Welding Accident

We had an awesomely terrifying accident in class last Saturday. Ryan was trying to blow a hole through a stubborn strip of metal, and was going to show us how to patch it when he finished. The MIG welder was heating the metal up, but wouldn't blow through - until a chunk of the strip dripped out at once and splashed on the floor. Nobody got burned, but a big drop landed on our extension cord and ate straight through the insulation! As they say at 3rd Ward, Safety dont forget !

Stockpile Designs

This is Jake, one of Ryan's students in intro to metalworking. Last spring I started a micro-business making housewares out of military surplus. The business has been going pretty well, but I got to a point where I was drafting designs I didn't know how to make. The class has already been great in giving me new ideas for using my pieces, and showing me the potential and limitations of my materials. I'll check in here from time to time to post any new projects - and please check out my Etsy store if you need a gift for someone who likes tasteful interiors and heavy metal.

Fall 2010 Class @ 3rd Ward (Furniture & Sculpture)

Hello All,

1st - here is the blog associated with the class. Its an opportunity for everyone to ask questions & post photos/ideas. This exists as a way for us to be engaged beyond just meeting on Saturdays. In one way the subsequent dialogue is as good as we make it.

For example - Amelia spoke about Donald Judd and her having worked at http://www.chinati.org/ which Ben hadnt really heard about. This is the space to introduce each other to those things we find inspiring, interesting and imbued with criticality.

In light of that comment -
http://www.husseinchalayan.com/

Ordering Steel from Extremor or Rapid Steel

Order from http://www.rapidsteel.us (delivers to 3rd Ward) or from Extremor Stainless Steel 1050 Grand Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211 718-302-6108 (walking distance from 3rd Ward). Reed has used Extremor and Mike K. has used Rapid Steel.

The material to order is hot rolled mild steel.
Steel generally comes in 24 ft lengths.
The wall thickness or gauge would be 1/8 inch which is .125.

For furniture or sculpture Square Box tubing is a good material. To give you some context we were working on the one foot square cubes from one inch square box tubing last week in class. A one foot square cube requires 12ft of material.

Place a steel order if you have a project idea in mind. Depending on where you are at in the class working with the available scrap steel at 3rd Ward can be very useful to develop your technique and get a sense of sculptural composition.

Tack welds, Scribing & 90 degree angles

Here is a video that I created as I started to assemble the legs of a table. In the demo, I'm using a set of magnets to hold together the different pieces to ensure that the two pieces are positioned are at 90 degrees.

Here is the link to the video.

Tack Welds

To secure the two pieces together, I'll use a tack weld to ensure that the two pieces are secure before I finish them off with a longer weld across the two seams of the metal. The tack welds are used to ensure that I measured correctly and that the angles are setup correctly before "really" attaching the two pieces together with the longer welds. If I screwed up my tack welds, it's easy to fix.

But if I don't use a tack weld and go right into a longer weld, it will require a lot more work to fix such as using the angle-grinder to cut off the weld, more sanding to clean up any spatter and genuine frustration that I have to start over from scratch.

Scribing

I overlooked the concept of scribing when I first got started in metal working. Scribing is the art of measuring and then cutting the metal to your expected lengths. While the video doesn't show me scribing anything, I never would have been able to get the lengths to the right size without it.

I like to use both a Sharpie marker to identify the lengths (and pieces) that I'm working with and a scribe tool such as this:

The scribing is important because it's easy to cut the pieces the wrong size and that is never a fun exercise to repeat something that you should do once.

90 degree angles

Welding two pieces together at 90 degree angles and have them line up perfectly sounds really easy but it's actually more complex than you think. Depending on whether you have cold-rolled or hot-rolled steel, the steel may or may not be perfectly uniform. I took this for granted when I was trying to figure out the differences and most often two pieces of steel are never exactly the same.

Welding magnets, like the one below really helps the two pieces of steel stay where you want them to and holds them together while you do the tack welds. I can't recommend these magnets enough and I'd recommend that you use two to ensure that you have a tight grip on the steel.

I hope you've enjoyed the video.

Ordering Steel

On Saturday we will go through the process of ordering steel so that people will be able purchase their own material for specific projects and/or to experiment.

In the meantime take a look at Rapid Steel a company that will deliver directly to 3rd Ward which students have used successfully in the past - http://www.rapidsteel.us/

Hot rolled (mild) steel works great for welded steel furniture and sculpture. This is the material to use for your first project.

Inspiration

I keep a folder of inspirational images for my design work, and I thought folks might be interested in the architectural & interiors related images from that.

It's stuff from every where, but it gets me thinking about new furniture & sculpture ideas.

Hope it's useful:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28117403@N07