something just "clicks". That's the way it was for me anyways.

I like the idea of the pulse for timing, or a metronome. For me, having an extensive background in music, I would pick songs that maintained the tempo I needed. I did get some odd looks at school when some would come to my booth and hear me humming "The Log Drivers Waltz" (probably have to be Canadian to understand that song). Or "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". Or whatever I needed. Had a few curse me because they would have a song stuck in their head for the rest of the day lol.

I have yet to really do any aluminum, but I suspect it's going to get away from me a few times. I see some cussing in my future . . always seems to help for some reason lol.

[MosquitoMoto]

Entity, you will probably find that all of a sudden something just "clicks". That's the way it was for me anyways.

I like the idea of the pulse for timing, or a metronome. For me, having an extensive background in music, I would pick songs that maintained the tempo I needed. I did get some odd looks at school when some would come to my booth and hear me humming "The Log Drivers Waltz" (probably have to be Canadian to understand that song). Or "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". Or whatever I needed. Had a few curse me because they would have a song stuck in their head for the rest of the day lol.

I have yet to really do any aluminum, but I suspect it's going to get away from me a few times. I see some cussing in my future . . always seems to help for some reason lol.

I hear you on the music/metronome thing, DM.

I switched to pulse at one stage (often 1 pulse per second) while welding aluminium and found that it gave me robot-like spacing of my ripples (by my standards). But it felt like cheating, so I went back to manual, often with the radio on. Shortly thereafter I discovered that my ripples were always more even when there was a song playing that had a nice 'tick-tock' that I could time my welding to.

Nowadays I'm trying to just gently tap my left foot...


Kym

[entity-unknown]

I finally got one perfectly consistent bead on my aluminum last night! Not the best start or stop but everything between was perfectly even. I've dropped to 110 Amps for max and still using the foot pedal for the 1/8. My joints are going very well and look pretty for the most part and I'm running 120 for those. The 110 vs. 120 on a basic bead does pool in about 2-4 seconds for the 110 and about 2-3 seconds for the 120. The big difference there is controlling the pedal becomes more difficult to satisfy tapering off amps since the range between the potentiometer points is a lot larger than the range when you're at a lower amp i.e. more control. Now could a better pedal vs. my Everlast basic 22k Ohm (I think?) one that came with the unit help out a lot more when doing this? Probably...

I noticed in the beginning and now I'm feeling for it, that I need to quickly ramp the pedal to full floor but still ramp not mash, and a lil pool will start. Still not ready though! I let it expand to the size I'm wanting and then start feeding and traveling pulsing the whole way. With about every 1/2 inch I find I have to continue dropping the pulse I'm applying till I'm around maybe half pedal for my fill and about 1/3 to 1/4 for my travel. The best bead profile I got involved backing up the torch a bit too as Jody suggests. This helped a lot and seems to avoid most chances of dipping or stabbing your tungsten. I don't think it's any simpler though if not more complex vs. Jody saying it's easier since you're only doing one thing at a time. YMMV I suppose applies here too.

Still learning but with all the suggestions what I've experienced so far seems about what I should expect and how I should be treating this.
I'm still against using the machines pulse settings but I'm also the guy who puts every game on the hardest level and will die a 100 times till I get it right. Only difference here is there really isn't a reset button, grinding just gets you close

I do listen to music a lot and subconsciously I think I use it for some timing too. My music has erratic patterns so having to roll back to some Elton John might be necessary I hope not though and really might give the metronome a shot or just find some tracks I got with a calmer, more steady flow of rhythm. If I told you the music I listen to and if you looked at most of my beads you'd probably blame my music for the bead "rhythm"
P.S. It is NOT dubstep

[exnailpounder]

I finally got one perfectly consistent bead on my aluminum last night! Not the best start or stop but everything between was perfectly even. I've dropped to 110 Amps for max and still using the foot pedal for the 1/8. My joints are going very well and look pretty for the most part and I'm running 120 for those. The 110 vs. 120 on a basic bead does pool in about 2-4 seconds for the 110 and about 2-3 seconds for the 120. The big difference there is controlling the pedal becomes more difficult to satisfy tapering off amps since the range between the potentiometer points is a lot larger than the range when you're at a lower amp i.e. more control. Now could a better pedal vs. my Everlast basic 22k Ohm (I think?) one that came with the unit help out a lot more when doing this? Probably...

I noticed in the beginning and now I'm feeling for it, that I need to quickly ramp the pedal to full floor but still ramp not mash, and a lil pool will start. Still not ready though! I let it expand to the size I'm wanting and then start feeding and traveling pulsing the whole way. With about every 1/2 inch I find I have to continue dropping the pulse I'm applying till I'm around maybe half pedal for my fill and about 1/3 to 1/4 for my travel. The best bead profile I got involved backing up the torch a bit too as Jody suggests. This helped a lot and seems to avoid most chances of dipping or stabbing your tungsten. I don't think it's any simpler though if not more complex vs. Jody saying it's easier since you're only doing one thing at a time. YMMV I suppose applies here too.

Still learning but with all the suggestions what I've experienced so far seems about what I should expect and how I should be treating this.
I'm still against using the machines pulse settings but I'm also the guy who puts every game on the hardest level and will die a 100 times till I get it right. Only difference here is there really isn't a reset button, grinding just gets you close

I do listen to music a lot and subconsciously I think I use it for some timing too. My music has erratic patterns so having to roll back to some Elton John might be necessary I hope not though and really might give the metronome a shot or just find some tracks I got with a calmer, more steady flow of rhythm. If I told you the music I listen to and if you looked at most of my beads you'd probably blame my music for the bead "rhythm"
P.S. It is NOT dubstep

Pics or it didn't happen

[entity-unknown]

Ha ok fine!
I'm in AZ so it's about 101F today but it was 110F yesterday. I'm really thinking about a 10 degree difference is making about a 1-2 second lag on my puddle. Part art of is how hot the part is too but I'm seeing this on my first start with the part cooled to ambient temp. If it's over 200F everything I do looks baked. If I let it cool around 160F I can get a shiny bead running 110 Amps and I can get a puddle in 3 seconds or less.
If it's around 100F ambient and it's my first start 110A does not make a puddle till probably 5 seconds and even then it's barely formed so I just stop. If I kick it up to 120A or just started with that I can get a puddle in 3 seconds or less. When it was 110F yesterday and the day before, I can use 110A and I did get a puddle in about 3 seconds. If it's any cooler though it seems I need 120A. Again, once I get the part heated up running 110A is a good go to with several shiny beads i.e. less often baked. 120A I'm usually getting a baked bead almost always. Not so true with the joints though. So I'm almost thinking if it's 100F or below outside and it's my first start, I should run 120A for maybe 2 seconds then stop. Switch to 110A and start again (I'm hoping no cleanup??) and then maybe I'll get a puddle in good time.
Only reason I'm not wanting to stick with 120A is there's a blatant difference to the arc/heat when say at exactly 50% pedal and moving to 80% vs. using 110A. Really considering getting a different pedal too since the basic one feels more like a clutch pedal than a brake/gas pedal.

In all of these scenarios I'm starting out with a ramping heavy foot on the pedal all the way to the floor until I get a puddle then I start pulsing with about 1/2 then 3/4 or 4/5 pedal and startin feedin n traveling. As I travel it's about 1" or 1/2" that I have to start tapering down my pedal to about 1/4 - 1/3 backing off, and about 1/2 to 3/4 on. Doing this is the only way I'm keeping the most consistent (for me) width and height. Seems to make sense since that's about what I hear everyone saying you'll learn with aluminum.

Below is that one bead that turned out pretty damn good in regards to consistency. I had a bad start and thought I was gonna lose this one but went with it. Got real happy with the overall profile and didn't give an F about the end, just wanted to stop because I saw I was about to lose control

[exnailpounder]

DANG MAN...your gettin it! Nice!

[maker of things]

Nice going. You are around that point where more goes right than wrong. That's a good feeling. Plus tig welding aluminum when it is 110f. Extra merit points to you.

[entity-unknown]

Ha thank you! 110F, I was doin it at 117F too but the mild steel at 110 was pretty brutal especially after about 2 beads. The heat rising was not fun and probably added to a lot of my haste
Yeah I think I'm gettin it with more ripply, shiny and not so bird turdy/dull roads ahead of me now

[maker of things]

Sounds like you have had it "click", and in fairly short order too. I admire your tenacitty.

Some people claim that can't handle the snow we get in Michigan, but I am just not made for that kind of heat. At least when it is cold I can just put another layer on. With the heat there is only so much you can take off!

[Poland308]

Wait till you get to work on a DA tank for a 2000 HP boiler that just got shut off. 100psi steam at 300deg f or a bit over. Then you belly up to the pipe in a room that's about 140 deg ambient.

[Drunken Moose]

I can't wait to play around with some aluminum. Need to get some scrap plate. All I have kicking around is mild steel. Your beads sure are coming along nice. Don't envy your weather though. I was running some beads last night, didn't notice how much the sweat went through my gloves and shirt...gave myself a nice jolt. I'm still trying to get used to having a pedal. Keep the pics coming, looking good!