There are certain skill sets needed to be a moderately capable wrench. You need to know the basics of how to take things apart and put them back together in the right order, the correct way. You need to know how to safely operate tools and to understand their proper uses. That’s where my skill set has been since I was a kid. Outside of electrical specialty work I learned in the Army courtesy of my time as a helicopter technician, I didn’t do much more than that. One thing that always nagged me in the back of my mind was that I didn’t know how to weld. I never had the opportunity growing up…the metalshop in school closed house the year before I would’ve been able to learn, and everybody who taught me how to wrench growing up farmed out the work to someone else. After seeing my youngest brother and a friend of his go through college courses to learn how to turn two pieces of metal into one, I felt that was the only way to go, that welding was some mythical deal that needed classroom time and tons of hands-on work to make happen properly.

After mentioning this to the crew at Mid-South Mopars, they decided that a welding lesson was in order. When I arrived at the shop, two pieces of scrap metal were sitting in the vice on the bench and a Chicago Electric flux-core welder was plugged in and ready to go. With a helmet borrowed from Stu (one of the wrenches in the shop), my first tasking was to start welding. I got a quick lesson in operation, a fresh roll of wire ran into the machine, and was simply told to hit a spot for a two-count before coming off of it. How did that go? I fed out a little bit of wire and reached out to touch it to the metal…and nothing happened. You know that whole thing about pride going before the fall? Yep…”Um…I need to pull the trigger, don’t I?”

I didn’t need sight or sound to know that at least three people watching me face-palmed.

My first couple of actual welds weren’t really welds…it was more like shorting out a wire on metal. No penetration, no stitching, no puddle, nada. I almost wound up welding the tip onto one piece of the plate. My movements were too big to be of any use, and I kept instinctively jerking back at the sound. Blame that last part on the helicopter experience…if I heard sparking noises, my day was about to become very, very bad. But after a couple of hits and misses, I started to get the sensation on how the welder itself functioned and I started to get comfortable.

Part of the issue with my scrap pieces in the vice was that they weren’t grounding properly, so two fresh pieces of scrap were cut. The edges were cleaned up and they were laid out on the floor, and I got down and started laying into it. I was getting progressively better…not great, but better. After building up a line on one side, DeFeo unclipped the piece and flipped it over…on one side, decent-looking bead. On the other, about six spots of good weld. I still was moving the wire away too fast.

More welds. More practice on butting up the next tack from the last one before it cools. More practice on making tiny circles to get both individual pieces of metal together. I was finally starting to see what was going on…I’d hit it until I had a good glowing spot that covered both pieces of scrap, stop, shift down slightly to the bottom of that spot, hit it again. It was starting to come together.

That’s the end result. Not pretty by a wide margin, but not bad either. That sucker is going on the wall in my garage. But I wasn’t done yet. In the background, you can see a 1961 Dodge Lancer. Guess what that puppy needs after decades of living in Tennessee? Floors! Sheetmetal was ready to tack into place, and if anything, I need all the practice I can get. I got into the car with “Wild Bill”, the Lancer’s owner, who was playing observer. Those two pieces of scrap were good, solid chunks of sheetmetal, like the replacement pans were. The transmission tunnel I was welding them to, however, was not.

When I had forum member SuperBuickGuy weld up the rust holes in the Dodge Mirada I owned about five years ago, he kept complaining of blowing through the metal. Someone here with more experience could better explain what happens, but my best attempt is that the metal is so thin that it heats up quickly and the force of the inert gas blows the molten metal away as slag. That’s the fun I got to deal with: I’d get a good bead started, and after a few good spots, I’d blow through and spend a minute trying to fill in the hole with quick hits from the wire.

So, let’s recap: Prior to this, the only time I welded anything to anything was when I drove a car with no battery tie-down in the snow and welded the battery to the hood as a teenager. In the course of a couple hours, I went from not knowing jack squat to welding on someone else’s car using a Harbor Freight flux-core unit. I still need loads of practice, no doubt. I’m not even proficient…more like I know enough to be dangerous. But you have to start somewhere if you want to gain a new skill, and I was lucky enough to capture my first rounds.

Maybe next time I’ll wear jeans and a cheap sweatshirt…my arms are nice and spotted from tiny little burns.