Remember Thursday the twelveth?

              Ah the joy of the finished project.

Nothing compares with seeing your creation come to fruition. It brings you to a point where you tend to forget all those hours of detail work with the raw metal under the ol' Eco-friendly helical green light bulbs.

You tend to notice the power bill up about 30% when you put a couple of weeks of cutting, grinding, sawing, drilling and welding on your utility tab. Even more if you are of the perfectionist persuasion.
I say that in a friendly sort of way. It's OK to be a perfectionist, you got your pride involved and that's a good thing.

This quickie tool cart project came as a challenge for my self imposed two week in process policy. Yup just two weeks ago I started the working phase of this job. I finished it up last night. It seems funny you miss some little imperfections until the paint dries, like that stubborn little BB that casts a shadow in the evening sunset. You chip it loose and where does it fall? In a corner or crevice! I'm a tellin' ya, it's "Murphy's Law".

It seemed the little details bit my butt all day long on the Thursday the 12th, only to realise there is still a delivery on Friday the 13th, and due date on 9 / 11. Go figure.

Welder World?

I gotta tell ya about a pretty cool welding website that I found late last night. I was twittering my usual political views and got on the subject of a local corporation up in Oshkosh, WI who got a big government contract for building a new and improved version of a military vehicle used for transporting troops in a combat zone.
Now I'm pretty sure everyone knows that with a government contract come government standards in the process and the pay standards. The US government mandates pay standards to a union scale, but what happens when the contracting company farms out work? The company that wins the bid for the work is not mentioned in the government contract, therefore they are not tied to the pay standards, only the quality standards.
What this means to an unemployed welder with 25 years of experience like myself is that I get a call from a temp agency who has one of my resumes on file, calls me and asks if I am interested in working a job that should pay union scale wages for a whole lot less and with out any benefits either. I've worked for Oshkosh truck sub-contractors before, and it is not for the novice welder, especially when you consider our soldiers lives depend on your skills as a welder to help protect them on the battlefield. It seems to me this practice is purely profit driven.
A short time later I looked at my email, and found a follower's message that led me to Welder World.com at this link, http://welderworld.com/
As I explored the site reading a few articles I decided to share this site with my readers as well. Why? Because there is tons of good information here.
I am currently working with stainless steal on one of my jobs and I found a tips article about the use of heat sinks to help prevent the warpage that is often encountered when working with stainless steel. Good information guys.
So I would suggest that, if you have questions about the processes of welding you take a short visit to Welder World.com.