Life, Contracting, and TIG welding

Well - it has been a while since I have posted an update. Many of you are probably wondering what I have been up to - I have been busy for sure. There has been a few electrical contracting jobs (good money when I can get it - at least until building bikes becomes profitable) and there has been 4 weekends of traveling and camping. 3 camping trips - two on Channel Islands National Park - one on Santa Cruz Island aboard a sail boat with our friend Lander, the other on Santa Rosa Island via Island Packers with our friends Sarah, Jayne and 3 year old Ally. There has also been a trip to Las Vegas to see Mystere Cirque du Soleil. We have been wanting to get out to the islands since we arrived here in Santa Barbara, and Danielle has been wanting to see a Cirque du Soleil show for ages.

But it hasn't been all travel and contracting work - I have spent a few days here and there in the workshop. I have been learning to use the Dynasty 200DX TIG welder. I have been burning through some welding rod and making good use of the metal tubing harvested from the doner bikes - as well as using some of the straight gauge CroMolly that I ordered up from Wicks Aircraft Supply.

Here are some pictures of the progress. I apologize the for blurry photos - I am still trying to figure out how to take closeups in low light conditions without having to use the digital SLR...

This weld would certainly hold up to years of use - but I need to work on uniformity. I have a few ideas for a clamp that will let me position the work better to allow me to get my hands and torch at better angles while welding. This weld was done while the piece was laying on a table - so working around the tube to do the fillet joint was a little awkward. I feel the need to spend a lot more time doing the Fillet welds on these miters before I am ready to start welding up the more expensive tube sets on a bicycle frame - where a mistake could be costly and time consuming to fix.