Mr Blobby has been here.

No - not this Mr Blobby. I'm talking about my blobby welds. The new welder has been absolutely ace. I've been able to weld at amperages as low as the welder can provide. I've also been able to weld with 3/32 rods and my old AC welder really didn't like them.

This is what the welding looked like after I'd sandblasted the work and worked my way along the top a little. When I broke off I'd welded along the top and most of both sides and a bit of the bottom. As the welds are very blobby I'll have to get my angle grinder out to tidy them up but that's a job for another day.

Speaking of sand blasting I had bought a new hopper blaster from Harbor Freight yesterday. In fact I bought my welder and some welding rods yesterday too. I didn't get out of Harbor Freight for much  less than $250. The hopper didn't come with a funnel but the instruction book (why in tarnation does this actually merit an instruction book) came in very handy combined with a little piece of duct tape as a funnel.

I bought some glass media for my blasting and it has done an excellent job. It removed all my Rustoleum Smoke Grey paint and with effort the yellow paint from the bus. I'm not so sure about the galvanizing though. It looked like that had gone too but I'm not certain. I bought a big box of media and probably have enough for this and more.

That's the DC welder. I bought an AC welder when I started because I really didn't know how well I'd get on with welding. Thus I bought a cheap one. I've clearly outgrown it! The DC welder is lighter, smaller and much better for what I'm doing. Having said that, even at low amperages the fridge steel I'm welding had a tendency to combust and turn into a sparkler. That's where the blobby welds come in...

I had a little practice with some 6011 and 6013 rods on my workbench, attaching an old breaker box to my workbench as a handy storage cupboard. It turned out that DCEN (DC Electrode Negative) seemed to work better than anything else. I gather it should have been DCEP (DC Electrode Positive) but I'm into making it work rather than turning theory into practice.

The method of welding given the spontaneous combustion issue was to work the electrode quickly back and fro over about 5 inches of the work. That way steel got deposited without the fridge door burning up too badly. I had the amparage as low as possible. I think I was on 30 amps with 3/32 6013 welding rod.  

As you can see the welds aren't smooth and perfect. The holes I can fill in easily enough with the welding rod. That was as far as I got today though. Today is my 2nd day of welding. The first day, my AC welder was just burning up the work without attaching it. It looks well attached. The sheet of steel I've been putting in has warped and not gone in as perfectly as I would have liked but it's going to work. I'm planning on going to the back of the panel when the outside has been welded and adding more filler behind in order to try to fill any spaces. Then I'll angle grind the front to be as smooth as possible

The old tape from yesterday landed on the ground. You can also see some evidence of my sandblasting. The reason for this picture is that you can see the tape is on fire. This is because the very end of some welding rods landed on the discarded tape. Being still hot, the tape caught fire. This is exactly why I like to weld over sand rather than grass or leaves.

After stopping welding for the day I sprayed everything with the first can of spray paint I could lay my hands on.  The sky had turned grey and it looked awfully like rain was going to head my way. Thus, rather than continuing on to complete the welding I stopped, in order to prepare the work for rain.

Fairly quickly the paint was dry so I slapped some duct tape on. Now the whole thing is protected against the weather. There's enough weld completed to make the back secure against break-ins. Mind, having said that, the interior steel panel will stop intruders.

If there's one thing I can take away from this, that is that the steel sheet from fridges is not at all easy to work with. I've used it before but never welded it before. Perhaps there are some tips and tricks that I need to discover.

Having pulled out the spray paint I taped off one of the rub rails and sprayed it black in order to see what it will look like. I think it looks really smart. Some of the grey came off when I removed the masking tape and I had to respray with grey but using some junkmail that had just arrived as a spray shield. I'll spray all the rub rails black because the grey seems to come off them the worst. Thus, if they're black and the black comes off, it'll take the grey with it, revealing the original black. 

That's the electrical box I have been working on attaching to my workbench. Eventually I'll put hinges on it so that it'll open like a real cupboard. I have no idea what I'll use it for. I just fancied the idea of having that box as a cupboard which is why I kept it.

Finally (almost but not quite yet), that's my workbench. I built that using my AC welder and angle iron that came from the hillbilly bus conversion. They'd built bunk beds from that stuff. Talk about heavy and over strong!

And finally, this is the overcast grey sky that drove me to clear up just in case of rain. In the last hour or two since I packed up for the day it has stayed it has not rained. The weather lied to me! Still, if it does then the work is better painted and protected.

Boy does the ground glass from media blasting get everywhere. I had safety glasses and a breathing mask but it's all in my hair. I need to get goggles too as the safety glasses don't stop everything.

In general, today has been an extreme success. I know various people were saying that I should have gone for a mig welder but honestly this little DC welder uses my existing rods. I have quite a stack of existing rods. I also gather spool type welders are not immune from their own issues such as kinked wire. With the amount of welding I do, I just don't see the need for a mig.