Welding!

For years, I have joked that, I don’t weld. Well, now I do. There are a few steel components on my Bede BD-4C airplane that need to be fabricated to fit my plane. The main ones in front of me now are the door frames, the rear seat frame, the brackets for the front seat, and the tail skid. I talked to several people I trust and all advised me to just hire the welding done; that for the small amount of welding required it would not be cost-effective for me to acquire good equipment and learn to use it properly. Fortunately, I have found an excellent local welder so taking this advice is easy. (Hat tip to S. S. Radiator & Welding Service in Saint Peters, MO.)

But I was stymied because all of these components are made up of several bits of metal and, for most, I need to have the first few pieces fabricated and stuck together before I can fabricate the next few pieces. The solution, I decided, was to learn to do a tiny bit of welding, just the “tack welding” to temporarily hold stuff together while I fabricate. Then I can take the tack welded components over to S. S. Radiator & Welding for final welding.

So I acquired the bare minimum equipment and set to practicing and… ta da!… here are my first two pieces of steel, tack welded together:

So what do you think? Do I need a little more practice? 🙂