Welding machines and welding stuff

[Wapiti]

Boilermaking has been a really rewarding trade for me.
Working on some massive projects, on steel 300mm thick, distortion control, hardfacing, flame case-hardening, pressure vessels, xray and UT on my work, and I made some incredible mates that were top class dudes that never took "she'll be right mate" as an excuse.
The one time I had to apply for a job was when I finished my apprenticeship at 19, after that every job I ever had was one of a list to choose from, at a time that suited me. So I cannot complain one bit, then I did a diploma in WPHS, did the engineering and welding supervisor courses, even paint and blasting inspection because I just loved making stuff and understanding how things work.
One trade was enough for me, staying on the tools in such a heavy game just wears you out into an early retirement, and how do you afford that? that's why I did the seat-warmer stuff but there wasn't much time for that. Flying all over China and Thailand, setting up workshops, working as a fabrication and welding inspector, looking at how other countries tick. Shot at, threatened with death by bikies, told personally by John Setka that he was going to teach me a lesson in CFMEU negotiation skills. The upgrades to military bases, having to duck as the C-17's and Hornets land next to you, rides in the new Romeo choppers.

Getting visits at my hotel room on the 23rd floor of a skyrise Chinese hotel in the centre of a city-sized skyscraper ghost town in the smog, by secret police with Qingdao beer, a bowl of cashews and three Russian prostitutes as bribes for info. Which I refused of course. watching Chinese generals touring 300,000 sq/m welding shops as neat and clean as a white bed sheet, workers bowing whilst I stand there with my bag of test gear grinning like a cheshire cat. They would not look a round-eye in the eyes, you'd just get a visit later. Befriending a Chinese mafia druglord who was known as "the Knife" in Chinese who gave me tours of hidden gold and dinosaur fossil markets. How'd i do that, well he was staring at me in a bar in Five Colour City and I stared him out, when he came over and asked my terp WTF I thought I was looking at I complimented him on hos full-body beautifully-coloured Chinese tattoos. Apparently he said, I was the first person who dared engage him in a stare-bear contest. What a ride.
The trades, I am so fortunate that I followed my dad as a Boilermaker, even though he flatly refused that his son be a "worker" and not use my brains.

And now, I am being told what to do by political scum who's whole life was as an activist and a union blowjob fluffer, and watching my country being handed over to cavemen who've ruined theirs.

[Fester]

Sounds like you have been around and seen some stuff, Wapiti.
Like most things, welding can be basic or pretty specialized stuff.

I did some hard facing with the MIG, and no one told me it was deadly stuff, mongrels.
I taught myself to TIG by making the operators a little bridge with steps to cross their production line.
I sort of liked how nice and clean it was doing the stainless stuff with TIG.
The TIG was a tiny machine and great to climb around with.
I didn't do the gas purge pipe stuff.

Heavy industry had me retired early, but my leisure pursuits were always more important than work, and I just worked to live, as they say.

My deer hunting journey could never have happened if I were tied to weekends.
Most blokes think the forests are like shot-out deserts, but deer numbers are actually high; they just don't cruise around waiting to be shot, or hang out where the weekend hunters are.
The hunters don't see them because the deer see them first.

It saddens me that the country is rapidly falling because of useless, lazy, corrupt leaders.
Look at where we could have been heading with all our natural resources.

The retard is in the islands now, crying net zero.
Why is it up to Australia, and how could Australia even change anything?
We sure will go broke trying.

[Wapiti]

Gas purging pipes, you've seen it mate.

I have an inverter scratch-start tig, and a full-house pulse tig too, and for some jobs, there isn't an option. To me, tig is the hardest option to master, and the pressure pipe welders we had were stars, the most incredibly switched on trades out there.
I have a t-shirt about Welders, something like the hands of a surgeon, the precision of a sniper, that sort of thing. True too.

Welding really is as easy, or as hard, as the advice the bloke doing it has been given.

[Fester]

Yeah, watched my mate do a custom fitting we made up to change a pipe run.
He was the boss contractor and obviously knew how to do it.
My contractor mates were lucky and worked in food production line joints all their lives.
Good blokes who grew up in the mountains
Cruisiest gig I ever did, but breakdowns could be stressful, and some of the machines were like complex robots.
All I knew was to keep that tip nice. I hated oxy-welding in TAFT, but liked the TIG.

I did these extrusion dies made of really hard steel, Inconel, from memory.
The machines would squash them undersize and we had a little turntable, so you sat there and just did the weave to build up the face and bore. Then turn them back to size within about +- .001"
I don't know what the special wire was, but no poison label on the box.
If a pinhole in the weld showed up when machining, we tigged it up, as they rejected any that were found when a batch went back to Crane Enfield.

[Wapiti]

Turntables are the standard now in pipe shops, Bloody hell, they'll turn the biggest, longest pipes. It's just a matter of getting the ones suitable for the weights turned, at incredibly consistent slow speeds as per the welding procedure. Different from tank rollers, that you'd use for that with any process including sub-arc.

I've even got one here in the farm shop, to turn tig jobs. It swivels between horizontal and vertical, and this one has a chuck same as a lather does. You can swap for a 4-jaw to spin weird size stuff at the incredibly slow speeds you need for real fine tig work.
Then, all you have to do is concentrate on a stand for your torch hand, and a rest for your filler-rod feed hand. You use a foot control for the rotator, and an auto-helmet.

Actually, for blokes making trick stuff for race cars, or building crank journals or whatever, Vevor make perfectly acceptable rotators like I've described. Improve the work by 100's of percent.

[JDM9691]

Here's a welding job I recently finished. If you haven't run into African Boxthorns, they're a woody, razor sharp thorny bush, that is spread like wildfire when birds and foxes eat it's berries. If you dig them, you'll have another one there next year for every root that gets cut off underground, so they really need to be pulled up. I have several methods of dealing with them, usually pulling them out with a slip chain and the ute, but that gets tedious and I get my forearms cut up when fitting the chain on larger ones.

Last year I made this puller to go on the telehandler, and it works a treat. Fast, easy, pulls up all the roots, works on big or small ones, and you don't have to leave the cab or touch the rotten things!

20260903_103441RS.jpg (154.63 KiB) Viewed 47 times

[JDM9691]

All made from bits I had lying around the place, plus a few hydraulic fittings. Here it is in action last year before it got painted.

20250819_143711RS.jpg (165.8 KiB) Viewed 47 times

It can't get them all though, as a lot of the time birds land in a tree and crap the seeds out, so sometimes they grow up through native trees, and I have to use other methods, but for anything else it's perfect.

[Wapiti]

Love it mate, great work.
Looks like there aren't many boxthorns around now after you've made that up!

[JDM9691]

Not too many, but I make an effort to keep on top of them every year. The problem is that not all the neighbors land or the roadsides get the same attention, so the birds and foxes have a never ending supply of berries in the spring, and the boxthorns keep coming back. I've had to pull over a hundred in a two hundred acre paddock on a number of occasions!

You professional welders would probably have a fit if you saw my welds, but they seem to hold OK (they're certainly better than the paintjob!). As we farmers say about ourselves :- "Jack of all trades - master of none"

I ran out of .9 wire yesterday, and dug out some 1.2 flux core to give it another go, but couldn't get it to feed through the torch even with the tension on max. I seem to remember having trouble with it 30 years ago - tried a new liner, but still no joy so I gave up and have been on .9 and argoshield ever since. Not sure if the liner has a groove cut into it at the bend in the torch from all the .9 I've been using, and the 1.2 jams in it? I'd like to try the shielded wire but it's just easy to go back to something that you know will work.